Typhoon Storm in Japan: A giant 3,000-year-old pine tree located on Yakushima Island in Kagoshima Prefecture in southwestern Japan has collapsed. According to local media, the accident was caused by strong winds caused by Typhoon Shanshan. The pine was about 26 meters high and its trunk had a circumference of 8 meters, Xinhua news agency reported, citing Kyodo News. Local tour guides found it broken near its base on Saturday.
Pine tree hit by storm
Yakushima Island, famous for its more than a thousand-year-old Yakusugi pines, was designated a World Natural Heritage Site in 1993. According to the local weather observatory, Typhoon Shanshan, also known as Typhoon No. 10, hit the island between August 27 and 29 with wind speeds of 168.48 kilometres per hour.
More than a thousand houses were damaged.
According to local media, the powerful storm killed 7 people and injured more than 120. More than 1,000 houses were damaged due to strong winds and floods. The storm hit the Pacific coast of central Japan. On Saturday, Shanshan caused prolonged rainfall in Atami city in the Shizuoka province of central Japan, where a record 654 mm of rain fell in 72 hours, three times more than the average rainfall in the region for the whole of August.
Ebina city in Kanagawa Prefecture also received 439 mm of rain, 2.7 times the normal August rainfall. Both Atami and Ebina recorded the highest rainfall since 1976. NHK footage showed that the rain caused a section of the hill behind a temple in Shizuoka city to collapse, damaging a cemetery and about 50 graves in it.
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