Typhoon Goni Impacts: Millions in Japan Under Landslide Threat, Advised to Prepare For Evacuation

August 24,2015
Tpyhoon Goni made landfall in Japan about 6 a.m. local time, reports the Japan Meteorological Agency.  Nearly 120,000 people in Kumamoto and Hiroshima prefectures are under an "evacuation advisory" according to Japan's national broadcasting corporartion NHK,  while 2.2 million in region have been "advised to prepare for evacuation".
The JMA issued a landslide warning for Fukuoka, the 7th-largest city in Japan with a population of about 1.5 million, shortly before 8 a.m. local time. The warning says landslide danger is rising due to the heavy rainfall in the area. Several other municipalities in Fukuoka Prefecture, as well as parts of Saga and Ōita prefectures, are also under landslide warnings.
One death has been attributed to high waves as the storm moved towards the mainland. According to NHK, a 66-year-old man drowned after falling from a fishing boat off of Miyazaki Prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu on Monday.
Wind gusts of 159 mph, a local record, flipped over cars and toppled utility poles overnight on the remote Japanese island of Ishigaki, near Taiwan, Japanese media reported. A few people were cut by broken windows. The storm, with maximum sustained winds of 112 mph, was heading north toward Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu.
The Kyushu Electric Power Company said that more than 350,000 homes were without power just before the storm made landfall, mostly in Kagoshima Prefecture, where 26.4% of all customers have no service.
(MORE: Twin Typhoons Threaten the Western Pacific)
On the northern islands of the Philippines, Goni triggered mudslides and brought deadly damaging winds, killing at least 19 people and leaving 16 unaccounted for.
Landslides killed at least 13 people in the mountain province of Benguet, including four gold miners who were pulled out of a huge mudslide that buried three work camps. A dozen miners were missing and more than 100 policemen and fellow miners dug through the mud amid fading hope that survivors would be found, officials said.
Benguet Governor Nestor Fongwan said days of pounding rain and a swollen creek saturated a mountain slope, which cascaded down the gold-mining area at dawn Saturday. "They were sleeping when a huge chunk of the mountain came down and buried their work sites," he said by phone.
Six people died elsewhere in the north, and four others were missing, according to the Office of Civil Defense.
The 9-month old boy and his sister drowned after floods swept away their riverside shanty in Subic town in northwestern Zambales province early Monday. Their 5-year-old brother remains missing.
The typhoon damaged more than 1,000 houses, said Alexander Pama, head of the government's disaster-response agency.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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