Farmland along a river is flooded by heavy rains caused by a typhoon in Yufu, Oita prefecture, western Japan, on August 29, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

A typhoon lashed southern Japan with torrential rain and strong winds on Thursday (August 29, 2024), causing at least three deaths as it started a crawl up the length of the archipelago and raised concerns of flooding, landslips and extensive damage.

“Typhoon Shanshan made landfall in the morning on the southern island of Kyushu and about 60 centimetres (nearly 2 ft) of rainfall had fallen in parts of Miyazaki prefecture,” the Japan Meteorological Agency said. “That 24-hour total was more than the August rainfall average and swollen rivers were threatening floods,” it said.

The typhoon ripped through downtown Miyazaki City, knocking down trees, throwing cars to the side in parking lots and shattering windows of some buildings. The prefectural disaster management task force said 40 buildings were damaged.

Footage on NHK public television showed the swollen river in a popular hot spring town of Yufu in Oita prefecture, just north of Miyazaki, with muddy water splashing against the bridge over it.

“The typhoon was forecast to bring strong winds, high waves and significant rainfall to most of the country, particularly the southern prefectures of Kyushu. Around midday, Shanshan was moving north at 15 kph (9 mph) and its winds had weakened to 126 kph (78 mph),” JMA said.

“More than a dozen people were injured in Miyazaki, many of them thrown to the ground. One each was also injured nearby Kumamoto and Kagoshima prefectures on their way to shelters,” the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said.

“Nearly a quarter million households were without power across Kyushu, most of them in the Kagoshima prefecture,” the Kyushu Electric Power Co. said.

Ahead of the typhoon’s arrival, heavy rain caused a landslip that buried a house in the central city of Gamagori, killing three residents and injuring two others, according to the city’s disaster management department. “On the southern island of Amami, where the typhoon passed, one person was injured by being knocked down by a wind gust while riding a motorcycle,” the FDMA said.

Weather and government officials are concerned about extensive damage as the typhoon slowly sweeps up the Japanese archipelago over the next few days, threatening floods and landslips. The typhoon’s impact was yet to be felt in the Tokyo region, where business was as usual and heavy rain was predicted later this week.

Disaster Management Minister Yoshifumi Matsumura said the typhoon could cause “unprecedented” levels of violent winds, high waves, storm surges and heavy rain. At a task force meeting on Wednesday (August 28, 2024) he urged people, especially older adults, not to hesitate and to take shelter whenever there is any safety concern.

Hundreds of domestic flights connecting southwestern cities and islands were cancelled on Thursday, and bullet trains and some local train services were suspended. Similar steps were taken on Thursday in parts of the main island of Honshu that were experiencing heavy rain. Postal and delivery services have been also suspended in the Kyushu region, and supermarkets and other stores planned to close.

Tokyo:

Japan braced Wednesday for its strongest typhoon of the year, with authorities advising tens of thousands of people to evacuate and issuing the highest warning level for wind and storm surges on the main southern island of Kyushu.

“Typhoon Shanshan is expected to approach southern Kyushu with extremely strong force through Thursday and it may make landfall,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters.

“It is expected that violent winds, high waves, and storm surge at levels that many people have never experienced before may occur,” said Hayashi, the top government spokesman.

The approach of the storm, packing gusts of up to 252 kilometres (157 miles) per hour and already bringing widespread heavy rain, prompted auto giant Toyota to suspend production at all 14 of its factories.

Two people remained unaccounted for on Wednesday after a landslide buried a house with five family members inside in Gamagori, a city in central Aichi prefecture.

Rescuers worked around the clock and on Wednesday afternoon they pulled out a woman in her 70s.

“She wasn’t breathing and was unconscious,” a Gamagori official told AFP. They were still searching for a man in his 70s and another in his 30s.

For southern Kyushu, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) predicted 1,100 millimetres (43 inches) of precipitation in the 48 hours to Friday morning, around half the annual average for the area comprising Kagoshima and Miyazaki regions.

The JMA also issued its highest “special warning” for violent storms, waves and high tides in parts of the Kagoshima region of Kyushu, with authorities there advising 56,000 people to evacuate.

Video on public broadcaster NHK TV showed roof tiles being blown off houses, broken windows and felled trees.

“Our carport roof was blown away in its entirety. I wasn’t at home when it happened, but my kids say they felt the shaking so strong they thought an earthquake happened,” a local resident in Miyazaki told NHK.

