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biofunmy · 5 years

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Japan Fights Floods in Wake of Typhoon Hagibis

TOKYO — Japan woke Sunday morning to flooded rivers and burst levees, as emergency workers employed helicopters and boats to rescue stranded residents from their homes in the wake of Typhoon Hagibis, the largest storm to hit the country in decades.

Rain began falling Saturday and continued through Sunday morning, testing dams, pulling down hillsides, destroying roads and bridges, and driving rivers over their banks. Anticipating massive damage, authorities urged nearly 6 million people to evacuate.

Rescue services jumped into action early in the morning, with helicopters plucking stranded people from balconies and roofs. As of Sunday morning the death toll stood at 10, with 16 people missing and nearly 100 injuries reported, according to public broadcaster NHK. Fatalities were expected to mount as swollen rivers rushed through flooded neighborhoods.

More than 370,000 households were without power and at least 15,000 homes were without water, Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary told reporters, adding that the country was taking every measure to recover.

At least 14 rivers flooded, NHK said, after record-breaking rains. In Nagano prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, a levee burst on the Chikuma river, flooding a wide area of Nagano city.

Another four levees across the flood zone had also collapsed, according to NHK and information provided by local governments.

In Fukushima prefecture, where a huge earthquake and tsunami caused the Daiichi nuclear power plant to melt down in 2011, a burst levee flooded the banks of the Abukuma river following heavy rains. Separately, Tokyo Electric Power said it was inspecting the nuclear plant for damage from the heavy rains.

At least 27,000 rescue workers raced to evacuate people from the flood zones, where water reached up to buildings’ second stories and strong currents swept through the streets. NHK showed images of an effort to rescue hundreds of people stranded at an elder care center in Saitama, a suburban area north of Tokyo. Television announcers urged people trapped in their homes to put up pieces of fabric as a signal to rescuers.

After a day of heavy rains, the storm made landfall Saturday around 7 p.m., local time, southwest of Tokyo in the resort town of Ito. It struck the capital directly, lashing the surrounding areas with heavy rains and winds of up to 130 miles per hour, before moving north.

At least two deaths and several landslides occurred even before the typhoon hit, and a 5.7-magnitude earthquake of shook Chiba, east of Tokyo, Saturday evening just before the storm made landfall.

Authorities had expected that Hagibis could rival the Kanogawa typhoon of 1958, which killed more than 1,200 people in Shizuoka Prefecture and the Tokyo region. They urged people to prepare to evacuate for days in the lead up to the storm.

On Saturday, authorities issued a rare highest-level warning of extreme rain in 12 prefectures, including Saitama and Shizuoka, advising residents to evacuate or move to higher floors in the “nearest sturdy building” in order to avoid “imminent danger.” All of the alerts had been lifted by Sunday morning.

On Saturday, authorities canceled flights across the country, Japan railways suspended service in the Tokyo region and bullet trains between Tokyo and Osaka were suspended. Rugby World Cup organizers canceled two matches on Saturday and a third match Sunday,. Businesses, grocery stores, restaurants and even the country’s 24-hour convenience stores — which almost never shut their doors — closed en masse, leaving the normally bustling streets of Tokyo’s busiest neighborhoods largely empty.

Some businesses planned to remain closed on Sunday as road closures across the country’s central and northern regions disrupted deliveries.

Some flights and trains had resumed service Sunday morning. But many Japan Railways routes continued to be suspended Sunday morning as operators assessed damage, the company said. Images from NHK showed a number of bullet trains submerged up to their windows.

Hagibis followed another strong typhoon, Faxai, which hit Japan last month, causing heavy damage in Chiba Prefecture.

In Saitama, the Oppegawa River was swollen with muddy water Sunday morning. Some neighborhoods near the riverbanks had flooded and nearby residents walked or rode bikes to view the flooding. One street in Sakado-shi- Akao was impassable but had a pristine view of Mount Fuji in the distance under a clear blue sky. Kenichi Nakajima, 58, a farmer, had driven over a bridge to see the flooding close to a friend’s house.

“They can’t get out of their houses, it’s such a pity,” he said.

“We don’t have supermarkets around here. We have to go far to a big supermarket. But without a car, we can’t go shopping as the cars are flooded.”

The scale of the damage was “abnormal,” Mr. Nakajima said, suggesting global warming was responsible.

“Recently a girl made a speech about global warming and as she was crying she said ‘we have no future,’” he said, referring to the climate activist Greta Thunberg.

“She is absolutely right.”

Motoko Rich reported from Saitama. Hisako Ueno contributed reporting.

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biofunmy · 5 years

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Typhoon Hagibis Slams Into Japan After Landslides, Floods and a Quake

This is a developing news story. Check back for updates.

