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, downgraded to a “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 west from Japan, where major cities like Osaka and Kobe are located, heading north.
The city of Tottori, which faces the Sea of ??Japan, issued its maximum evacuation alert for 182,000 residents in the late afternoon, as the meteorological agency warned of the arrival “unprecedented” heavy rains in the region.
“Lives are in danger. Residents are in a situation where their personal safety needs to 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. Around 650 people were forced to spend the night at Kansai International Airport, located on a man-made 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 weather agency said on the X Network (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.
