A powerful typhoon smashed into Japan on Wednesday and headed for the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, where workers raced to protect buildings and reactors that are leaking radiation. The storm, which was packing winds of up to 198 kilometres (123 miles) per hour, has killed at least five people and a million were initially warned to leave their homes over fears torrential rains could cause widespread flooding. At around 7:00pm (1000 GMT) Typhoon Roke was centred 63 kilometres northwest of Tokyo, heading northeast — towards the area that was devastated by a record earthquake and tsunami on March 11 that sparked nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima.
Hundreds of flights were cancelled, ferry and rail services were suspended and roads closed as the country prepared for the full impact of the storm. Roke comes less than a month after another vicious typhoon barrelled through Japan, killing around 100 people in one of the deadliest storms the country has seen in decades and heaping more misery on the disaster-weary nation.
“We have taken every possible measure against the typhoon,” said Naoki Tsunoda, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co, the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on the northeast coast. “We have tied down cables and hoses while fixing equipment so that radioactive materials will not spread (in violent winds),” he said, adding operations on the ground and at sea had been suspended. Five people have so far been found dead in central and western Japan in the latest calamity, NHK reported, while four people are missing including a boy who disappeared on his way home from primary school.
