Disasters & Accidents

2 dead, 60 injured in Japan as Typhoon Khanun slams Okinawa

Tokyo, Aug 3 (EFE).- At least two people have died and another 60 injured during a powerful typhoon’s passage through southwest Japan’s Okinawa prefecture, which also caused flight disruptions and power outages affecting some 156,000 homes on Thursday.

Khanun, the sixth typhoon of the season in the Pacific, and classified as “very strong” by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), was located about 230 kilometers (143 miles) to the southwest of Kumejima Island, in the Okinawa archipelago, at 10:45 am.

The storm is moving very slowly in a west-northwest direction, carrying gusts of winds of up to 216 kilometers per hour (134 miles per hour), according to the Japanese meteorological authorities.

The typhoon, which has already made its presence felt in the nearby Taiwan as well as China’s west coast, is expected to change its course in the coming days towards the east and head to Kyushu island in southwest Japan and Honshu island, the biggest in the Japanese archipelago and where the capital city of Tokyo is located.

The typhoon has already left two people dead, including a man in his 90s in Ogimi village who was crushed after a garage collapsed due to strong winds, and an 89-year-old woman in the city of Uruma who died from burns she sustained after the candles she used during a power outage caused a fire.

The typhoon has also left some 60 people injured, including a person who broke his arm trying to remove a tree knocked over by the wind and another man who sustained injuries when the glass at his house shattered, public broadcaster NHK reported.

Energy company Okinawa Electric Power said that around 156,000 homes, or a quarter of the homes in the Okinawa prefecture, faced power outages early Thursday.

Flight disruptions at the Naha, Miyako, New Ishigaki and Shimojishima airports – Okinawa’s main airports, on Thursday, affected 314 flights and some 40,000 passengers.

The Japanese authorities have urged caution during the typhoon’s passage due to the risk of storms, strong winds, waves and landslides. EFE

emg-yk/pd

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