JAPAN: Floods swamp hundreds of homes in Central Japan

TOKYO (Reuters), August 29, 2008: Heavy rain flooded hundreds of homes in central Japan on Friday, leaving one elderly woman dead and prompting evacuation orders for more than half a million households, police and media said. "The thunder was so strong and the rain was very heavy, too. Then I smelled the mud. That's when I knew this is really quite serious," a man who fled his home in Tokyo when a landslide hit the area told NHK television. Some people fled their home in a boat as floodwater reached close to their waist, television pictures showed, and cars sank in muddy water. Police said a woman in her 70s was found dead in her flooded home in the city of Okazaki, 230 km (143 miles) west of Tokyo. Source: Reuters