Typhoon Goni slams into Japanese mainland

A NASA satellite image shows Typhoon Goni in the East China Sea. (Photo: AFP/Handout/NASA)

TOKYO: Typhoon Goni slammed into the Japanese mainland on Tuesday (Aug 25), leaving at least one person missing, more than 70 others injured and disrupting rail and flight services, as authorities urged more than 600,000 people to leave homes.

The powerful storm, which killed at least 26 people in landslides and floods in the Philippines, hit the southwestern Kumamoto prefecture on Kyushu island at about 6:00 am (2100 GMT Monday), Japan's weather agency said.

Most of those injured sustained minor cuts from broken glass, a prefectural official told AFP. TV footage showed trees ripped from their roots by violent winds and streets strewn with seaweed and fish dumped ashore by huge waves.

In the major city of Fukuoka, a man in his 60s suffered a serious head injury after he was hit by a flying steel pipe, authorities said. In Kumamoto, a man delivering newspapers was missing and believed buried by a landslide, a Jiji Press report said.

Packing gusts up to 180 kilometres (112 miles) per hour, Goni passed over Kyushu, one of Japan's four main islands, and continued its path over the Sea of Japan (East Sea), according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Local governments in northern Kyushu and some prefectures on the main island of Honshu issued evacuation advisories for more than 600,000 people, the disaster management agency reported.

Most regional railway operators halted trains while several hundred flights arriving and departing from local airports were also cancelled, including international services between Fukuoka and other regional centres including Seoul and Shanghai.

At 4:00 pm almost 290,000 households in Kyushu were left without electricity after blackouts.

At the weekend, Goni hit parts of the northern Philippines hard, destroying nearly 1,000 houses and forcing more than 12,000 people to flee.