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Toyota stops production as torrential rains lash Japan |
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September 13, 2000
TOKYO (AP) - Boulevards became muddy rivers and hundreds of thousands of people were ordered to evacuate Tuesday as Japan's heaviest rains on record soaked central areas, killing six people and forcing the nation's biggest carmaker to stop production. Authorities in the major city of Nagoya ordered about 140,000 households, or 363,985 people, to move to public facilities or other safe places, said city official Tadanobu Horiguchi. A typhoon packing winds of 144 kph (89 mph) was also churning close to the coast of Okinawa and lashing areas of southern Japan with powerful gusts. The dead included a 53-year-old firefighter, who fell into a flooded roadside ditch, and a 49-year-old man, who was buried by mudslides, Horiguchi said. Four other people were killed, 32 were injured and three were missing, the national police said. Nagoya-based Toyota Motor Corp. stopped production nationwide because of the relentless downpour, a company spokeswoman said. The automaker has a highly interdependent network of parts-makers, which means that a stoppage in the flooded Nagoya nerve-center would affect operations in other areas. Mitsubishi Motors Corp., Japan's fourth-largest automaker, also stopped production at its two factories in Nagoya, said company spokesman Isao Sakaibara. Nagoya, a major industrial city of 2.2 million people, is 269 kilometers (167 miles), west of Tokyo. Television footage showed residents wading waist-deep in muddy water and children navigating flooded streets in rubber inner-tubes. Troops in rowboats paddled past inundated buses to rescue stranded residents. Fourteen homes were demolished by landslides, and more than 12,000 were flooded above the floor level, police said. Landslides happened in 310 places. Separately, a tornado swept through a residential area in central Tokyo on Tuesday morning, destroying the roofs of several homes, police said. There were no reports of injuries. Power was cut in 800 places when the twister knocked down electricity poles, said Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Soichi Takeguchi. Most lines had been restored by the afternoon. In central Japan, bullet train services were interrupted because of power outages caused by the torrential rains. About 50,000 passengers were forced to sleep overnight at railway stations or in trains that ground to a halt. Services resumed in the afternoon after a record interruption of more than 18 hours. The governor of Aichi prefecture (state), where Nagoya is located, requested troops from the Self-Defense Forces - Japan's military - to help with disaster relief, the prime minister's office said. Rainfall totaling 582 millimeters (23 inches) was recorded in Tokai, near Nagoya, over the past 24-hour period, the local observatory said. The rainfall, the largest ever, was expected to surpass 800 millimeters (32 inches) in some areas, the Meteorological Agency said. More violent weather was hitting southern Japan, as typhoon Saomai approached the southernmost prefecture of Okinawa. Saomai, located 50 kilometers (61 miles) east of the Okinawa capital of Naha, was battering the island with powerful winds. Naha is about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) southwest of Tokyo.
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