Millions of people were ordered to leave their homes as Typhoon Shanshan lashed southwest Japan with strong winds and torrential rain on Thursday, knocking out power, disrupting air traffic and forcing major factories to close.
The storm, the strongest to hit Japan this year, packed maximum sustained winds of up to 120km/h and gusts of 150km/h on Thursday evening, equivalent to those of a Category 1 hurricane, according to the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Centre.
Three people died after a landslide buried their home in Gamagori, a city in central Japan that was hit by heavy rain, the local government said early Thursday. Another person died after a roof collapsed in Kamiita Town, according to Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK.
More than 80 people were injured in the storm, and one person was missing, the news agency said. More than 150,000 households were without power as of Thursday evening in Kyushu, the service provider Kyushu Electric Power Transmission and Distribution said.
Shanshan made landfall on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s main islands, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. It was forecast to move north through Kyushu before shifting east on Friday and Saturday, moving farther inland and losing strength.
The storm was weakening as it moved slowly inland, but authorities issued warnings for landslides and floods in many parts of southwestern Japan. More than 4.1 million people were under evacuation orders nationwide, Japan’s Cabinet Office said.
“This is one of the biggest typhoons in recent years, for a prefecture that experiences many typhoons every year,” Kensei Tomisako, a disaster response official in Satsumasendai, said in an interview.
Shanshan has brought record rainfall. Some parts of Kyushu recorded nearly a metre of rain in 48 hours, forecasters said. The storm, moving north at just 10km/h on Thursday afternoon, lashed some areas with rain for hours.
Japan Airlines, one of the country’s largest carriers,, cancelled all flights to and from Nagasaki and seven other cities in Shanshan’s path on Thursday and said that many flights to and from 20 cities across the country Friday had already been cancelled. Nippon Airways also canceled all flights that had been scheduled at Kansai International Airport for Friday.
The Shinkansen bullet-train service was suspended for all of Kyushu, along with service between Tokyo and Osaka, because of heavy rain. Many of the train lines linking major cities in western Japan, including Osaka, Kyoto and Hiroshima, were also suspended.
Toyota announced that it would pause production at all 14 of its Japan factories starting Wednesday evening. On Thursday morning, the carmaker said that it would extend the suspension until Friday for all but one of the factories. Nissan and Honda and semiconductor firms Renesas, Tokyo Electron and Rohm, also temporarily halted production at some factories. - New York Times