Powerful typhoon slams Japan coast
The second powerful typhoon to slam Japan in a
week unleashed fierce winds and rain on southern islands on Sunday, blowing off rooftops and leaving homes without power as it edged northward into an area vulnerable to flooding and mudslides. Weather officials warned that the rainfall from what could be a record storm would be fierce. Several rivers on the main southwestern island of Kyushu were at risk of overflowing, officials said. The Japan Meteorological Agency said Typhoon Haishen was packing sustained winds of up to 162kmper hour.
TOKYO: The second powerful typhoon to slam Japan in a week unleashed fierce winds and rain on southern islands on Sunday, cutting power to tens of thousands of homes and prompting authorities to call for some 1.8 million people to evacuate.
Haishen was drawing closer to Japan’s main southern island of Kyushu by Sunday night.
“This typhoon is headed toward and may potentially make landfall in Kyushu, bringing record rains, winds, waves and high tides,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at a meeting with cabinet ministers earlier.
“I am asking that people exercise the utmost caution.”
The typhoon was forecast to carry top sustained winds of up to 216 kilometres per hour by Monday, Japan’s meteorological agency said.
Authorities urged evacuations for people in areas across seven prefectures in southern Japan, public broadcaster NHK said, an effort that was complicated by social distancing that meant evacuation centres could take fewer people than normal.The typhoon has cut power to some 180,000 homes, NHK said adding that public transport was stopped in affected areas.
The typhoon was headed north by northwest at 30 kmph, the meteorological agency said, forecast to approach the Goto Islands west of Nagasaki around 3 a.m. local time on Monday and then move to the Korean peninsula.