Sharjah24 - AFP: Rescue and recovery teams were at work on Sunday in a remote peninsula that had already been damaged by a significant earthquake earlier this year after floods and landslides in central Japan left one person dead and at least six missing.
"Unprecedented" heavy rains that lashed the area from Saturday began to subside, leaving muddy scenes of destruction as the national weather agency urged residents to stay vigilant for loose ground and other dangers.
In the city of Wajima, piles of splintered branches and a huge uprooted tree amassed at a bridge over a river whose raging brown waters almost reached ground level.
People were seen wading into the mud to try to dig out half-buried cars, while elsewhere flood waters inundated emergency housing built for those who had lost their homes in the New Year's Day earthquake that killed at least 318 people.
Eight temporary housing complexes were affected in Wajima and Suzu, two of the cities on the Noto Peninsula hardest hit by the magnitude-7.5 quake, which toppled buildings, triggered tsunami waves and sparked a major fire.
More than 540 millimetres (21 inches) of rainfall in the past 72 hours to Sunday morning was recorded in Wajima -- the heaviest continuous rain since comparative data became available in 1976.
Landslides blocked roads, complicating rescue efforts, and tens of thousands of people in the wider region have been urged to evacuate.
Muddy rivers ran high in Anamizu, south of Wajima, where more rain fell on Sunday morning onto quake-damaged houses and the shattered stone columns of a shrine still lying on the ground months after they were toppled.
A message blared from the city's loudspeaker disaster prevention system warning residents that the rain could flood the sewer system and dirty water could rise up.
Hideaki Sato, 74, stood on a bridge holding a blue umbrella, anxiously looking at the swollen water of a small canal.
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