Japan typhoon rescue effort goes into 2nd night

Terra Daily via AFP: A painstaking search through tonnes of mud and splintered houses entered its second night Thursday on a typhoon-battered Japanese island, where the death toll from landslides rose to 21.

Hundreds of police, firefighters and troops searched for the more than 30 people still missing in an area where buildings were swallowed when a mountainside collapsed.

Typhoon Wipha, dubbed the strongest in a decade, never actually made landfall as it surged past Japan, but violent winds and torrential rain set off mudslides that buried neighbourhoods on Oshima. At least 21 people died and 33 were still missing on the island, which lies 120 kilometres (75 miles) south of the Japanese capital, broadcaster NHK said.

One woman also died in western Tokyo, police have said. On Oshima, about 15 police officers spent the morning using chainsaws and shovels to free the body of an elderly woman buried in mud and the smashed remains of a wooden building, an AFP reporter said....

An aerial view of Oshima, Wikimedia Commons, "National Land Image Information (Color Aerial Photographs), Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism"