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At Least 25 People Remain Missing After Flooding Near Tokyo

Family members clean a house on Friday after the flooding in Shimotsuma, near Joso, Ibaraki prefecture, north of Tokyo.
Shizuo Kambayashi AP
Family members clean a house on Friday after the flooding in Shimotsuma, near Joso, Ibaraki prefecture, north of Tokyo.

A day after a flood berm failed in Joso, a city of 60,000 northeast of Tokyo, Japan's weather service said the rain was headed further north on Honshu Island.

On Friday, evacuation orders and advisories were extended to include nearly a million people.

The flooding followed two days of heavy rain from the remnant of Typhoon Etau. In some places six inches of rain fell in a twenty-four hour period.

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Thursday in Joso, houses were washed away and people stranded by high water were rescued by helicopter.

Joso was flooded when the Kinugawa River broke through its berm. Friday, the banks of the Shibui River in the city of Osaki collapsed, flooding nearby houses, according to The Japan Times.

The Japan Times reports:

"Residents rescued by helicopter recalled the teror they felt as the flood waters quickly rose. "'There was a scene in front of me which was like the one in the tsunami disaster,' said Jiro Nakayama, 70, referring to the 2011 calamity triggered by a huge earthquake off northeastern Japan."

Japan's Fire and Disaster Agency confirms one fatality, a woman in her 60s whose body was found at the foot of a steep hill following a mudslide.

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