Four missing after landslide in central Japan – Observer

Four members of the same family are missing in Japan after a landslide triggered by torrential rains, local authorities said Wednesday, as a strong typhoon approaches the Ryukyu archipelago.

“The landslide destroyed a house where five members of a family lived — a couple in their 70s, two women in their 40s and a man in his 30s,” an official in the coastal city of Gamagori, in the center of the country, told the AFP news agency.

“One of them was rescued on Tuesday night, but the search for the other four continued throughout the night,” he added, without providing further details.

The rains that are affecting the center of the archipelago precede Typhoon Shanshan, which was this morning about 80 kilometers northeast of the island of Amami, in the south of the country, with wind gusts of up to 252 kilometers per hour.

“We need to be on high alert,” an official from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said at a press conference, referring in particular to the south of the country.

The JMA said it expected up to 400 millimeters of rain on Amami Island in the next 24 hours and up to 500 millimeters in the Kyushu region by the end of Thursday.

As Airlines have already decided to cancel hundreds of flights. Japan Airlines canceled 110 domestic flights and six international flights scheduled for today, and ANA announced it had canceled 112 domestic flights through Friday.

Some Shinkansen lines, the high-speed trains, could be suspended this weekdepending on the typhoon’s path, operators said.

Typhoon Shanshan is expected to head towards the southern island of Kyushu, the country’s second largest, and then head towards the main island of Honshu by the end of the week.

Fishermen on Kyushu island anchored their boats at ports on Monday to prepare for the typhoon.

In mid-August, Typhoon Ampil caused the cancellation of rail transport and more than 650 flights national and international, without causing serious injuries or major damage as it made its way up the Pacific coast off the Tokyo region.

“Very strong” typhoon expected in Tokyo region

Typhoons in the region are forming closer to the coast than before, intensifying more quickly and staying over land longer because of climate change, according to a study released in July.