Powerful Typhoon Hits Southern Japan

(AP)  A powerful typhoon pounded Japan's southern Okinawa island chain Friday, injuring dozens of people, cutting power to tens of thousands of households and grounding hundreds of flights, officials said.

Typhoon Man-Yi injured 27 people by late Friday, many of them knocked down to the ground by the wind, Okinawa prefecture (state) government said in a statement.

In Okinawa City, a gust of wind knocked one man in his 70s to the ground, seriously injuring his head, the prefecture said. In Ginowan, another man, also in his 70s, suffered arm and leg injuries as he fell from a roof while fixing tiles in the blowing wind.

Man-Yi clocked sustained wind speeds of up to 100 miles per hour as it stormed past Naha, the prefectural capital of Okinawa, and headed toward the southern main island of Kyushu, the Meteorological Agency said.

Public broadcaster NHK showed footage of a steel structure at a golf driving range in central Okinawa knocked to the ground and a parked delivery truck turned on its side.

The typhoon was moving north at 12.4 miles per hour late Friday and is forecast to hit Kyushu on Saturday, the agency said, predicting up to 32 inches of rain in parts of the region in the next 24 hours.

Southern Kyushu was already inundated Friday morning, and the agency warned of heavy rains, high waves and strong winds moving up with the typhoon.

It is expected to then rake Japan's Pacific coast toward Tokyo, but the agency did not say if or when the typhoon would hit the capital.

At least 100 people were evacuated from flooded areas across Okinawa, the prefecture's government said.

Nearly 100,000 of Okinawa's households, about one-sixth of its total, were without power at one point, though the electricity later returned to about 30,000 of them, it said.

Tomoko Sunagawa, an official of Okinawa Electric Power Co. said it was not immediately clear when power would be restored.

"It is raining hard and the wind is very strong. It looks all white outside," Sunagawa said by phone from Naha.