As it made landfall, it lost some intensity, with gusts of up to 160 km/h, but the danger came mainly from torrential rains that triggered a deadly landslide. Three members of the same family, a couple in their 70s and their son in his 30s, died after a landslide buried their house in Gamagori, a city in central Aichi Prefecture.
Twenty-six injuries – including 10 caused by a tornado – were reported and more than 150 buildings were damaged in the early hours of the morning in Miyazaki prefecture on the Pacific coast of Kyushu, a local official said.
Typhoon Shanshan threat forces mass evacuations in #Japan
An evacuation order has been issued for 845,000 people on the Japanese island of Kyushu ahead of the expected arrival of Shanshan, while businesses are suspending work. Toyota has stopped all its⦠pic.twitter.com/APLBrQTakp
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As early as Wednesday, authorities had issued their highest alert level in some departments, advising hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate and warning of “potentially deadly” flooding, landslides and storm surges.
Power cuts
“Our house is fine, but there was a tornado in Miyazaki and there were power outages in some places. It’s worrying,” said Aoi Nishimoto, an 18-year-old student who lives in Fukuoka, the island’s main city, but was able to reach his parents in Miyazaki.
“This year is the first time I’m away from my parents’ house, so it’s a bit scary to be alone,” said Rio Ohtsuru, a 19-year-old student interviewed in the northern city of Fukuoka. Kyushu’s utility operator said 254,610 homes were already without power on the island.
The system is moving slowly, meaning it has had time to fill with water over the sea, and the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) is predicting, without absolute certainty, a gradual shift towards Japan’s main island of Honshu and the cities of Osaka and Nagoya.
The JMA warned that “the risk of disasters due to heavy rains could rapidly increase in western Japan by Friday.”
Transport impacted
“Please exercise maximum vigilance for the risk of severe storms, waves and high tides in Kagoshima, as well as landslides and floods in low-lying areas and river overflows in southern Kyushu,” the JMA warned early Thursday.
The two southern prefectures of Kyushu are expected to receive about half of their average annual rainfall in 48 hours. In Kagoshima and Miyazaki, 1,100 mm of rain is expected by Friday morning, according to the JMA.
Heavy rains from Shanshan have already been hitting other parts of Japan since Tuesday. Transportation has been severely impacted in the southern part of the Japanese archipelago. Japan Airlines canceled 275 domestic flights on Thursday, affecting 14,893 passengers, and another 13 on Friday that would have carried 1,307 people.