Joso City: Japanese authorities were yesterday grappling with the aftermath of massive flooding that killed at least three people as thousands of rescuers frantically searched a shattered community for almost two dozen still missing.

The heaviest rain in decades pounded the country in the wake of Typhoon Etau which smashed through Japan this week leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

Hundreds of thousands were ordered to leave their homes and at least 22 people including a pair of eight-year-old children were still unaccounted for yesterday evening in disaster-struck Joso city which lies about 60 kilometres outside Tokyo. Another person was missing in a northern prefecture.

Ryosei Akazawa a member of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet acknowledged that emergency personnel still did not know the whereabouts of the missing as fears grew that the death toll would rise.

“We are in a situation where we have yet to confirm where these missing people are” said Akazawa the Cabinet Office’s state minister after visting the devastated area.

Parts of Joso a community of 65000 residents were destroyed on Thursday when a levee on the Kinugawa river gave way flooding an area that reportedly spans 32 square kilometres and includes 6500 homes.

Dramatic aerial footage showed whole houses being swept away by raging torrents in scenes eerily reminiscent of the devastating tsunami that crushed Japan’s northeast coast four years ago.

Desperate Joso residents waved towels as they stood on balconies trying to summon help while military dinghies ferried dozens of people to safety and helicopters plucked individuals from rooftops.

Hundreds of people are believed to still be trapped in buildings while more than 600 had been rescued in Ibaraki prefecture where Joso is located by Friday evening.

Some frightened Joso residents took to social media on their smartphones to beg for help as the muddy brown waves swirled around their doomed houses while trees were uprooted and cars bobbed in the dirty water.

“I don’t know what to do as my house has been inundated” 23-year-old nurse Kentaro Sato told Kyodo News.

One woman said she was anxiously awaiting details about her family at an emergency shelter after leaving her husband and children to go shopping Thursday morning. She was unable to return home due to the flooding.

“I have been here since yesterday morning... and I do not have any news about my family” said the woman in her 60s who gave her last name as Furuya.

The government started drainage operations at the swollen river while repair work on its dykes were reportedly expected to take about a week.

“I still feel the trauma” from the tsunami a woman told public broadcaster NHK from a shelter in Minami Soma one of the areas hit by the 2011 disaster that also triggered reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Some 5800 troops police and firefighters have been dispatched to flooded areas where rescuers continued to work through the night.

AFP