7 killed, 15 missing as fierce typhoon pounds Tokyo

TOKYO - Seven people were killed and 15 were missing after the most powerful typhoon to hit Japan in decades paralysed Tokyo, flooding rivers and leaving almost half a million homes without power, public broadcaster NHK reported on Sunday.

Authorities lifted rain and flood warnings for the Kanto region around a becalmed Tokyo before dawn as the typhoon plowed up Japan's northeast coast. Warnings for areas north of the capital began to be lifted by Sunday morning.

Typhoon Hagibis was expected to head out to sea on Sunday evening after churning its way up the northern island of Hokkaido.

Seven people were killed in areas including the Chiba, Gunma, Kanagawa and Fukushima prefectures surrounding Tokyo, NHK said. Among them was a man in his 60s who was found in a flooded apartment in Kawasaki, it said. Fifteen people were also missing early on Sunday, it said.

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Millions of people had been warned earlier to evacuate.

Some 425,000 homes were without power, the government said, reviving fears of a repeat of the weeks-long power outages suffered after another typhoon hit east of Tokyo last month.

In Fukushima, north of the capital, Tokyo Electric Power Co reported irregular readings from sensors monitoring water in its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant overnight. The plant was crippled by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Heavy rain caused rivers to flood their banks in parts of Fukushima and Nagano prefectures, submerging houses and rice paddies and forcing some people to climb onto their roofs for safety.

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Houses along the Chikuma river in Nagano were nearly under water and at least one person was rescued from the roof of a house by helicopter, NHK said. Part of a road was swept away in flooding.

Authorities issued evacuation advisories and orders for more than 6 million people across Japan as the storm unleashed the heaviest rain and winds in years. Some 100 injuries have been reported so far, NHK said.

MORE FLOODING POSSIBLE

The storm, which the government said could be the strongest to hit Tokyo since 1958, brought record-breaking rainfall in many areas, including the popular resort town of Hakone, which was hit with 939.5 mm (37 inches) of rain over 24 hours.

Hagibis, which means "speed" in the Philippine language Tagalog, made landfall on Japan's main island of Honshu on Saturday evening. A magnitude 5.7 earthquake shook Tokyo shortly after.

Major shinkansen bullet trains from Tokyo would begin on schedule Sunday, NHK said, while the Tokyo subway system was also operating.

One expert, Nobuyuki Tsuchiya, director of the Japan Riverfront Research Center, had earlier told Reuters that further flooding could occur as several surrounding prefectures began releasing water from dams, letting it flow downstream.

About 1.5 million people in Tokyo live below sea level.

The Japan Meteorological Agency had issued the highest alert level for 12 prefectures, warning of the potential for once-in-decades rain totals, but lifted them early on Sunday.

Just last month, another strong storm, Typhoon Faxai, destroyed or damaged 30,000 houses in Chiba, east of Tokyo, and caused extensive power outages.

Tokyo Disneyland was closed on Saturday, its first weather-related closure since 1984, and supermarkets ran out of bottled water, batteries and other disaster-related goods.

Many people in and around Tokyo took shelter in temporary evacuation facilities early, before the worst of the storm arrived.

Yuka Ikemura, a 24-year-old nursery school teacher, was in one such facility at a community centre in eastern Tokyo with her 3-year-old son, 8-month-old daughter and their pet rabbit.

She said she decided to move before it was too late.

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"I've got small children to take care of and we live on the first floor of an old apartment," Ikemura told Reuters.

"We brought with us the bare necessities. I'm scared to think about when we will have run out diapers and milk."

Japanese Formula One Grand Prix organisers cancelled all practice and qualifying sessions scheduled for Saturday.

Two matches of the Rugby World Cup due to be played on Saturday were also cancelled.