Sawt Falasteen - Rain offers relief as Japan battles worst wildfire in 50 years

The blaze around the northern city of Ofunato has killed one person and forced nearly 4,000 to evacuate their homes.

It has engulfed around 2,900 hectares (7,170 acres) -- over eight times the area of New York City's Central Park -- making it Japan's largest wildfire since at least 1975, when 2,700 hectares burnt in Kushiro on Hokkaido island.

But rain and snow were falling Wednesday, AFP reporters saw, as several columns of white smoke billowed from a mountain where the blaze has been raging.

"Firefighters have been working on the ground through the night to extinguish the fire," a city official told AFP on Wednesday.

"We are hoping that snow, which started to fall this morning, will help" put out the blaze, he added.

At least 84 buildings are believed to have been damaged, although details are still being assessed, according to the fire agency.

As of late Tuesday, almost 4,000 people living nearby had complied with orders to evacuate.

Japan endured its hottest summer on record last year, as climate change pushes up temperatures worldwide.

The number of wildfires in the country has declined since its 1970s peak, but there were about 1,300 in 2023, concentrated in the period from February to April when the air dries out and winds pick up.

Ofunato had just 2.5 millimetres (0.1 inches) of rainfall in February -- breaking the previous record low for the month of 4.4 millimetres in 1967 and falling well below the usual average of 41 millimetres.

Since Friday, "there has been no rain -- or very little, if any" in Ofunato, a local weather agency official told AFP late Tuesday.

Around 2,000 firefighters -- most deployed from other parts of the country, including Tokyo -- have been working from the air and ground in the fire-hit zone in the Iwate region, which was devastated in 2011 by a deadly tsunami.

Some types of extreme weather have a well-established link with climate change, such as heatwaves and heavy rainfall.

Other phenomena like droughts, snowstorms, tropical storms and forest fires can result from a combination of complex factors.

Japanese baseball prodigy Roki Sasaki, who recently joined the Los Angeles Dodgers, has offered a 10-million-yen ($67,000) donation and 500 sets of bedding to people affected by the wildfire, Ofunato city posted on X.

Sasaki was a high school student there, after losing his father and grandparents in the huge 2011 tsunami.

X.Habash--SF-PST