As the typhoon named ‘Shanshan’ slid eastwards across Japan on a Saturday, it caused the death of at least six individuals alongside widespread rainfall leading to landslides and flooding over a large radius from the storm’s epicentre.
Images broadcasted by national station, NHK, depicted partly decapitated homes contrasting against cars drowned wheel-deep on roads submerged by floodwaters in southwest Japan. Post making landfall in Kyushu by Thursday, the storm ushered in unprecedented rainfall.
According to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency of Japan, another individual has yet to be found whereas more than a hundred have sustained injuries. Kyushu Electric reported that more than 35,000 households in southern Kyushu’s Kagoshima prefecture were cut from power supply.
Whilst centered around 480km to the southwest of Tokyo in the Pacific Ocean at 12:50pm local time, ‘Shanshan’ incited heavy rainfall as distant as the utmost north prefecture of Hokkaido, despite being demoted to a tropical storm by Friday with wind speeds hovering up to 90km/h.
The Japanese authorities responded to the storm’s arrival by disseminating warnings for flooding and landslides throughout the nation, causing air and railway services to come to a standstill and factories to cease their operations.
Despite predictions suggesting ‘Shanshan’ will further decrease in intensity over the weekend turning into a tropical depression, the heavy rains are anticipated to persist according to NHK reports. – Reuters
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