Japan in storm shutdown

The typhoon ripped roofs off buildings, caused bridges to collapse and shut highways [Reuters]

Thursday, October 08, 2009

(Post by CAAI News Media)

Japanese were bracing last night for a direct hit from one of the strongest typhoons in years as heavy rain and strong winds cut power to thousands of homes and tore roofs from buildings on the country's southern islands.

Melor, which was on course to batter the main island of Honshu today, looks like being the first typhoon to make landfall in Japan since 2007.

"We are issuing storm and high-wave warnings as the typhoon is seen as one of the strongest for the past decade," said Shinichi Nakatsukasa, a weather forecaster at the Meteorological Agency.

The storm was packing gusts of up to 216 kilometers an hour, moving south of Shikoku, one of Japan's four main islands.

It was predicted to make landfall from the west and then roar over densely populated Honshu, the industrial heartland of the world's No2 economy.

Toyota Motor ordered production to be suspended at all 12 of its domestic plants, while operators of railways in western Japan said they would cancel some express trains.

More than 200 flights, four of them international, were grounded due to strong winds in the west, affecting some 15,000 people, while most ferry services were suspended.

"Rain will be very heavy and winds will also be fairly strong on land," another weather agency official said. "It is likely to make landfall with a violent force."

Close to 11,000 households were without electricity on islands in Japan's far south, according to local power companies. Roofs were blown off homes and other buildings while trees and power poles were toppled.

Authorities feared that Melor would rip through the archipelago on a course similar to a 1959 typhoon that left thousands of dead in its wake.

Last month typhoon Ketsana killed more than 400 people in the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia. Tropical storm Parma is still sitting over northern Luzon, where 22 people have been killed in the heavy rains.