Japan’s death toll from Typhoon Chaba rose to 13 on Wednesday as another powerful Pacific storm threatened to hit its southern island of Okinawa.
Another four people are missing since Chaba hit Japan on Monday and wrought havoc across much of the country, flooding homes, uprooting trees and causing transport chaos.
The typhoon is the third deadly storm to hit the country in two weeks. Typhoons Aere and Megi earlier raced through East Asia, causing dozens of deaths in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.
By late Tuesday, Chaba had weakened into a tropical depression, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
But the death toll was still rising. Police discovered the body of a 25-year-old Vietnamese seaman who had been missing off Ehime, 700km south-west of Tokyo, since Monday.
Three other Vietnamese crew members are still missing since their freighter ran aground in the storm, a Japan Coast Guard official said.
The deaths of three other people in western and southern Japan brought the toll to 13 on Wednesday, police said.
A 75-year-old Japanese man is still missing from Tokushima on the southern main island of Shikoku, a police spokesperson said.
Chaba, which means hibiscus in Thai, flooded about 13 000 homes and cut off electricity to more than 341 700 households, mainly in the south-west. Dozens of flights were grounded and train services were disrupted by the storm.
Thousands of people left their homes and took shelter in schools amid fears of floods and mudslides.
The typhoon caused at least eight billion yen ($73-million) in damage to farm products in southern Japan, the Agricultural Ministry said. It said it was still assessing damage to rice paddies and fruit trees in central and northern Japan.
The storms have hit Japan just as farmers saw better crops emerging in hot weather after suffering serious damage from the coolest summer in a decade.
Another one on the way
Typhoon Songda is also threatening to make landfall on Japan.
Songda lashed several islands in the Northern Marianas chain on Wednesday, sending the tiny population fleeing into Japanese World War II bunkers for shelter.
Songda battered Pagan and Agrihan islands, which have a combined population of 33 and are at the northern end of the United States territory.
Despite winds of 193kph, officials said there have been no reports of injuries and the main islands of Saipan and Tinian have escaped damage.
The Northern Marianas lie about 2 400km south of Tokyo.
The Honolulu-based Joint Typhoon Warning Centre said Songda, named after a Vietnamese river, was headed towards the Japanese island of Okinawa and would then move north toward South Korea and southern Japan.
The Japan Meteorological Agency said Songda was expected to move west through Saturday towards waters off Taiwan and Okinawa.
”But we cannot tell in which direction it will be headed after that,” said an agency official, adding that it was unclear whether Songda would directly hit Japan.
Elsewhere in Asia, the Philippines were on Wednesday still mopping up from torrential rains that killed 43 people and displaced more than one million.
Some northern suburban areas of Manila as well as some northern regions remained under water.
US mops up
Meanwhile, Richmond, the capital of the US state of Virginia, was cleaning up on Wednesday after tropical storm Gaston stalled over the city, causing widespread flooding and reportedly killing at least five people.
Virginia Governor Mark Warner declared a state of emergency for the urban district after the tropical storm dumped 35cm rain on the region late on Monday. Officials estimate the flood damage at about $15-million.
Gaston, which made landfall Sunday in South Carolina, had been expected to pass quickly over the Richmond area. But instead, it stalled for several hours, causing the James River to overflow its banks and flood several low-lying neighborhoods, turning numerous cars into a floating parade.
Five people were killed in the floods, including two women drowned inside their cars and a young man swept away after climbing out of his vehicle, Richmond’s Time Dispatch daily said.
Two other people drowned after a human chain of about eight people trying to rescue somebody trapped inside their vehicle in a flooded creek broke apart. Police presume the other members of the human chain climbed safely out of the water.
The rain-driven floods closed down scores of roads across the city, including Interstate 95, the main highway running north-south along the US eastern seaboard. It also knocked out electricity to about 100 000 homes in the area.
And Richmond’s woes may not be over.
Weather forecasters are keeping a close watch on Hurricane Frances, which is heading for the Bahamas with winds of 225kph.
If it follows the usual path for hurricanes in the Atlantic, it could hug the US shore and eventually bring more damaging rain and wind to the Virginian capital. — Sapa-AFP