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Buried street in the Japanese city of Atami
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- / dpa
An enormous mudslide as a result of torrential rains tore down several residential buildings in Japan.
The fate of around 20 people was initially uncertain, as local media reported on Saturday from Atami, which is famous for its hot onsen baths.
The coastal city is around a hundred kilometers southwest of Tokyo.
Rescue workers looked for the missing.
The authorities issued the highest warning level and called on around 25,000 households to get to safety.
The military was asked for assistance.
Footage shows rescue workers wading through waist-deep water.
The government set up a crisis team.
"I heard a terrible noise and saw a mudslide moving down while the rescue workers asked people to evacuate," the director of a temple told the public broadcaster NHK.
He saved himself to a higher area.
When he returned, the houses and cars in front of the temple had disappeared.
The number of landslides almost doubled in a short time
Pictures on Japanese television showed how a massive wave of black mud suddenly crashes down a slope, breaks through several houses and pulls everything with it.
In other places along the Pacific coast, residents have also been warned to seek safety from swelling rivers, flooding and possible landslides.
In the course of global warming, Japan is recording more and more heavy rainfall, which also leads to more and more landslides.
The cause is a warmer atmosphere that stores more water, which in turn leads to more intense rainfall.
In the past ten years, according to official information, an average of almost 1500 landslides have occurred in the mountainous island kingdom - almost twice as many as in the previous ten years.
According to a study, people in Japan rate the effects of climate change as particularly threatening, alongside people in Italy and the UK.
80 percent of those surveyed there expressed concern about more severe heat waves, droughts, torrential rains and storms.
France, Germany, South Africa and Canada were close behind in the survey.
irb / AFP / dpa
