A powerful typhoon pummeled Japan’s southern island of Okinawa yesterday, injuring at least nine people, while weather officials said that the storm would rip through the Japanese archipelago over the weekend.
Typhoon Trami, packing maximum gusts of 216 kph near its center, was forecast to hit mainland Japan early today and cause extreme weather across the nation into tomorrow.
Television footage showed branches ripped from trees by strong winds blocking a main street in Naha, with massive waves splashing on breakwaters on a remote island in the region and torrential horizontal rain.
Photo: Kyodo / Reuters
Local policemen in rain jackets armed with chainsaws were battling the furious wind to remove fallen trees.
About 600 people evacuated to shelters in Okinawa and electricity was cut to nearly 200,000 homes, public broadcaster NHK said.
At least 386 flights were canceled mainly in western Japan, NHK said.
Nine people sustained minor injuries in storm-related incidents in Okinawa, but no one was feared dead, local officials said.
“The number may rise further as we are in the middle of sorting out figures,” said Masatsune Miyazato, an official at the island’s disaster-management office.
“People in Okinawa are used to typhoons, but we are strongly urging them to stay vigilant,” he told reporters.
The weather agency warned people across Japan to be on alert for strong winds, high waves and heavy rain.
“The typhoon is feared to bring record rainfalls and violent winds over large areas,” agency official Yasushi Kajiwara told reporters.
“Please stay on alert, evacuate early and ensure your safety,” Kajiwara said.
After raking the outlying islands, the typhoon was forecast to pick up speed and approach western Japan, “with a very strong force,” as it barrels over mainland Japan, he added.
There have already been heavy downpours in large areas of western and eastern Japan, including the capital, Tokyo, as the storm spurred a seasonal rain front.
Fishermen in Kagoshima Bay, where the typhoon was expected to make landfall, were already making preparations, tying down their boats as Trami approached — even as forecasters warned that another typhoon was following in Trami’s course.
Angler Masakazu Hirase told reporters: “It’s dreadful, because we already know there’s another typhoon after this one, but you cannot compete with nature. We do what we can to limit the damage.”
Western parts of Japan are still recovering from the most powerful typhoon to strike the nation in a quarter of a century after Typhoon Jebi claimed 11 lives and shut down Kansai Airport in Osaka this month.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including