Rescue workers carried out house-to-house searches Tuesday in the increasingly unlikely hope of finding survivors after days of deadly floods and landslides as the authorities struggled to restore utilities and bring relief to the victims. Top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said Tuesday that at least 141 people had been killed. Media said dozens more remained missing and the tally was expected to rise further. The record downpours that began last week have stopped and receding flood waters have laid bare the destruction that has cut a swathe through the west of the country. In the city of Kurashiki, the flooding engulfed entire districts at one point, forcing some people to their rooftops to wait for rescue. By Tuesday morning, rescue workers were going door-to-door, looking for survivors -- or victims -- of the disaster. "Its what we call a grid operation, where we are checking every single house to see if there are people still trapped inside them," an official with the local Okayama prefecture government told AFP. "We know its a race against time, we are trying as hard as we can." Power supply has resumed to all but 3,500 customers, but more than 200,000 remain without water under scorching sun, with temperatures set to hit 33 C in some of the hardest-hit areas, such as Kurashiki. "There have been requests for setting up air-conditioners due to rising temperatures above 30 degrees today, and at the same time we need to restore lifelines," Finance Minister Taro Aso told reporters after a cabinet meeting. The crisis is the deadliest rain-related disaster in over three decades, and has sparked national grief. On Monday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe canceled a four-stop overseas trip as the death toll rose, and his office said he would visit Okayama on Wednesday. Around 75,000 police, firemen and troops have been deployed in the search and rescue operation across parts of central and western Japan. A new evacuation order went out on Tuesday in a part of Hiroshima prefecture, after a river blocked by debris overflowed its banks, affecting 23,000 people.