TOKYO (AFP) — A strong typhoon lashed the Tokyo region Friday, bringing torrential downpours and violent winds that killed at least two, injured dozens more and stranded homeless people on a swollen river.
Typhoon Fitow -- named after a flower found in Micronesia -- slammed into Japan before sunrise, felling trees, smashing windows and causing one bridge to snap in two.
A 76-year-old man was killed in Karuizawa, a resort town north of Tokyo, an official said.
"The man was clearing off fallen trees at an acquaintance's house when another tree was felled and hit him hard on the head," said municipal crisis-management official Nobuhiko Kobayashi.
A 50-year-old worker also died after being buried alive when a landslide hit his dam construction site in the southwestern prefecture of Fukui, a local official said.
Rescue workers in helicopters and boats scoured the Tamagawa river in Tokyo to pluck more than 30 people -- mostly believed to be homeless -- who were stuck along the river or on midstream sandbanks.
Television footage showed several people barely hanging on to wrecked remains of steel fences as rising water gushed under their feet.
One man was spotted floating with only his head sticking out of the water, as he held on to plastic sheets he had turned into a makeshift raft for him and his several cats. Both the man and the cats were later rescued.
But at least two people remained missing along the Tamagawa river, which runs from the west of the capital into Tokyo Bay, officials said.
Fitow's intensity was just a notch below that of Typhoon Tokage, Japan's deadliest storm in a quarter century, which killed dozens in October 2004.
"I didn't go out and was sure to bring inside everything that was out of the house," said construction worker Yasushi Mikawa, 54. "But Japanese people are used to these things."
Misuzu Toguchi, a company employee who commutes into Tokyo from the suburbs, said her boss let her go home early Thursday to brace for the typhoon.
"I got home at around five and holed up inside. I'm relieved it's over now," she said.
The storm weakened considerably and was moving slowly north with winds up to 42.6 kilometres (57 miles) an hour near its centre, the meteorological agency said.
By late afternoon the typhoon was some 530 kilometres (330 miles) north of Tokyo, where sunshine returned to show broken umbrellas and tree branches littering the streets.
The storm cut power to nearly 80,000 households in 12 prefectures and disrupted cable lines.
The water level was falling back Friday on the Tamagawa, one of the main hubs for the makeshift shacks of Tokyo's homeless.
The Tokyo Fire Department said it had rescued 35 stranded people by the river, but one of the men fell back into the water as rescuers tried to reach him.
Official figures showed the typhoon injured 57 people and flooded more than 300 houses in several prefectures.
Several passengers were injured by shattered glass as violent gusts broke a train window in Chiba prefecture, east of Tokyo, on Thursday.
Six children were also slightly injured when nine windows smashed at a hotel in Nikko, a spa resort north of Tokyo.
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