OSAKA, (PNA/Xinhua) — At least 7,000 people in western Japan have been advised to evacuate due to threats of landslide and flooding caused by a typhoon, which made a landfall Wednesday morning in southern Kyushu Island in southwestern Japan, local press reported.
The Japan Meteorological Agency announced that the season’s 17th typhoon was downgraded to an extratropical cyclone off the east coast of Kyushu Island on Wednesday morning.
But heavy rainfall brought by a rain front activated by the storm has forced the evacuation of about 7,000 people in several prefectures in western Japan, such as Ehime, Tottori, Okayama and Shimane, since the morning hours, according to Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), Japan’s public broadcaster.
The report for example said that more than 2,700 people from 1,051 households in Ozu City of Ehime Prefecture were advised at 11 a.m. local time to evacuate their houses due to threats of landslide and flooding, while about 1,000 people in Shikokuchuo City of the prefecture were also advised to evacuate by the time on Wednesday.
Also in Ehime on Shikoku Island, where heavy downpours of 100 millimeters per hour were recorded as of 10 a.m., a mudslide occurred on a carriageway of the Matsuyama Expressway in the morning.
Although the report cited local officials as saying that no one was injured on the road, it has been closed between Matsuyama Interchange and Ozu Interchange.
The meteorological agency warns that heavy rainfall may trigger further floods and landslides in a wide area of western Japan, parts of which may see hourly rainfall of about 100 millimeters by Thursday morning.