Rescue workers search for at least 6 people missing after heavy rain pounds Japan’s Noto region

TOKYO (AP) — Rescue workers searched for at least six people missing Sunday after heavy rain pounded Japan’s northcentral region of Noto, triggering landslides and floods and leaving one person dead in a region still recovering from a deadly Jan. 1 earthquake.

The Japan Meteorological Agency on Saturday issued the highest alert level for heavy rain across several cities in the Ishikawa prefecture, including hard-hit cities Suzu and Wajima on the northern coast of the Noto peninsula.

The agency has since downgraded the heavy rain alert, and kept landslide and flooding warnings in place.

In Suzu, one person died and another was missing after being swept in floodwaters. Another went missing in the nearby town of Noto, according to the prefecture.

In Wajima, rescue workers were searching for four people missing following a landslide at a construction site. They were among 60 construction workers repairing a tunnel damaged by January's quake.

The FDMA said another person was missing due to floods at a different location in the city.

NHK footage at a coastal area of Wajima showed a wooden house torn and tilted after it was apparently hit by a landslide. No injuries were reported from the site.

In Noto town, two people were seriously injured by a landslide while visiting their quake-damaged home.

At least 16 rivers in Ishikawa breached their banks as of Saturday afternoon, according to the Land and Infrastructure Ministry. Residents were urged to use maximum caution against possible mudslides and building damage.

By late afternoon Saturday, about 1,350 residents were taking shelter at designated community centers, school gymnasiums and other town facilities, authorities said.

About 50 centimeters (20 inches) of rain has fallen in the region over the last three days, due to the rainbands that cause torrential rain above the Hokuriku region, JMA said.

“Heavy rain is hitting the region that had been badly damaged by the Noto earthquake, and I believe many people are feeling very uneasy," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi.

Hayashi said the government “puts people's lives first” and its priority was search and rescue operations. He also called on the residents to pay close attention to the latest weather and evacuation advisories and take precautions early, adding that the Self Defense Force troops have been dispatched to Ishikawa to join rescue efforts.

A resident in Wajima told NHK that he has just finished cleaning his house from the quake damage and it was depressing to now see it flooded by muddy water.

A number of roads flooded by muddy water were also blocked. Hokuriku Electric Power Co. said more than 5,000 homes were still without power Sunday. Traffic lights were out in the affected areas. Many homes were also without water supply.

Heavy rain also fell in nearby northern prefectures of Niigata and Yamagata, threatening flooding and other damages and suspending train operations, including the Yamagata Shinkansen bullet trains, officials said.

A 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck the region on Jan. 1, killing more than 370 people and damaging roads and other key infrastructure. Its aftermath still affects the local industry, economy and daily lives.

A man wades through a flooded street near temporary housing units installed after the Jan. 1 earthquake in Wajima, Japan, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024, following heavy rain in central Japan's Noto peninsula area, where a devastating earthquake took place on Jan. 1. (Muneyuki Tomari/Kyodo News via AP)

Debris is piled in a river running through Wajima, Japan, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024, following heavy rain in central Japan's Noto peninsula area, where a devastating earthquake took place on Jan. 1. (Katsunori Nishioka/Kyodo News via AP)

A street is flooded in Wajima, Japan, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024, following heavy rain in central Japan's Noto peninsula area, where a devastating earthquake took place on Jan. 1. (Yasuko Kishimoto/Kyodo News via AP)

Debris is piled along a bridge over the Kawarada river near the city hall in Wajima, Japan, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024, following heavy rain in central Japan's Noto peninsula area. (Yasuko Kishimoto/Kyodo News via AP)

Japan's Self-Defense Forces vehicles deployed to support people in areas affected by severe weather are parked on a mud-covered road in Wajima, Japan, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024, following heavy rain in central Japan's Noto peninsula area. (Katsunori Nishioka/Kyodo News via AP)

People wade through a partially flooded street in Suzu, Japan, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024, following heavy rain in central Japan's Noto peninsula area, where a devastating earthquake took place on Jan. 1. (Kasumi Fukudome/Kyodo News via AP)

A man wades through a flooded street near temporary housing units installed after the Jan. 1 earthquake in Wajima, Japan, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024, following heavy rain in central Japan's Noto peninsula area. (Muneyuki Tomari/Kyodo News via AP)

This aerial photo shows the flooded Kawarada river and submerged area after heavy rain in Wajima, Ishikawa prefecture, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)

In this aerial photo, the car park of a municipal office is seen under water, after heavy rain in Wajima, Ishikawa prefecture, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)

A car is blocked by rocks covering a road, after heavy rain in Wajima, Ishikawa prefecture, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)

This aerial photo shows cars are submerged after heavy rain in Wajima, Ishikawa prefecture, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)

A car is blocked by rocks covering a road, after heavy rain in Wajima, Ishikawa prefecture, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)

This aerial photo shows the flooded area after heavy rain in Wajima, Ishikawa prefecture, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)

This aerial photo shows the flooded area after heavy rain in Wajima, Ishikawa prefecture, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)

A road is flooded after heavy rain in Wajima, Ishikawa prefecture, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Hold on to those Thanksgiving turkeys! WKRP is coming to Cincinnati — for real this time.