“I was surprised. It was completely beyond our imagination,” she said.

The warnings indicate the “possibility that a major disaster prompted by (the typhoon) is extremely high,” Satoshi Sugimoto, chief forecaster of JMA, told a news conference.

Japan Airlines cancelled 172 domestic flights and six international flights scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, while ANA nixed 219 domestic flights and four international ones on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

The cancellations affected around 25,000 people.

Kyushu Railway said it would suspend some Shinkansen bullet train services between Kumamoto and Kagoshima Chuo from Wednesday night and warned of further possible disruption.

Trains between Tokyo and Fukuoka, the most populous city in Kyushu, may also be cancelled depending on weather conditions this week, other operators said.

Shanshan comes in the wake of Typhoon Ampil, which disrupted hundreds of flights and trains this month.

Despite dumping heavy rain, it caused only minor injuries and damage.

Ampil came days after Tropical Storm Maria brought record rains to northern areas.

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 last month.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Tokyo:

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday cancelled a trip to Central Asia after earthquake scientists warned the country should prepare for a possible “megaquake”.

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) issued the advisory on Thursday after eight people were injured by a tremor of magnitude 7.1 in the south.

Kishida was due Friday to travel to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia and had planned to attend a regional summit.

“As the prime minister with the highest responsibility for crisis management, I decided I should stay in Japan for at least a week,” he told reporters.

Kishida added that the public must be feeling “very anxious” after the JMA issued its first advisory under a new system drawn up following a major magnitude 9.0 earthquake in 2011 which triggered a deadly tsunami and nuclear disaster.

“The likelihood of a new major earthquake is higher than normal, but this is not an indication that a major earthquake will definitely occur,” the JMA said.

Traffic lights and cars shook and dishes fell off shelves during Thursday’s earthquake off the southern island of Kyushu, but no serious damage was reported.

The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said eight people were hurt — including several hit by falling objects.

Sitting on top of four major tectonic plates, the Japanese archipelago of 125 million people sees some 1,500 quakes every year, most of them minor.

Even with larger tremors the impact is generally contained thanks to advanced building techniques and well-practised emergency procedures.

The government has previously said a megaquake has a roughly 70 percent probability of striking within the next 30 years.

It could affect a large swath of the Pacific coastline of Japan and threaten an estimated 300,000 lives in the worst-case scenario, experts say.

‘Risk elevated, but low’

“While earthquake prediction is impossible, the occurrence of one earthquake usually does raise the likelihood of another,” experts from Earthquake Insights said.

But they added that even when the risk of a second earthquake is elevated, it is “still always low”.

On January 1, a 7.6-sized jolt and powerful aftershocks hit the Noto Peninsula on the Sea of Japan coast, killing at least 318 people, toppling buildings and knocking out roads.

In 2011, a mammoth 9.0-magnitude undersea quake off northeastern Japan triggered a tsunami that left around 18,500 people dead or missing.

It sent three reactors into meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, causing Japan’s worst post-war disaster and the most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

A future megaquake could emanate from the vast Nankai Trough off eastern Japan that in the past has seen major jolts, often in pairs, with magnitudes of eight and even nine.

This included one in 1707 — until 2011 the largest recorded — when Mount Fuji last erupted, in 1854, and then a pair in 1944 and 1946.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

An aerial view shows the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan. File photo
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Japan issued a tsunami advisory Thursday. October 5, 2023, after a strong earthquake struck near its outlying islands in the Pacific Ocean, but lifted it about two hours later. No damage was reported.

The advisory, the second-lowest of a four-stage warning system, asked people on islands in the Izu chain, which stretches south from the Tokyo region, to stay away from the coast and river mouths.

The U.S. Geological Survey said a series of offshore earthquakes hit the area on Thursday morning. The strongest measured magnitude 6.1 and was located at a depth of 10 km, it said.

The quake was not felt on the islands or in the Tokyo region, but the Japan Meteorological Agency warned that a tsunami as high as 1 meter (3.2 feet) could hit the coasts of the islands. A small tsunami measuring about 30 centimeters (1 foot) was observed at Yaene on Hachijo island, the agency said.

No damage was reported and the agency lifted the tsunami advisory about two hours later.

Japan is one of the most earthquake prone places on Earth.

A massive magnitude 9.0 quake in 2011 triggered a tsunami that destroyed swaths of northern Japan and caused three reactors to melt at the Fukushima nuclear plant.