Typhoon Trami hits Japan, dozens injured

International Desk: A powerful typhoon hurtled toward Japan’s mainland Sunday after injuring dozens on southern islands. Weather officials warned that fierce winds and torrential rain could trigger landslides and floods.

Typhoon Trami has already sparked travel disruption in the world’s third-biggest economy, with bullet train services in the west of Japan suspended and almost 1,000 flights canceled due to the closure of a key airport hub.

East Japan Railway Co., which operates major rail lines in the Japanese capital, said it planned to take the highly unusual step of suspending all train services in the Tokyo area from 8 p.m. on Sunday in preparation for the storm.

Greater Tokyo is the world’s largest metropolis with a population of about 36 million people.

The typhoon is not expected to hit the capital head on but strong winds and heavy rain are still feared from later Sunday and some businesses were already putting up shutters and hunkering down.

Trami, the 24th typhoon of the season, swept the southern islands of Okinawa and Kyushu Sunday morning, with winds gusts of up to 222 kilometers per hour (138 mph), according to the agency. The tropical cyclone is classified as a “very strong” typhoon, the second-highest on the Meteorological Agency’s scale.

The storm was forecast to smash into the mainland near Osaka at around 6 p.m. and churn across the Japanese archipelago, likely hitting areas still recovering from a series of extreme weather events that have battered the country in recent months.

Trami tore through the southern island of Okinawa on Saturday, bringing winds strong enough to flip over cars. Several houses were flooded or damaged and 40 people on the island sustained minor injuries but no one was feared dead, local officials said.

Nationwide, authorities issued noncompulsory evacuation advisories to some 349,000 residents, while 300,000 households have lost power, according to public broadcaster NHK.

Maintaining its “very strong” classification, the storm churned near Kagoshima, causing seven minor injuries.

“We are strongly urging our residents to stay indoors because it is extremely dangerous to be outside now,” said Masaaki Tamaki, an official of Kagoshima’s disaster management section.

The Japanese meteorological agency issued a special warning of landslides and floods in Kagoshima and Chiba. It said the kind of heavy rain only seen once in half a century has been monitored on the island of Yakushima, in southern Kagoshima Prefecture.

The Meteorological Agency warned the typhoon would bring strong winds and downpours, which could trigger landslides and floods as well as lightning strikes and tornados across the nation.

Violent gusts swept away roof tiles on some houses in the city of Kochi city in western Japan.

“There was a big ‘bang, bang.’ That woke me up,” a local elderly man in Kochi told NHK.

Trami is the latest in a string of extreme natural events in Japan, which has suffered typhoons, flooding, earthquakes and heat waves in recent months, claiming scores of lives and causing extensive damage.

Western regions are still recovering from the most powerful typhoon to strike the country in a quarter of a century in early September. Typhoon Jebi claimed 11 lives and shut down Kansai Airport, the region’s main airport.

Deadly record rains also hit western Japan earlier this year, and the country sweltered through one of the hottest summers on record.

Also in September, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake rocked Hokkaido, setting off landslides and leaving more than 40 people dead.

Source: Agencies


risingbd/Dhaka/Sept 30, 2018/AI