Typhoon slams Japan with deadly wind, rain
TOKYO — Typhoon Hagibis, Japan’s largest storm in decades, lashed the country’s northeast early today, just hours after hitting the Tokyo region with heavy rain and high winds that forced many residents to move to evacuation centers.
Government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said Hagibis left seven people dead and 15 missing.
Public broadcaster NHK gave a higher toll than the government of 10 dead and 16 missing plus 128 injured, a day after Hagibis made landfall south of Tokyo and moved northward.
“The major typhoon has caused immense damage far and wide in eastern Japan,” Suga told reporters, adding that 27,000 military troops and other crews were deployed for rescue operations.
Among the reported deaths were those whose homes were buried in landslides. Other fatalities included people who got swept away by rivers flooded by record rains.
An earthquake shook the area shortly before the typhoon made landfall Saturday evening in Shizuoka prefecture. There were no immediate reports of dam
age.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude 5.3 quake was centered in the ocean off the coast of Chiba, near Tokyo, and was fairly deep, at 37 miles. Deep quakes tend to cause less damage than shallow ones.
A tornado also ripped through Chiba on Saturday, overturning a car in the city of Ichihara and killing a man inside the vehicle, city official Tatsuya Sakamaki said.
Hagibis made landfall around 7 p.m. Saturday in Ito, a resort town on the Izu Peninsula, also southwest of Tokyo. By midnight, the rain and wind had moved past the capital, leaving some flooding in the city’s west.
The Japan Meteorological Agency said Saturday afternoon that sustained winds from the typhoon had been measured at about 100 mph, with gusts of up to 135 mph, landing the storm in the third-strongest category.
By Saturday night, NHK reported that 3.9 million people had been ordered to evacuate their homes. That included 432,000 people who had been advised to leave the Edogawa ward of Tokyo because of fears of heavy flooding. In Kawasaki City, outside the capital, more than 900,000 people had been urged to evacuate, according to NHK.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said that as of midnight, 432,000 households were without power across Tokyo and Shizuoka.
As Japan prepared for the typhoon to make landfall, the meteorological agency issued a rare, highest-level warning of extreme rain in seven prefectures, including Saitama and Shizuoka, urging residents to evacuate or move to higher floors in the “nearest sturdy building” in order to avoid “imminent danger.”
Less than an hour after the typhoon made landfall, the agency added five more prefectures to the extreme-rain warning list. In a first for central Tokyo, two wards received torrential-rainfall warnings.
The heavy rain caused rivers to swell, and several had flooded by late Saturday.
The wind flipped anchored boats and whipped up waters in a dangerous surge along the coast and areas near rivers. Some residential neighborhoods received an“among kle-deep flooding and cars were left floating.
In Tokyo’s western neighborhood of Setagaya, the Tama river overflowed its banks, flooding the city streets. By midnight, forecasters had lowered warning levels around Tokyo, but were continuing to issue new warnings for other prefectures as the typhoon moved northeast.
Water levels in close to 30 rivers, in prefectures including Tokyo, Kanagawa, Gunma and Shizuoka, had already exceeded levels considered dangerous by the meteorological agency. Several dams were releasing water to reduce the pressure on them as rivers swelled with the record-setting rain.
NHK reported that Hakone, a popular tourist destination in the mountains west of Tokyo, received more than 35 inches of rain in just 24 hours, the most for a single day since record-keeping was begun in 1974. The weather agency said the southeastern Tokai region could receive as much as 31 inches of rain in a 24-hour period.
In Shizuoka, one of two men missing in the Nishikawa River was rescued, Gotemba city official Fumihiko Katsumata said. Firefighters said the two men were working at a river canal to try to control overflowing when they were swept away.
Hundreds of flights were canceled Saturday in anticipation of Hagibis, including every one of All Nippon Airways’ domestic and international flights from airports in the Tokyo area. Japan Railways suspended service in the Tokyo region on Saturday, as well as bullet train service between Tokyo and Osaka.
With the storm bearing down, Rugby World Cup organizers for the first time canceled two matches in Japan. Tourist attractions in Tokyo, including the Disneyland and DisneySea theme parks and the Ueno Zoo, closed Saturday, as did hundreds of supermarkets and department stores in the city and nearby prefectures.
As Hagibis approached this past week — at one point the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane, with 160 mph winds — the Japanese authorities prepared for disruptions in the lives of millions. About 1.5 million people live below sea level in eastern parts of Tokyo, and meteorologists warned that as many as 5 million people might need to be evacuated if water overwhelmed the levees in low-lying areas.
Yusuke Ikegaya, a Shizuoka resident who evacuated ahead of the storm, said he was surprised that the nearby river was about to overflow Saturday morning, hours before the typhoon made landfall.
“In the 28 years of my life, this is the first time I’ve had to evacuate even before a typhoon has landed,” he said.
Evacuation centers were set up in coastal towns, and people rested on gymnasium floors, saying they hoped their homes were still there after the storm passed.
On Friday, the meteorological agency warned that Hagibis could rival the Kanogawa typhoon of 1958, which killed more than 1,200 people in Shizuoka prefecture and the Tokyo region.
On the same day, the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization warned that tropical cyclones like Typhoon Hagibis were
the most devastating of all natural hazards.”
Speaking at a meeting with Japanese officials, the secretary-general, Petteri Taalas, said that since 1970, seven of the 10 disasters that caused the biggest economic losses around the world had been tropical cyclones. “They wreak havoc with their violent winds, torrential rainfall and associated storm surges and floods,” he said.
This past week, Jeff Masters, a meteorologist with the magazine Scientific American, warned that a direct hit on Tokyo Bay could be “a multibillion-dollar disaster.”
Last year, Typhoon Jebi, the worst typhoon in 25 years, killed 11 people, injured hundreds and caused an estimated $12.6 billion in damage.
Information for this article was contributed by Motoko Rich and Ben Dooley of The New York Times and by Yuri Kageyama, Jae C. Hong and Haruka Nuga of The Associated Press.