Powerful Typhoon Nabi hit Japan on Tuesday, leaving at least 13 people dead or missing and injuring 19, as 100 000 people were ordered to flee their homes to escape violent winds and mudslides.
Hundreds of flights were cancelled and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi called off campaign stops in the main southern island of Kyushu before the weekend election as his government set up a crisis-management centre.
Nabi, packing winds of up to 126kph, landed in Nagasaki prefecture on Kyushu’s western coast at 2.25pm (5.25am GMT), the meteorological agency said.
Moving north at 30kph, the typhoon was forecast to sweep through the Japanese archipelago, where some areas have already been swamped by more than 1 000mm of rain since Sunday afternoon.
The typhoon was weaker than Hurricane Katrina but it brought violent winds of 90kph or more across a radius of nearly 300km, wider than the 220km Katrina covered at its peak.
”Since this typhoon is bringing strong winds to a wide area, we should be all the more careful about damage,” a weather official said.
With images of Katrina’s destruction on the United States Gulf Coast still prominent in the news, disaster-prone Japan ordered more than 100 000 people to evacuate their homes in Kyushu.
”We have been seeing torrential rain, and the slow speed of the typhoon is making things worse. We have ordered cities and towns to be on high alert,” said an official at the Kagoshima prefectural government in Kyushu.
Four people went missing as landslides crushed their homes in Kagoshima. A mother in her 40s and her 10-year-old son were also slightly injured in the province when their windows were broken by strong winds.
”Police, the Self-Defence Forces [military] and firefighters are heading toward the scene but haven’t arrived there yet,” another prefectural government official said.
In nearby Miyazaki prefecture, eight people are missing after mudslides slammed into their houses.
”We hope residents will follow the order” and evacuate, a disaster-prevention official in Miyazaki said.
At least 19 people were injured throughout Kyushu and the island chain of Okinawa, a Fire and Disaster Management Agency official said.
More than 500 flights to and from southern Japan were cancelled on Tuesday, according to public broadcaster NHK.
The typhoon has also brought heavy rain to other parts of the nation. A 61-year-old man was found dead on Sunday on a flooded road in Saitama outside Tokyo after he rushed to help his son whose car was stuck.
Typhoon Mawar hit Japan last month, bringing heavy rains and fierce winds that left at least one person dead and injured four others.
The mainland was struck by a record 10 typhoons last year. One of them, Tokage, was the deadliest in a quarter-century, killing 90 people. — Sapa-AFP