Death due to miscommunication. (Floods in Japan.)

By, Uwe Paschen.

In the past two weeks we have known much rain here in Japan's Tokyo, Saitama, Tochigi, and Chiba Prefecture. At times the rain fall went as high as 113 mm/H and this through out the Western Japanese Prefectures.

In Tokyo last week 4 City Worker lost their lives in one of those floods as they tried to work on a drain, the Water just took them away.

Yesterday, in Kanuma City in the Tochigi Prefecture, the water was as high as a meter and a half in some areas and took with it cars and what ever else was in its way.

The Police received many calls of people in trouble and responded rather quickly to them, however there was one tragic case yesterday, as the rain fall exceeded the 100 mm and swept Cars away with the drivers in them.

Calls went in to the Police Station and the Police and rescue worker where busy. And yet something went wrong. Someone called in a car being swept away by the masses of water running through the streets and drifting along a gas station that was already covered in water it self.

The Police received another call, also about a car in the same area at another gas station being swept away,  believing it to be the same car then the earlier call and there for the Police did not worry since rescue had already being dispatched.

Yet that car was just about 50 meter further up from the first call and disappeared in the masses of water, the Woman inside was trapped by the pressure the water was putting on the car and once engulfed in it had no way nor time to escape and she drowned.

Only later as the water started to subside, people noticed the car that had been washed under the bridge at the main intersection in Kanuma City. Police came to investigate the car in the middle of the road bellow the train bridge and fund a deceased Woman of 45 Year in it. She is living behind a teen age Son and her Husband, both devastated yet not angered at the Police for the misunderstanding.

It was then that the Police realised that the two calls where not connected and that they should not ever have assumed so either. A lesson to be learned for future calls, yet a lesson that came at a high cost. The Cost of a Human life that could have been saved most likely if the call wound not have been dismissed or misunderstood.

Today we had more rain though and in Tokyo a building collapse under the masses of water, yet this time no one lost their life and all where safe thanks to an outstanding job by rescue and Police workers alike.