“I cannot, by contract, tell you when. I cannot tell you who. But I can tell you, direct to the camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati,” D.P. McIntire, who runs the media nonprofit that is auctioning the famous call letters, told The Associated Press. “Book it! It’s done!”

The call sign was made famous by “WKRP in Cincinnati,” a CBS television sitcom that ran from 1978 to 1982. It made stars of actors like Loni Anderson and Richard Sanders, whose bumbling newsman Les Nessman reported on a Thanksgiving promotion gone bad when live but flightless turkeys were dropped from a helicopter.

McIntire remembers watching the show’s first episode — featuring disc jockeys Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) — in the living room with his parents and older sister.

“And at the end of the 30-minute episode,” he said, “I got up and I proclaimed, `I’m going to be in radio. And if I ever have the opportunity, I’m going to run a station called WKRP.’”

McIntire said he got his first on-air job at 13 as a news anchor at WNQQ “Wink FM” in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.

Fast forward to 2014, when his North Carolina-based nonprofit acquired the call sign from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations in Dallas, Georgia, and Alexandria, Tennessee, previously bore the letters.

McIntire laughs as he recalls his chat with a woman in the agency’s audio division.

He had two sets of call letters in mind. She told him he needed a third.

“Being the jokester that I am, I said, `Well, if you need three, and if it’s available, we’ll take WKRP,’” he said. “And 90 seconds later, she came back and she said, `Mr. McIntire. Congratulations. You’re the general manager of WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina.’”

WKRP-LP — 101.9 on the FM dial — went live Nov. 30, 2015. The LP stands for “low power,” a class of station created to serve more local audiences that didn’t want mass-market content.

“Our format is what radio used to be 35 years ago in small-town America,” he said. "There is Greats of the ‘80s, Sounds of the ’70s, '90s Rewind," as well as local news and “specialty programming.”

LPFM is restricted to nonprofit organizations like his Oak City Media, and it’s definitely local.

“Your broadcast capacity is limited to 100 watts,” McIntire said. “So, your average range is between, depending on your terrain and circumstances, 4 and 12 miles (6 and 19 kilometers) in any direction. Enough to cover a small town.”

And, by necessity, it’s a low-budget affair.

The transmitter is in a corner of McIntire’s garage, between a recycling bin and the cleaning supplies. The broadcast antenna sits atop a 25-foot (7.62-meter) metal flagpole in the backyard. The studio — microphones and a mixing board hooked up to a computer — is on the first floor of McIntire’s home.

Like the WKRP of television, McIntire and his partners set out to be “irreverent.” One of their offerings is a two-hour show called “Weird Al and Friends,” focusing on the satirical works of Weird Al Yankovic.

They even had an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. But don’t call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — they hand out gift certificates to a local grocery store.

“We don’t toss them out of helicopters,” he said with a laugh.

This news comes hot on the heels of the decision to shutter CBS News Radio after nearly a century in operation. After more than a decade on the air, the 56-year-old McIntire decided it was time to pass the reins.

“We’re in a position where the older members like me who started the station are turning the leadership over to younger members,” he said. “They’re not interested in radio.”

They put out a call for bids to use the call letters on FM and AM radio, as well as television and digital television.

They intend to use the proceeds for a new nonprofit venture called Independent Broadcast Consultants. He said IBC will be “geared specifically toward helping these new broadcasters get up and running, get the consulting that they need in order to be, hopefully, more successful than we have been.”

Oak City Media was all set to hand off the television-related suffixes — WKRP-TV and WKRP-DT — when another group defaulted on the agreement, McIntire said. But he said the Cincinnati deal is in the bag, he just can’t legally discuss it.

“It will be radio,” he said. “But that’s all I can tell you at this time.”

Robert Thompson, who uses a season 2 episode of “WKRP” in his TV history class at Syracuse University, said it’s telling that people see real value in a fictional station whose call letters invoke the word “crap.”

“The value comes from the love of the characters for each other,” he said. “And now by buying this thing, the value comes from our love of the characters themselves.”

Whatever they do with the call sign, McIntire hopes they will be true to the show that inspired it.

“It has a special place in the hearts of an awful lot of people,” he said. “And we have been very, very, very proud to have been a steward of that legacy.”

This story has been updated to correct that the studio is on the first floor of the home, not the basement.

D.P. McIntire leans against a deck beneath the WKRP radio antenna in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

D.P. McIntire points to the transmitter for WKRP radio in a corner of his garage in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

The WKRP radio antenna sits atop a 25-foot flagpole behind D.P. McIntire's home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

A photo of the cast members of the sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" sits in a window at the home of D.P. McIntire in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

D.P. McIntire stands beneath a WKRP banner in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)