Sunday, Sep. 4, 2011
Two dead, 67 hurt as Talas hits Shikoku
13 missing in mudslides and flooding; flights, trains disrupted
Kyodo
A powerful typhoon crashed through Shikoku and slammed into Honshu's Okayama Prefecture on Saturday, leaving two people dead, at least 13 missing and 67 injured, the Meteorological Agency and local officials said.
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| Blown away: Workers inspect a roof damaged Saturday by Typhoon Talas at an elementary school in Togo, Aichi Prefecture. KYODO PHOTO |
Typhoon Talas hit southern Okayama Prefecture at around 6 p.m. after blowing through Shikoku with winds of up to 144 kph near its center, the agency said. The 12th typhoon of the season was moving slowly northward with an atmospheric pressure of 985 hectopascals at its center.
The agency issued warnings for mudslides and flooding, and some 3,200 people in small communities across 17 prefectures were forced to evacuate their homes.
Separately, an evacuation advisory was issued to about 220,000 residents in the city of Okayama and to around 100,000 people in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture.
Because the typhoon was moving relatively slowly, heavy rain and strong winds persisted across a wide area of the archipelago, it said.
A woman thought to be in her 30s died after she was found around 6:20 a.m. in a river in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, and taken to a hospital in a state of cardiac arrest.
The second fatality came at 11:05 a.m. in the village of Totsukawa, Nara Prefecture, when a mudslide hit the wooden one-story home of Takao Tanaka, 73, police said.
The house was built on the mountainside and Tanaka was found dead after the mudslide swept his home about 50 meters down the mountain, the police said.
In Tokushima Prefecture, Sumako Sogabe, 75, was listed as missing after she was swept away by a swollen river while heading to an evacuation center near her home in Miyoshi.
Kiyoshi Iwahashi, 83, also went missing after going outside to check the situation. Three others were reported missing in Hiroshima, Wakayama and Kagoshima prefectures.
The storm caused blackouts that affected about 103,000 households in the Kinki, Shikoku and Chugoku regions, according to power utilities.
All Japan Railway services were suspended in Shikoku, while strong winds delayed 42 bullet trains on the Tokaido Shinkansen Line by up to 46 minutes, affecting some 24,000 passengers.
The typhoon also disrupted air traffic centering on western Japan, causing more than 400 domestic and 20 international flights to be canceled Saturday, airlines said.
Rainfall topped 1,150 mm during a 72-hour period in a village in Nara Prefecture, the highest precipitation on record there, and reached almost 800 mm in Tokushima, Kochi, Tottori and Wakayama prefectures.
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