Roke was about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of the Kii peninsula, where 67 people died in a typhoon earlier this month, at 11 a.m. local time and is expected to make landfall near Nagoya around 3 p.m., the Japan Meteorological Agency said. The storm had sustained winds of 157 kilometers per hour, making it a weak Category 2 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, down from a Category 4 over the last 36 hours.
NHK showed footage of flooded roads across central Japan including Kyoto, Wakayama and Aichi prefectures where as much as 300 millimeters (12 inches) of rain fell this morning. Roke is forecast to pass over Japan three weeks after typhoon Talas, the nation’s worst storm in seven years. Japan’s weather agency issued warnings for high waves and stormy conditions along the southern and eastern coasts.
One person died in Nagoya after falling from the third floor of a building, Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency said in a statement. One man died in Saga prefecture checking the mooring on a fishing boat, while another drowned in a swollen river in Ehime prefecture, the agency said.
About 1.1 million people in Aichi, Gifu and other prefectures in central Japan were ordered or advised to leave their homes as of 9 a.m. today, national broadcaster NHK said on its website. Nagoya city, the capital of Aichi, lifted evacuation orders at 11:15 a.m., according to the city website.
Canceled Flights
Japan Airlines Co. canceled 112 domestic flights, the carrier said in a faxed statement. All Nippon Airways Co. said it canceled 116 domestic flights and two international flights while Skymark Airlines Inc., Japan’s biggest discount carrier, said it had 43 cancellations.
Toyota Motor Corp. suspended today’s afternoon shift at 11 factories in Aichi prefecture due to the typhoon, Shiori Hashimoto, a Tokyo-based spokeswoman said by phone.
Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and Suzuki Motor Corp. are operating factories in the region as normal and don’t plan to shut them, Mitsubishi spokeswoman Namie Koketsu and Suzuki spokesman Ei Mochizuki said today.
Description : Toàn cảnh đường đi của bão tại vùng Tây Thái Bình ...
Description : Digital Typhoon: Cyclone ZOE
Description : 이 태풍은 8월 1일 발생하여, 계속 북서진 하다가 8월 ...
JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp. stopped berthing operations at six refineries across the country today, according to a spokeswoman, who declined to be identified because of company policy. Refining operations or shipments by trucks are operating as usual, she said.
Toward Fukushima
Roke is expected to weaken as it moves northeast, past the Greater Tokyo area and towards the stricken nuclear power plant in Fukushima.
“The major difference between the two typhoons was Talas was slow-moving over the Kii peninsula, dumping rain in the same area, while Roke is fast moving,” Kenji Okada, a forecaster at the Japan Meteorological Agency, said yesterday. “Roke is bringing strong gusts and dumping rain in a wide region.”
The storm was expected to dump 150 millimeters of rain on Fukushima within 24 hours, likely in short, heavy downpours, Okada of the Japan Meteorological Agency said by phone yesterday.
Roke may hinder work to control leakage of water into the basements of the Dai-Ichi reactor buildings, which contained 102 million liters of radioactive water as of Sept. 13, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co. estimates.
Leaking Reactor
Since July, much of Tokyo Electric’s work in Fukushima has focused on decontaminating highly radiated cooling water that ran off into basements and trenches at the damaged reactors.
In addition, as much as 500 tons, or 500,000 liters, of underground water is leaking into Dai-Ichi buildings every day through cracks in walls and trenches, Tokyo Electric spokesman Hajime Motojuku said yesterday.
The utility has been injecting water into Dai-Ichi’s reactors since a March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems, causing the worst nuclear accident in 25 years. Reactors need to be cooled below 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit) to shut down the plant.
Levels of contaminated water in Dai-Ichi basements have fallen more than 14 percent in the last month as Tepco sped up water decontamination by adding a system supplied by Toshiba Corp. and Shaw Group Inc.
The company is in the process of installing a cover for the No. 1 reactor building and aims to put similar covers over units 3 and 4 next year after debris is cleared, Tokyo Electric spokesman Takeo Iwamoto said yesterday. The tops of those three units were blown off by hydrogen explosions in March.
Still, the covers are unlikely to prevent rainwater from flowing into the basements, Iwamoto said.
--With assistance from Chris Cooper, Yuji Okada, Takashi Amano, Anna Mukai, Makoto Miyazaki and Yuriy Humber in Tokyo and Masatsugu Horie in Osaka. Editors: Teo Chian Wei, Pavel Alpeyev
Source : Typhoon Roke Weakens on Approach to Japan, Leaves Three Dead
