One of the most powerful typhoons to hit Japan in recent decades made landfall on Thursday, killing at least three people and causing extensive material damage, mainly due to torrential rains lashing the south of the country.
Typhoon Shanshan, packing wind gusts of up to 252 km/h, hit Kyushu, the country’s main southern island, home to 12.5 million people, at around 8:00 a.m. (23:00 GMT Wednesday) on Thursday.
When it reached land, it lost intensity, with gusts of up to 160 km/h. However, its danger lies mainly in the torrential rains, which caused a deadly avalanche.
Three members of the same family, a couple in their 70s and their son in his 30s, were killed when a landslide buried their home in Gamagori, central Aichi Prefecture.
Authorities had already issued the highest level of alert in some areas on Wednesday and advised hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes, warning of the danger of “potentially fatal” flooding, landslides and rising sea levels.
The city of Kunisaki, in the Oita region on Kyushu island, urged its residents to go “to a safe place” or to stay on high ground, such as the “second floor” of their homes, due to the risk of flooding.
In the coastal city of Miyazaki, which was littered with debris of all kinds, 25 people were reported injured, some from a tornado, and nearly 200 buildings were damaged, a local official told AFP.
According to NHK, 59 people were injured in Kyushu and a man who was sailing on a boat went missing in the south of the island.
“Our house is fine, but there was a tornado in Miyazaki and the power went out in some places. It’s worrying,” Aoi Nishimoto, an 18-year-old student living in Fukuoka, the island’s main city, told AFP. She said she was able to contact her parents, who live in Miyazaki.
Kyushu’s utility operator said 187,010 households had lost power on the island.
The typhoon is moving slowly and, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), it could move towards Japan’s main island, Honshu, and the cities of Osaka and Nagoya.
According to the agency, the “risk of disasters due to heavy rains could increase rapidly in western Japan by Friday.”