11 killed and passengers left stranded
Typhoon batters western Japan
TOKYO: A powerful typhoon killed 11 people in western Japan and an airport company started to transfer some 3000 stranded passengers by boats from a flooded airport, the Government said yesterday.
Jebi, or ‘‘swallow’’ in Korean, was briefly a super typhoon and is the most powerful storm to hit Japan in 25 years. It follows heavy rains, landslips, floods and recordbreaking heat that killed hundreds of people this summer.
About 3000 tourists stayed overnight at Kansai Airport in western Japan, an important hub for Japanese companies to export semiconductors. Airport officials began transferring the stranded passengers to nearby Kobe airport by highspeed boats and buses yesterday morning, the Government said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said about 600 people were injured. It was uncertain when the airport would reopen, and some roads and train lines in the affected areas were still closed, he said. About 1.2 million homes were without power.
‘‘The Government will continue to do everything possible to tackle these issues with utmost urgency,’’ Suga said.
Japan’s JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy Corp shut at least one of the refining units at its Sakai refinery in Osaka due to typhoon damage to part of the cooling tower, the trade ministry said.
Many chip plants operate in the Kansai region. Toshiba Memory, the world’s secondlargest maker of flash memory chips, was monitoring developments closely and may need to ship products from other airports if Kansai remains closed, a spokeswoman said.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, criticised for an initially slow response to devastating floods in July, posted repeated updates on the rescue efforts at Kansai.
Jebi’s course brought it close to parts of western Japan hit by rains and flooding that killed over 200 people in July, but most of the damage this time seemed to be from the wind. — Reuters