One dead, six missing as typhoons hit Japan
Police said one person had died, at least six others were missing and 15 injured as a powerful typhoon lashed southern Japan with heavy rains today, disrupting air traffic, prompting the evacuation of thousands of households and leaving thousands more without electricity.
Typhoon Tokage roared north from just off the south-western main island of Shikoku with sustained winds of 89 miles per hour, the Meteorological Agency said.
Tokage, the Japanese word for lizard, was the record eighth typhoon to hit Japan this year. Two additional typhoons had been downgraded to tropical storms by the time they reached the archipelago.
The storm’s heavy rains swelled rivers and triggered 16 landslides across the country, said a spokesman for the National Police Agency.
In Ehime prefecture (state) on Shikoku, a 24-year-old woman died as a landslide knocked down her house, burying her inside, prefectural police spokesman Keizo Shiraishi said. She was pulled out of the mud unconscious and later died at a hospital.
In Kochi, a 75-year-old fisherman went missing after he was hit by high waves while trying to tie his boat to a dock.
In Miyazaki, a 63-year-old farmer went missing after he went outside to check his fields.
A 42-year-old newspaper deliveryman in Oita prefecture, about 505 miles south-west of Tokyo, disappeared while making his rounds with the morning papers on a motorbike. Police suspect he may have been washed away by a swollen river.
Two men in Chiba vanished while repairing an artificial embankment and might have been swept away by high waves.
The typhoon made landfall on the south-western main island of Shikoku and headed north-east by early afternoon.
The Meteorological Agency predicted the storm could reach the Tokyo region later today. It warned that waves of up to 30 feet could hit southern coastlines, and as much as 14 inches of rain could fall in parts of Kyushu and Shikoku islands throughout the day.
The typhoon injured at least 15 people, including seven on Japan’s southernmost prefecture of Okinawa – about 1,000 miles south-west of Tokyo.
Four had head injuries, two had fingers broken in doors blown shut by gusts and one man suffered a deep gash in his arm during a boating accident sparked by rough waves, said police spokesman Tatsuki Yara.
Public broadcaster NHK said 30 people were injured.
Most public schools in Miyazaki were closed, and local transportation, including bus and train services, was cancelled for the day, said prefectural spokesman Takashi Arimura.
Several Japanese oil refiners were forced to halt sea deliveries of oil products from their refineries in western Japan due to heavy rain and strong winds in the region.
The suspension is unlikely to affect domestic supply, because the oil refiners have sufficient stocks of main refined products to cover emergencies such as typhoons and earthquakes.
About 271 flights linking southern Japanese cities and other parts of Japan have been cancelled, public broadcaster NHK said.
The typhoon also left 52,000 households without electricity and forced 117,000 others to evacuate in the Shikoku region, NHK said.
Earlier this month, Typhoon Ma-on killed six people in Japan after swiping the country’s Pacific coast. A week before that, Typhoon Meari killed 22.
This year’s typhoons have far outstripped the previous post-World War II record of six, set in 1990.
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