Officials Survey Damage After Torrential Rain
As rain continues to pound parts of the Tohoku region and Niigata Prefecture, officials are now surveying the damage.
The heavy rain has caused the collapse of a railway bridge over a river in a city in northern Fukushima Prefecture. Train service was suspended there on Thursday.
A video was taken after dawn in a village in northern Niigata Prefecture. About 150 millimeters of rain fell in just one hour early this morning.
And another image is from a city nearby. It shows residential areas submerged in water.
Dozens of people have called police in the city of Murakami and the village of Sekikawa to ask for help.
In neighboring Yamagata Prefecture, a bridge collapsed in the town of Iide. Witnesses say a car that was on the bridge at the time was swept away.
Police have received several reports about missing people. They hope to launch a search mission, but the river level is still dangerously high. The local fire departments have received about 100 reports of flooded homes.