More than 180,000 residents of a western Japanese city were urged to seek shelter on Tuesday (August 15th) as Tropical Storm Lan slammed into the country, raising fears of flooding and landslides, according to the Japanese Meteorological Agency.
The typhoon, degraded in “severe tropical storm” when it made landfall around 5 a.m. Tuesday (10 p.m. Monday CET) in Wakayama Prefecture, about 600 kilometers west of Tokyo, was sweeping across western Japan, home to major metropolises like Osaka and Kobe, heading north.
The town of Tottori, which faces the Sea of Japan, issued its maximum evacuation alert for all 182,000 residents in the late afternoon, as the weather agency warned of the arrival heavy rains ” unprecedented “ In the region.
“Lives are in danger. Residents are in a situation where their personal safety must be ensured”, Satoshi Sugimoto of the Japan Meteorological Agency told reporters. The latter asked the population of the region to take refuge on high ground because of a risk of flooding.
Flights and high-speed trains interrupted
Electricity was largely restored but was still missing for 9,200 homes, according to local operator Kansai Electric Power. The circulation of high-speed trains, Shinkansen, between Nagoya (center) and Okayama (west) was interrupted, like traffic on many local railway lines. Part of a pedestrian bridge spanning a river has been destroyed in Kyoto.
Many flights have been canceled since Monday: 240 flights for the airline Japan Airlines and more than 300 for its competitor ANA. About 650 people were forced to spend the night at Kansai International Airport, located on an artificial island in Osaka Bay and connected to the archipelago by a bridge, after road and rail access was cut off by storm, Japanese news agency Kyodo reported.
The rains “have already exceeded the average monthly rainfall for August in some areas” in the central and western regions, the meteorological agency said on the network X (formerly Twitter).
The storm is expected to continue sweeping across western Japan all day Tuesday before reaching the Sea of Japan and moving up towards Vladivostok, at the southeastern tip of Russia.