Photo/Illutration Victims of a deadly landslide in Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture, in July file a damages suit with the Shizuoka District Court’s Numazu branch in Numazu, Shizuoka Prefecture, on Sept. 28. (Takashi Uematsu)

NUMAZU, Shizuoka Prefecture--Victims of a deadly landslide in Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture, in July are suing companies that oversaw a landfill project on the site for causing the “manmade disaster.”

Seventy plaintiffs filed a lawsuit with the Shizuoka District Court’s Numazu branch on Sept. 28, seeking about 3.27 billion yen ($29.4 million) in compensation.

The plaintiffs include people who lost their loved ones or their homes in the July 3 landslide, as well as fishermen and operators of onsen hot spring facilities whose earnings plunged due to the disaster.

The rain-triggered landslide claimed 26 lives and left one person missing.

Those being sued include a real estate development company based in Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture, which owned the site where the landslide occurred up until 2011 and had undertaken a landfill project there, its executives, a company commissioned to build the landfill and the current owner of the site.

According to the lawsuit, they are accused of failing to perform their duties, such as carrying out proper drainage work and taking other safety measures when building the landfill, and neglecting the site after the project was completed.

The plaintiffs claim the landslide was a “manmade disaster” resulting from the piled-up fill dirt on the mountainside.

“The landowner didn’t know about the landfill that posed the danger,” said a lawyer for the current owner of the site. “We will deal with the lawsuit fair and square.”

A lawyer for the real estate development company said they will carefully consider their response to the complaint after examining it.

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