14 of 49 fatalities in Southwestern Japan floods were care home residents, concerns about spread of COVID-19 post-flood

From Kyodo

July 6 2020

KUMAMOTO – More torrential rain struck Japan’s southwestern region of Kyushu on Monday, causing flooding and mudslides in areas other than Kumamoto Prefecture, where at least 49 people have been confirmed dead, with rescuers racing against the clock to save others still missing following the weekend’s deluge.

The weather agency issued its highest-level heavy rain warning for parts of Fukuoka, Nagasaki and Saga prefectures, urging people to take all possible measures to protect their lives. More than 1.22 million people in the Kyushu region have been asked to evacuate.

Of the 49 fatalities in flood-ravaged Kumamoto, 14 were from the Senjuen nursing home near the Kuma River, which overran its banks at 11 locations and broke one levee, according to the prefectural government.

Eleven people remain missing and one person was feared dead, it added. About 6,100 homes along the river were submerged, and roughly 1,060 hectares of land were estimated to have been flooded, the infrastructure ministry said, adding that 11 bridges had been destroyed.

Given the risk of the novel coronavirus spreading, the evacuation centers have taken precautionary measures to avoid crowding and close contact of people in confined spaces, while readying sanitizers and checking the temperatures of people seeking shelter.

“It is important not to let people bring in the novel coronavirus,” said Yatsushiro city official Hideki Motomura, 48, who is working at an evacuation center in Yatsushiro, serving more than 100 people.

A local fire department said 69 people had turned up at its headquarters located on higher ground, but officials asked some to move to other evacuation centers to avoid crowding.

“We had capacity for 60 evacuees here in the past. But considering social distancing, 30 is appropriate at this time, so we had to ask some evacuees to move to another shelter,” said Toshihiko Nakamura, an official of the fire department.

Some evacuees have opted to stay inside their vehicles for fear of becoming infected with the virus, so they have been told to register with an evacuation center and handed leaflets on how to avoid economy class syndrome, in which people develop blood clots from staying in the same position for a long time.

At one evacuation center in Amakusa, a person thought to have the coronavirus was told to go to another evacuation center to self-isolate in a single room.

Some 100 evacuation centers opened in the city of Kagoshima, where rooms are periodically ventilated and people are asked to maintain social distancing.

The city said the number of people at each center was relatively small as it had notified residents since June to check the safety of their homes and consider evacuating to the homes of relatives or friends in times of disasters to reduce the risk of infection at shelters.