Typhoon Khanun churns through Japan’s Okinawa as it bears down on China
- The storm has knocked out electricity to more than 200,000 households in Okinawa prefecture. One man was crushed to death under a collapsed garage
- Typhoon Khanun is forecast to move westwards through the East China Sea towards China’s Zhejiang and Fujian provinces in the coming days
So far there has been one death reported and 11 people injured. A man was crushed under a collapsed garage and went into cardiac arrest, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency. He was found dead, media reports said.
Nearly 700,000 people in the tropical prefecture, a popular tourist destination some 1,600km (1,000 miles) southwest of Japan’s capital Tokyo, were advised to evacuate, with the storm moving northwest at 10km/h (6.2mph), the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
High winds had flipped cars over in several parking lots, TV footage showed. Rain battered empty streets as trees swayed and the wind kicked up waves in a flooded street. Some locations in Okinawa logged wind gusts of nearly 200km/h (124mph) on Wednesday morning and had more than 250mm of rain in the past 24 hours, according to the meteorological agency.
Local utility Okinawa Electric Power said about 210,000 households, or 34 per cent of all houses covered, were experiencing power outages as of 1pm local time, according to its website.
Kyushu Electric Power said power supply was down for 10,030 houses in Amami islands in Kagoshima prefecture, north of Okinawa.
Mobile operators SoftBank Corp and KDDI said phone and internet connections in some areas in Okinawa were disrupted due to the power outage.