Run for your life
Seven million told to evacuate as Japan is battered by typhoon AND earthquake
MORE than seven million people have been told to evacuate their homes amid torrential rain and 140mph winds as the most powerf ul t yphoon f or 60 years hi t Japan yesterday.
Devastating scenes of destruction saw trucks being thrown over by strong winds, parts of buildings being ripped away and rivers close to bursting their banks.
Two people have died – including a man in his 40s killed when his car overturned in Ichihara. More than 75 others have been injured.
Typhoon Hagibis has already damaged 30,000 houses and caused vast power cuts affecting 160,000 households. An earthquake in the ocean off Chiba, near Tokyo, was felt shortly before the storm made landfall on Japan’s main island, south-west of Tokyo.
The Rugby World Cup has been thrown into disarray with two of yesterday’s games cancelled and declared as draws – England v France and New Zealand v Italy.
One British supporter in Tokyo said: ‘I’ve never seen rain like it before. The streets are covered. You see hundreds of umbrellas, which are ripped out of people’s hands, streaming across the streets.
‘ When the earthquake hit, the walls started to shake. We’ve been told to stay in our hostel. All transport has been called off. We were due to fly out of Tokyo tomorrow. Now we can’t get a flight until Wednesday. The city is like a ghost town – it’s almost apocalyptic.’
World Rugby has urged supporters not to travel unless it is ‘ absolutely necessary’. Japan’s World Cup players were yesterday pictured wading through a flooded Tokyo stadium after they were forced to abandon their match with Scotland.
Elsewhere, rescue teams used dingies to search flooded residential streets in central Japan. Conditions in the Tokyo area were last night expected to worsen and Japan’s Meteorological Agency has warned t hat more t han a foot and a half of rain could fall between midday yesterday and midday today.
JMA forecaster Yasushi Kajiwara told reporters: ‘The possibility is extremely high that disasters such as l andslides and floods have already occurred. It is important to take action that can help save your lives.’
Thousands of police and military are standing by for rescue operations. The storm is thought to be the country’s strongest since Typhoon Vera in 1959 brought winds of 190mph and left more than 5,000 people dead or missing.