Nine pensioners are found dead in a care home for dementia sufferers as floods from 100mph typhoon sweep through Japan
At least nine elderly people have been found dead at a nursing home in Japan as heavy overnight rain from a devastating Typhoon left towns flooded across the country’s north.
Police discovered the bodies in the town of Iwaizumi while checking another facility in the flooded area.
Takehiro Hayashijiri, an official at the Iwate prefecture disaster management division, said the home was for people with dementia.
Footage from public broadcaster NHK showed a helicopter hovering over the building as rescuers tried to pluck other stranded residents to safety.
Media reports said the building was reserved for people with dementia and another 86 elderly residents and employees were in another facility building at the time.
Footage showed the nursing home partially buried in mud, surrounded by debris apparently washed down from the mountains. A car by the home was turned upside down.
The death toll from the powerful storm rose to 11 after an elderly woman was found dead in her flooded home nearby, and another body was discovered not far from the nursing home, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said.
‘We’re making a government-wide effort to assess the extent of damage,’ Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.
The government sent the Self-Defense Force, Japan’s military, to help in the rescue and cleanup effort.
Further north, on the island of Hokkaido, at least two rivers broke through their banks.
The embankments gave way early on Wednesday morning, NHK said, quoting Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Tourism.
Authorities in the town of Minami-furano reported many people trapped in houses and shelters by flooding from the Sorachi river, NHK said.
The typhoon, with winds of over 100 miles an hour when it made landfall, also caused flooding on the northern island of Hokkaido.
The typhoon was later reclassified as an extratropical cyclone and moved out into the Sea of Japan at midnight, said the Japan Meteorological Agency.
