Mother nature must be mad> Typhoon hits Japan; 21 dead or missing, 45 injured
KAGOSHIMA, Japan (AFX) - A powerful typhoon has cut across the country, leaving at least 21 dead or missing and injuring 45, as 100,000 people were ordered to flee their homes, officials and media reports said.
Hundreds of flights were cancelled and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi called off campaign stops in the main southern island of Kyushu before Sunday's election.
Nabi, packing winds of up to 126 kilometers per hour, headed toward the Sea of Japan as it swept over Kyushu in a matter of ours, the Meteorological Agency said.
Moving north at just 25 kilometers per hour, the typhoon has swamped the archipelago with more than 1,000 millimeters of rain since Sunday afternoon.
The typhoon was weaker than Hurricane Katrina but it brought violent winds of 90 kilometers an hour or more across a radius of nearly 300 kilometers, wider than the 220 kilometers Katrina covered at its peak.
It left at least three people dead and 16 missing in southern Japan, mostly in landslides, Jiji Press said. In addition, Kyodo News said one woman died in western Okayama prefecture from falling off a ferry shaken by the waves. A man was killed earlier in the Tokyo area.
The public broadcaster NHK said at least 45 people were injured.
The National Police Agency had more conservative figures of 12 missing and 20 injured as of 0600 GMT.
'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 US 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-Defense Forces (military) and firefighters are heading toward the scene but haven't arrived there yet,' another prefectural government official said.
More than 500 flights to and from southern Japan were cancelled today, 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 Sunday on a flooded road in Saitama outside Tokyo after he rushed to help his son whose car was stuck. |
