TOKYO, October 1 (Itar-Tass) —— The typhoon Jelawat, which is raging off the Japanese island Hokkaido, heads to the Kurile Islands. The typhoon killed two people in the prefectures Okinawa and Mie, the law enforcement agencies reported. The number of injured people exceeded 160.
Now the typhoon is 120 kilometres away from Kushiro on the southern coast of Hokkaido. The maximum wind speed reaches 35 meters per second, the level of hourly precipitation may exceed 80 millimetres. Jelawat is moving north-eastwards with the wind speed of 75 meters per hour and heads to the Kurile Islands. The typhoon may pass to the non-tropical zone already on Monday.
On Sunday, Jelawat passed along the coast of the central island Honshu and affected the Japanese capital. Since the typhoon was moving along the coastal line, the Japanese national meteorological department reported about the waves higher than five meters, and the local authorities recommend strongly the residents to keep from the sea as far as possible. Over 140,000 people received the recommendations for evacuation. The wind was breaking down the branches of the trees, made the parked bikes falling down and was tearing the billboards off.
Over 500 flights were cancelled and the railway traffic was disrupted in southern Japan over the typhoon. About 180,000 houses were left without power supplies on the southern Japanese island Okinawa over the typhoon.
Jelawat became already the third strong typhoon, which had hit Japan for the past month. Two previous typhoons Bolavan and Sanba triggered major floods in the southern region of the country and left thousands of residential houses without electric power supplies. Jelawat is the name of a species of fresh-water fish populated in Malaysia.