TOKYO, August 9 ------ Flights were canceled, bullet trains partially suspended, and factories shuttered as Typhoon "Khanun" headed past Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu, bringing heavy rain.
The storm last week reportedly killed at least two people, injured more than 100, and cut off power for several hundred thousand people in the southern Okinawa region before barreling toward Taiwan. The weather system then swung back to Okinawa, and on Wednesday it was due to roar along the western coast of Kyushu toward South Korea, forecasters say.
Japan Airlines on Tuesday canceled 132 flights, which affected some 8,390 people, a spokesman told Agence France-Presse (AFP). All Nippon Airways also scrapped flights between Kagoshima, in southern Kyushu and Tokyo.
The East Asian country's "shinkansen" bullet train was suspended on part of its southern route, while many other local commuter and express trains were canceled, Kyushu Railway said in a statement. "Please be vigilant about landslides, floods in lowlands, and increase and spillover of water in rivers, storms and high waves" at seas, the Japan Meteorological Agency warned local residents on its website.
Kagoshima prefecture issued noncompulsory evacuation orders to about 540,000 residents, setting up 314 shelters, officials said. Other regions north of Kyushu were also bracing for the violent weather system, with carmaker Mazda announcing that its factories in the southwestern cities of Hiroshima and Yamaguchi would suspend operations on Wednesday and Thursday. The storm forced Nagasaki, one of the main cities on Kyushu, to move indoors and scale down its annual commemoration ceremony of the 1945 atomic bombing scheduled for Wednesday.
In South Korea, the approaching weather system prompted the evacuation of tens of thousands of people at the World Scout Jamboree.
Source: manilatimes.net
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