Japan hit by an extremely powerful typhoon, victims and damage

Steph Deschamps / August 30, 2024

 
One of the most powerful typhoons to hit Japan in recent decades made landfall on Thursday, claiming three lives and causing extensive damage in the early hours of the storm, with torrential rains battering the south of the country.
 
Typhoon Shanshan, with gusts of up to 252 km/h, arrived in Japan via the country's main southern island of Kyushu, home to 12.5 million people, at around 08:00.
 
As it made landfall, the wind diminished in intensity, gusting to a maximum of 160 km/h, but the main danger came from the torrential rains, which triggered a fatal landslide.
 
Three members of the same family, a couple in their seventies and their son in his thirties, died after a landslide buried their home in Gamagori, a town in central Aichi prefecture.
 
By Wednesday, the authorities had issued their highest alert level in some areas, hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate and warning of “potentially deadly” flooding, landslides and inland sea advances.
 
The coastal city of Miyazaki, littered with debris of all kinds, reported 25 injuries - some caused by a tornado - and 195 damaged buildings, a local official said.
 
According to NHK television, 59 people were injured throughout the Kyushu region, and a man aboard a small boat was reported missing on the island's south coast.
 
Kyushu's utility operator reported that 254,610 homes were without power on the island.
 
The storm is moving slowly, which means it has had time to swell with water over the sea.