TOKYO — Typhoon Hagibis, Japan’s largest storm in decades, lashed the country’s northeast early Sunday morning, just hours after hitting the Tokyo region with heavy rain and high winds that forced many residents to move to evacuation centers.

Record rains flooded rivers, pushed dams to their limits and caused several landslides. An earthquake measuring 5.7 magnitude also shook Chiba, east of Tokyo, early Saturday evening.

One death was reported in a cyclone in Chiba, and NHK, the public broadcaster, reported that another person died after a landslide crushed his home in Tomioka City in Gunma Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo. Thirteen other people were missing, NHK said. Landslides were also reported in Sagamihara, a suburb of the city, and in Shizuoka, a coastal city to the southwest.

The storm made landfall around 7 p.m. on Saturday in Ito, a resort town on the Izu Peninsula, also southwest of Tokyo.

By midnight, the rain and wind had moved past the capital, leaving some flooding in the city’s west.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said Saturday afternoon that sustained winds from the typhoon had been measured at about 100 miles per hour, with gusts of up to 135 miles per hour, landing the storm in the third-strongest category.

By Saturday night, NHK reported that local governments had ordered 3.9 million people to evacuate their homes. That included 432,000 people who had been advised to leave the Edogawa ward of Tokyo because of fears of heavy flooding. In Kawasaki City, outside the capital, more than 900,000 people had been urged to evacuate, according to NHK.

Tokyo Electric Power Company said that as of midnight 432,000 households were without power across Tokyo and Shizuoka.

Record-setting rain and dangerous water levels

As Japan prepared for the typhoon to make landfall, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued a rare, highest-level warning of extreme rain in 7 prefectures, including Saitama and Shizuoka, urging residents to evacuate or move to higher floors in the “nearest sturdy building” in order to avoid “imminent danger.”

Less than an hour after the typhoon made landfall, the agency added five more prefectures to the extreme-rain warning list. In a first for central Tokyo, two wards received torrential rainfall warnings.

In Tokyo’s western neighborhood of Setagaya, the Tama river overflowed its banks, flooding the city streets.

By midnight, the agency had lowered warning levels around Tokyo, but was continuing to issue new warnings for additional prefectures as the typhoon moved northeast.

Water levels in close to 30 rivers, in prefectures including Tokyo, Kanagawa, Gunma and Shizuoka, had already exceeded levels considered dangerous by the meteorological agency. Several dams were releasing water to reduce the pressure on them as rivers swelled with the record-setting rain.

NHK reported that Hakone, a popular tourist destination in the mountains west of Tokyo, received more than 35 inches of rain in just 24 hours, the most for a single day since record-keeping was begun in 1974.

The weather agency said the southeastern Tokai region could receive as much as 31 inches of rain in a 24-hour period.

A nation takes refuge

Hundreds of flights were canceled in anticipation of Hagibis, including every one of All Nippon Airways’ domestic and international flights from airports in the Tokyo area on Saturday. Japan Railways suspended service in the Tokyo region on Saturday, as well as bullet train service between Tokyo and Osaka.

With the storm bearing down, Rugby World Cup organizers for the first time canceled two matches in Japan. Tourist attractions in Tokyo, including the Disneyland and DisneySea theme parks and the Ueno Zoo, closed on Saturday, as did hundreds of supermarkets and department stores in the city and nearby prefectures.

Warnings from authorities and experts

As Hagibis approached this past week — at one point the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane, with 160 m.p.h. winds — the Japanese authorities prepared for disruptions in the lives of millions. About 1.5 million people live below sea level in eastern parts of Tokyo, and meteorologists warned that as many as five million people might need to be evacuated if water overwhelmed the levees in low-lying areas.

On Friday, the Japan Meteorological Agency warned that Hagibis could rival the Kanogawa typhoon of 1958, which killed more than 1,200 people in Shizuoka Prefecture and the Tokyo region.

On the same day, the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization warned that tropical cyclones like Typhoon Hagibis were “among the most devastating of all natural hazards.”

Speaking at a meeting with Japanese officials, the secretary general, Petteri Taalas, said that since 1970, seven of the 10 disasters that caused the biggest economic losses around the world had been tropical cyclones. “They wreak havoc with their violent winds, torrential rainfall and associated storm surges and floods,” he said.

This past week, Jeff Masters, a meteorologist with the magazine Scientific American, warned that a direct hit on Tokyo Bay could be “a multibillion-dollar disaster.” Last year, Typhoon Jebi, the worst typhoon in 25 years, killed 11 people, injured hundreds and caused an estimated $12.6 billion in damage.

Reporting was contributed by Eimi Yamamitsu and Makiko Inoue from Chiba, Japan; Hisako Ueno from Okayama, Japan; and Alan Yuhas from New York.

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