Japan rain: Nearly two million residents told to seek shelter

© KYODO
Experts warn the rain is forecast to continue throughout the week

Nearly two million people have been urged to evacuate their homes amid heavy rainfall in parts of Japan.

Highest-level rain warnings have been issued in a number of prefectures, including Fukuoka and Hiroshima.

One woman has died and her husband and daughter are missing after a landslide destroyed two homes in Nagasaki prefecture.

More than 150 troops, police and firefighters have been sent to help with rescue operations in the area.

"They are carefully searching for the missing residents, while watching out for further mudslides as the heavy rain continues," a local official told the AFP news agency.

The west of the country is worst affected but heavy downpours are expected across the country in coming days.

In Saga prefecture, a hospital evacuated patients to its upper floors on Saturday after the nearby Rokkaku river overflowed and flooded the building, Kyodo News agency reported, citing local authorities.

In total, non-compulsory evacuation warnings are now in place for more than 1.8 million people across seven prefectures, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK.

Yushi Adachi, from Japan's meteorological agency, described the current rainfall as "unprecedented".

"It's highly likely that some kind of disaster has already occurred," he said.

Local television footage showed submerged roads. Rivers in Saga and Fukuoka have overflowed with water levels still rising, local media reports said.

An official in Kumamoto, south-western Japan, said a 76-year-old man was missing after trying to secure his fishing boat.

The flooding comes just weeks after heavy rain caused landslides and prompted rivers to burst their banks, killing dozens.

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M 8.1 - South Sandwich Islands region

2021-08-12 18:35:20 (UTC)58.416°S 25.321°W48.3 km depth

Seismic observations suggest this earthquake is part of a complex seismic sequence. Our current interpretation is that this earthquake is the mainshock to a M7.5 that occurred ~170s earlier. The location, depth, mechanism, and magnitude of this earthquake is preliminary and less well constrained than typical events of this size due to interference from the preceding M7.5 foreshock. Research is being conducted on this sequence to better understand the faulting geometry and details of rupture. This analysis will take time and our understanding will likely evolve. This page will be updated as we learn more about these interesting events.

Teen dies after lightning strike at Orchard Beach

A teenage boy has died after being struck by lightning during a fast-moving, pop-up thunderstorm that rolled over Orchard Beach late Thursday afternoon.

Carlos Ramos, 13, of the Bronx died at Jacobi Medical Center.

His friends of his family are devastated.

"If lightning struck one of my children, I don't know what I'll be doing. The thing is, he was a kid, he was a good kid. Really, really good one," family friend Jamila Banks said.

Six other people were hospitalized after the incident including 13-year-old, Stacy Saldivar.

Outside the hospital Friday, Saldivar, who was at the beach with her parents and two siblings, said she and her family saw the storm clouds, left the water and gathered their things and were running to escape a downpour of rain when lightning struck just in front of her.

"I passed out and then I was shaking and blood started coming out of my mouth," Saldivar said. "There was this man that was giving me compressions."

Saldivar said her dad screamed for help.

She said she was told the lightning struck the ground in front of her, but miraculously didn't leave a mark on her body.

"Like a little tingle that really hurt a lot," Saldivar said. "I feel lucky to be alive still."

Saldivar said she and her family were not at the beach with Ramos and that they don't know each other.

Lightning strikes are very rare, but what happened Thursday in the Bronx is a reminder they can happen.

The storm dumped heavy rain and brought thunder and lightning, forcing lifeguards to clear the beach.

But several people got caught in that storm.

In addition to Ramos and Saldivar, those struck were a 41-year-old man; a 33-year-old woman; a 14-year-old boy; a 12-year-old girl; and a 5-year-old boy.

All were taken to the hospital. All are expected to survive.

Beach goers described the scary scene.

"One lightning came down, and next thing you know the cloud came above us and lightning just started falling everywhere all around us," said Ralph Gonzalez.

"You can't there's no rationalizing it. It's just Mother Nature, if you want to call it that."

The thunderstorms came with the intense heat that gripped at the Tri-State area on Thursday, heat which is expected to continue Friday.

Lightning has injured 17 people in New York City since 2001, not including Thursday's incident.

In Aug 2018, two men were struck while playing soccer in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, we covered that. During the same storm, a man was struck while standing next to a car in Jamaica, Queens.

Three people were struck by lightning, also at Orchard Beach, back in August 2014.

In August 2002, a 25-year-old man was struck and killed by lightning on the roof of a building on Broome Street in Chinatown, likely the last known lightning death in the city.

Nationwide, lightning has killed six other people this year, including a 70-year-old man on a golf course in Westhampton, New Jersey.