Shocking photos show scale of devastation left by deadly Typhoon Lan in Japan

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Sebastian Mann23 October 2017

Four people have died and tens of thousands were ordered to flee their homes as Typhoon Lan ploughed into Japan.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled and trains were also disrupted as the tropical cyclone hit the country and caused landslides.

Among the dead was a man killed after being hit by falling scaffolding amid high winds. A fisherman tending to his boat also died and a woman was killed when her car was washed away by floodwaters.

Rivers burst their banks in several parts of Japan and fishing boats were tossed up on land. A container ship was stranded after being swept onto a harbour wall. All 19 crew members escaped injury.

One woman was killed when her car was washed away in floodwaters
Reuters

Some 80,000 people in Koriyama, a city 124 miles north of Tokyo, were subject to evacuation orders as a river neared the top of its banks, NHK public television said.

But by Monday afternoon water levels were starting to fall after the typhoon changed course and headed out to sea and largely spared Tokyo.

Lan had weakened to a category two storm when it made landfall early on Monday, glancing Tokyo after powering north for days as an intense category four storm, according to the Tropical Storm Risk monitoring site.

By Monday afternoon the storm had been downgraded to a tropical depression and it was in the Pacific, east of the northernmost main island of Hokkaido, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Around 350 flights were cancelled and train services disrupted over a wide area of Japan, although most commuter trains ran smoothly in Tokyo.

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