Two people have died and more than 100 were injured after Typhoon Nanmadol slammed into Japan on Monday,19 September, dumping heavy rain, paralysing traffic, and leaving tens of thousands of homes without power, as reproted by British news media The Guardian.
The worst of the rainfall was seen in the southernmost island of Kyushu, where two people died, according to the fire and disaster management agency, before the typhoon was downgraded to a tropical storm as it made its way to the Pacific Ocean.
One person was missing in Hiroshima prefecture, and 115 others were injured across western Japan, the agency said.
Nearly six million people were still under evacuation warnings.
The authorities cautioned against complacency, warning that in some areas even a small amount of additional rainfall could trigger flooding and landslides.
About 130 000 homes, most of them in the Kyushu region, were still without electricity on Tuesday, 20 September, morning. Many convenience stores were closed at one point and there was disruption to some supply lines.
The tropical storm has headed out to the Pacific Ocean off northern Japanese coast, the Japan meteorological agency said Tuesday, 20 September.
While the meteorological agency had warned of a potentially devastating typhoon, which came ashore unleashing gusts of up to 234 kilometres an hour, the damage appeared relatively limited.
«The typhoon has all but disappeared today and the rain and wind are also subsiding now,» a crisis management official in the south–western town of Saito said.
But residents in the region said they had left their homes as the storm approached, fearing the worst.
«I came to the hotel to shelter because it was windy and I thought it was dangerous,» said Yasuta Yamaguchi, a resident of Izumi in Kagoshima prefecture. «I didn’t feel safe at home.»
Meteorological agency officials said the storm appeared to have lost much of its intensity.
Japan is struck by about 20 typhoons a year, mainly in the autumn, and routinely experiences heavy rainfall that causes landslides and flash floods.
Experts have warned that typhoons are traveling much slower and causing more damage across Japan in September, a trend that has been attributed to global heating.