Tokyo Braces Itself For Deadly Storm

A fierce storm that killed dozens of people in the Philippines and Micronesia crawled up Japan toward Tokyo late Wednesday, threatening to dump heavy rains over the capital after flooding rural towns and leaving a 13-year-old boy drowned.

Two other storms were churning through the region, triggering a rock slide that crushed a tour bus in Taiwan and lashing the tiny Pacific island of Guam and the nearby Marianas.

Chata'an had been downgraded from typhoon status by the time it hit southern Japan early Wednesday, but it still wreaked havoc. About 15,000 people in the central Japanese city of Ogaki were ordered to evacuate after a river flooded over its banks and a rock slide cut access to villages.

The storm was expected to reach Tokyo in the early hours of Thursday. National news broadcasts said many company employees left work early Wednesday to avoid torrential rains, powerful winds and interruptions to public transport.

In Oita, southern Japan, junior high school student Dai Shuto was found dead in a swollen river where he went missing after chasing a soccer ball while playing with his classmates at a riverbank playground, local police said.

Police said two men fishing near the swollen river in Ogaki were swept away. One remained missing hours later, but the other was rescued by helicopter.

Eleven people were reported to have suffered minor injuries in strong winds just north of Tokyo.

Transportation was disrupted nationwide. Several flights to the south and the super-express train service between Tokyo and Osaka were canceled. Some highways were also closed.

The storm, which was blamed for 49 deaths in Micronesia and contributed to more than two dozen in the Philippines, was expected to cross over the Tokyo area early Thursday.

Farther south, another storm, Nakri, hit Taiwan's western coast with downpours of rain that caused several mudslides. Named after a Cambodian flower, Nakri whirled into the island just north of the west-central city of Taichung.

Because of lax zoning laws and a scarcity of land, many Taiwanese have built houses on unstable hillsides. It is common for landslides to carry away or bury homes after heavy rains.

In the eastern coastal Hualien county, a large boulder slammed onto the top of a tour bus that was carrying school children to scenic Taroko Gorge. A six-year-old girl received minor injuries.

Officials closed Taichung's airport as the storm approached, packing surface winds of 39 mph. China Airlines canceled flights from the southern city of Kaohsiung to Manila, Philippines. The airport was also closed on the Penghu island chain, 36 miles off Taiwan's west-central coast.

By early evening Wednesday, the storm's center was 60 miles off Taiwan's northeastern coast, and land warnings could be lifted later in the night, the Central Weather Bureau said.

But with two other tropical storms raging in the Pacific far off Taiwan's eastern coast, there was a chance that Nakri could be nudged back to the island, forecasters said.

Halong, a third tropical storm, was gaining strength southeast of the Pacific island of Guam. It was expected to be upgraded to typhoon status and possibly hit the nearby Marianas islands later Wednesday.

Along with the damage it caused in Micronesia and the Philippines, where it killed 30 people and injured another 41, Chata'an, with 100 mph winds, left the island of Guam without electricity and little or no water pressure in some areas.