Deadly Typhoon Pummels Japan

Japan's deadliest storm in more than a decade unleashed flash floods that washed away entire hillsides, killing up to 55 people before it veered east into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday. At least 29 people were still missing.

Rescue workers and Japanese troops dug through mud and debris and combing flooded rivers and coastal waters to search for the missing, Japanese media reported. Authorities said the storm's death toll was the highest since 1988.

"The death toll is likely to keep rising, as we take stock of the damage," National Police Agency spokesman Kojun Chibana said.

Typhoon Tokage blasted across Japan on Wednesday before being downgraded to a tropical storm. Early Thursday, the storm headed east to open seas, its fury spent.

Television footage showed powerful gusts uprooting huge trees, flash floods submerging cars to their windows and entire hillsides crumbling away in landslides across southern and central Japan. Delivery trucks, tipped over by winds, lay on their sides.

On Thursday, concrete frames, wood splinters and electrical appliances were all that was left of homes in Muroto in southwestern Kochi prefecture, where massive waves smashed through concrete tidebreaks and into beachside properties. In large areas of western and southern Japan, neighborhoods and farmlands were still under water, many public schools remained closed and local train and air transport were disrupted.

Nationwide, more than 15,700 homes were flooded and hundreds of others ripped apart or buried, Fire and Disaster Management Agency spokesman Akihiko Oda said. More than 13,000 people across the country were staying at temporary shelters, officials said.

Tokage, the Japanese word for lizard, was the record eighth typhoon to hit Japan this year.

By Thursday afternoon, 54 were dead and 29 others still unaccounted for, NHK said.

Oda said there were 48 fatalities, 30 others missing and 301 hurt, 58 of them seriously.

The reason for the difference in death tolls wasn't clear.

Workers in southwestern Okayama prefecture found the bodies of elderly people — a couple in their 80s, and two others, aged 76 and 83 — who had been among the missing after a mudslide buried homes, prefectural government spokesman Tatsuya Sugita said.

A landslide in western Kyoto prefecture also left two elderly women — aged 72 and 79 — dead in their homes, police spokesman Chibana said. A 70-year-old man living in the same village had drowned, he said.

On the southern main island of Shikoku, in Kochi prefecture, waves hit a coastal home, killing a family of three, while a 68-year-old fisherman was swept away and drowned after trying to dock his boat, said prefectural spokesman Masatoshi Iwamoto.

The last time storms killed more people was in September 1988, when 84 died in a nearly continuous two-week spell of typhoons, Fire and Disaster Management Agency spokesman Yoshikazu Nishiwaki said.

The storm forced the cancellation of more than 1,000 flights through Thursday morning, stranding tens of thousands of travelers, media reported.

Several Japanese oil refiners were forced to halt sea deliveries from their refineries in western Japan due to heavy rain and strong winds, but refiners had sufficient stocks to cover emergencies such as typhoons and earthquakes.

Earlier this month, Typhoon Ma-on killed six people in Japan after swiping the country's Pacific coast. A week before that, Typhoon Meari killed 22.

This year's typhoons have far outstripped the previous post-World War II record of six, set in 1990. The storms have left nearly 220 people dead or missing, the largest casualty tally since 1983.

Damages caused by storms and other natural disasters this year through mid-October were estimated at $6.72 billion, Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki told a parliamentary committee Thursday.