At least 19 people are dead and 16 missing after the powerful Typhoon Hagibis ripped through Japan triggering deadly landslides and flooding rivers, with hundreds of homes evacuated.
The destruction forced Rugby World Cup organisers to cancel the third match of the tournament, though the key Japan-Scotland clash will go ahead.
By Sunday morning, the significantly weakened storm had moved back off land, but serious flooding was reported in central Japan’s Nagano, where a burst levee sent water from the Chikuma river gushing into residential neighbourhoods, flooding homes up to the second floor.
Yasuhiro Yamaguchi, an emergency official in Nagano city said: ‘Overnight, we issued evacuation orders to 427 households, 1,417 individuals.’
The government has deployed 27,000 troops and other rescue workers to take part in operations after some 376,000 homes were left without electricity, and 14,000 without running water.
Hagibis smashed into the main Japanese island of Honshu around 7:00 pm (1000 GMT) Saturday as one of the most violent typhoons in recent years, with wind gusts of up to 134 miles per hour.
Well before making landfall, the outer bands of the storm claimed their first victim, a driver whose van was flipped over in the strong gusts.
Several more deaths were confirmed Saturday night, including a man killed in a landslide and another pulled from a flooded home.
And the toll continued to rise as the full scale of the disaster became clearer Sunday morning, with bodies recovered from submerged cars and landslides across several regions of the country.
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