Record-breaking torrential rain slammed Chiba Prefecture near Tokyo, Japan, resulting in casualties including eight deaths, while thousands of airport users spent the night stranded at the airport.

According to NHK and other reports on the 14th, Chiba Prefecture announced that the record-breaking downpour, which began the previous afternoon, has left eight people dead and 7,359 evacuees as of 6:00 AM.

The Japan Meteorological Agency reported that moisture-laden air collided with cold upper-air masses, triggering downpours exceeding 100 mm per hour starting from the afternoon of the 13th.

In Chiba City, 348 mm of rain fell over a 12-hour period leading up to 1:40 AM on the 14th, marking the highest figure since statistics began.

This volume equals roughly three times the region's average total precipitation for the entire month of August pouring down all at once.

An observation post in Midori Ward, Chiba City, measured approximately 450 mm of precipitation over a six-hour period starting from 6:00 PM on the 13th.

The Japan Meteorological Agency issued its highest-level emergency heavy rain warning, Level 5, for 22 cities and other areas in Chiba Prefecture.

At one point, residents subject to evacuation orders approached 400,000, and 45,000 households suffered power outages.

According to Jiji Press, a woman in her 60s who requested rescue after failing to escape a flooded taxi was found dead.

Fire authorities were dispatched following a report that a person was clinging to a guardrail, discovering an elderly man and rushing him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

In Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, a woman in her 70s trapped inside a car on a flooded road was rescued but remains in a state of cardiac arrest.

An acquaintance who rescued the woman said, "I called emergency services for rescue, but had no idea how long we would have to wait for them to arrive. The water on the road rose so high it reached above our heads, so I had to swim to the car, break the window with an iron pipe, and pull the person out."

A Pakistani national living in Yachiyo, Chiba Prefecture, described the tense situation, saying, "Around 6:00 PM on the 13th, the water inside my house was about knee-deep, but two hours later it suddenly surged up to 1.5 meters."

At Narita Airport in Chiba Prefecture, the downpour halted train and bus operations, leaving approximately 7,000 travelers stranded at the airport as of 4:00 AM on the 14th.

Narita Airport authorities provided stranded travelers with water, food, and sleeping bags.

At stations such as JR Soga Station, passengers unable to move because surrounding roads were flooded spent the night inside the railway stations.

In response to a request from Chiba Prefecture, the Japan Self-Defense Forces deployed large buses starting early in the morning on the 14th to transport 4,000 people who were unable to return home from train stations to evacuation shelters.

(Photo: Yonhap News)