Posted July 07, 2017 15:34:32

Severe flooding in the southern Japanese island of Kyushu has claimed six lives, with rescuers still working to get food and medical supplies to more than 1,000 people left stranded.

More than 12,000 personnel have been conscripted to help with the relief effort, digging through piles of splintered wood and mud in the wake of freak rains that forced nearly 80,000 from their homes.

This number was down from more than 400,000 at the peak of the rains, with tens of thousands more advised to leave their homes.

The Government said six people had died and 22 remained unaccounted for as rain continued to fall over northern Kyushu on Friday, amid warnings of further landslides.

Parts of Fukuoka, on the south-western island of Kyushu, were hit by 593 millimetres of rain in the 48 hours to 9:00am on Friday (local time), well over the rainfall of a usual July, the meteorological agency said.

Photo: Some of those stranded had to be rescued by helicopter. (Reuters/Kyodo)

"At first, it wasn't raining that much," said Sumie Umeyo, a resident of Asakura in south-central Fukuoka.

"But they spoke of record-breaking rain and it started raining heavily, then they began closing the roads.

"We looked outside and the roads were like rivers."

About 500 people were rescued yesterday when rivers across the region broke their banks and landslides cut off roads.

They said 1,100 people were still isolated on Friday and that Japan's military was transporting food and medical supplies wherever they could.

Heavy rain continued to fall, shifting to the northern part of Kyushu, although emergency rain warnings were lifted.

Photo: Landslides have already caused significant damage to many areas, and authorities warned more were possible. (AP/Kyodo: Ryosuke Ozawa)

Large boulders and uprooted trees littered the landscape as thousands of soldiers, police officers and firefighters waded through debris and mud to reach several hundred people cut off by landslides.

Fukuoka and neighbouring Oita, the hardest hit by the rain, are both largely rural prefectures but rivers were also rising in the city of Kitakyushu, which has a population of some 950,000, and issued evacuation orders for several districts.

The rain was caused by a low pressure area over the Pacific that fed warm, moist air into Japan's seasonal rainy front.

ABC/Reuters

Topics: floods, disasters-and-accidents, emergency-incidents, weather, japan