Heavy damage: A worker removing debris blown away by strong winds caused by Shanshan in Miyazaki. — AFP
Typhoon Shanshan weakened to a tropical storm but was still dumping heavy rains as it slowly churned through Japan, triggering transport havoc and landslide warnings, with up to six people killed.
The storm, which at landfall was one of the fiercest to hit Japan in decades, pummelled Kyushu island on Thursday with gusts of up to 252kph, later easing to 108kph as it moved up the archipelago yesterday.
Even before making landfall, a landslide caused by the heavy rains preceding the storm killed three members of the same family late Tuesday in Aichi prefecture, around 1,000km away.
Government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi yesterday confirmed reports of one additional death, but said that “the relation to the typhoon was being studied”.
Two more were feared dead and two others were missing, he added.
Eight people were seriously hurt and 70 others had light injuries, Hayashi said, with many injured by broken glass after the typhoon smashed windows and ripped tiles off roofs on Thursday. Almost 200 buildings were damaged.Typhoons in the region have been forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly and lasting longer over land due to climate change, according to a study released in July.
A rapid attribution analysis issued yesterday by Imperial College London using peer- reviewed methodology calculated that Typhoon Shanshan’s winds were made 26% more likely by a warming planet.
“Without phasing out fossil fuels, the root cause of climate change, typhoons will bring even greater devastation to Japan,” said Ralf Toumi, director of the Grantham Institute at Imperial.
The coming storm prompted Japanese authorities to issue their highest alert in several areas, with more than five million people advised to evacuate, although it was unclear how many did.
The Japan Meteorological Agency issued alerts yesterday for possible landslides in many parts of Kyushu and as far away as Shizuoka on the main island of Honshu, the Tokyo region and nearby Kanagawa.
Footage from Japanese broadcaster NHK showed a car park in Kanagawa prefecture with vehicles half-submerged in brown water, with authorities there urging residents to move to higher floors after a local river flooded.
Some parts of Kyushu saw record rains for August, with the town of Misato recording a staggering 791.5mm in 48 hours, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
Kyushu island’s Kitakyushu saw 474mm of rain in the 24 hours to yesterday morning, the most since 2012, when comparative data began to be collected. — AFP
