A powerful typhoon pummeled Japan’s southern island of Okinawa yesterday, injuring at least nine people, while weather officials said that the storm would rip through the Japanese archipelago over the weekend.
Typhoon Trami, packing maximum gusts of 216 kph near its center, was forecast to hit mainland Japan early today and cause extreme weather across the nation into tomorrow.
Television footage showed branches ripped from trees by strong winds blocking a main street in Naha, with massive waves splashing on breakwaters on a remote island in the region and torrential horizontal rain.
Photo: Kyodo / Reuters
Local policemen in rain jackets armed with chainsaws were battling the furious wind to remove fallen trees.
About 600 people evacuated to shelters in Okinawa and electricity was cut to nearly 200,000 homes, public broadcaster NHK said.
At least 386 flights were canceled mainly in western Japan, NHK said.
Nine people sustained minor injuries in storm-related incidents in Okinawa, but no one was feared dead, local officials said.
“The number may rise further as we are in the middle of sorting out figures,” said Masatsune Miyazato, an official at the island’s disaster-management office.
“People in Okinawa are used to typhoons, but we are strongly urging them to stay vigilant,” he told reporters.
The weather agency warned people across Japan to be on alert for strong winds, high waves and heavy rain.
“The typhoon is feared to bring record rainfalls and violent winds over large areas,” agency official Yasushi Kajiwara told reporters.
“Please stay on alert, evacuate early and ensure your safety,” Kajiwara said.
After raking the outlying islands, the typhoon was forecast to pick up speed and approach western Japan, “with a very strong force,” as it barrels over mainland Japan, he added.
There have already been heavy downpours in large areas of western and eastern Japan, including the capital, Tokyo, as the storm spurred a seasonal rain front.
Fishermen in Kagoshima Bay, where the typhoon was expected to make landfall, were already making preparations, tying down their boats as Trami approached — even as forecasters warned that another typhoon was following in Trami’s course.
Angler Masakazu Hirase told reporters: “It’s dreadful, because we already know there’s another typhoon after this one, but you cannot compete with nature. We do what we can to limit the damage.”
Western parts of Japan are still recovering from the most powerful typhoon to strike the nation in a quarter of a century after Typhoon Jebi claimed 11 lives and shut down Kansai Airport in Osaka this month.
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