Typhoon Tokage Kills at Least 51 in Japan
TOKYO - Japan's deadliest storm in more than a decade unleashed flash floods that washed away hillsides, killing up to 51 people before it veered east into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday. At least 30 people were missing.
Rescue workers and Japanese troops worked through the night and morning, digging through mud and debris and combing flooded rivers and coastal waters in search of the missing, Japanese media reported. Public broadcaster NHK said the combined deaths and missing were the highest in 16 years.
"The death toll is likely to keep rising, as we take stock of the damage," National Police Agency spokesman Kojun Chibana said.
Typhoon Tokage blasted across Japan on Wednesday before being downgraded to a tropical storm. Early Thursday, the storm headed east to open seas, its fury spent.
Television footage showed powerful gusts uprooting huge trees, flash floods submerging cars to their windows and entire hillsides crumbling away in landslides across southern and central Japan. Delivery trucks, tipped over by winds, lay on their sides.
On Thursday, concrete frames, wood splinters and electrical appliances were all that was left of homes in Muroto in the southwestern state of Kochi, where massive waves broke through concrete tidebreaks and smashed into beachside properties. In large areas of western and southern Japan, neighborhoods and farmlands were still under water.
Parts of southern Japan, including Miyazaki prefecture, were virtually shut down as public schools closed and local bus, train and air transport came to a halt, according to prefectural spokesman Takashi Arimura.
Nationwide, more than 7,000 homes were flooded and hundreds of others ripped apart or buried, police spokesman Chibana said. More than 13,000 people across the country were staying at temporary shelters, officials said.
Tokage, the Japanese word for lizard, was the record eighth typhoon to hit Japan this year.
By early afternoon Thursday, 51 were dead and 30 others still unaccounted for, NHK said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said there were 28 dead, 43 others missing and 252 injured.
The reason for the difference in death tolls wasn't clear.
Workers in southwestern Okayama prefecture had found the bodies of elderly people — a couple in their 80s, and two others, aged 76 and 83 — who had been among the missing after a mudslide buried homes, prefectural government spokesman Tatsuya Sugita said.
A landslide in western Kyoto prefecture also left two elderly women — aged 72 and 79 — dead in their homes, police spokesman Chibana said. A 70-year-old man living in the same village drowned, he said.
On the southern main island of Shikoku, waves had hit a coastal home, killing a family of three, while a 68-year-old fisherman was swept away and drowned after trying to dock his boat, said prefectural spokesman Masatoshi Iwamoto.
The storm forced the cancellation of more than 1,000 flights through Thursday morning, stranding tens of thousands of travelers, according to media reports.
In Kyoto, rescuers on motor boats and helicopters plucked all 36 passengers and a driver from a tourist bus after floodwaters nearly submerged the vehicle early Thursday, police said.
Several Japanese oil refiners were forced to halt sea deliveries from their refineries in western Japan due to heavy rain and strong winds. The suspension was unlikely to affect domestic supply because the refiners have sufficient stocks to cover emergencies such as typhoons and earthquakes.
Earlier this month, Typhoon Ma-on killed six people in Japan after swiping the country's Pacific coast. A week before that, Typhoon Meari killed 22.
This year's typhoons have far outstripped the previous post-World War II record of six, set in 1990. Damages caused by storms and other natural disasters in Japan this year through mid-October were estimated at $6.72 billion, Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki told a parliamentary committee Thursday.
