TOKYO: Japan’s weather agency issued its highest alert as super typhoon Neoguri barreled towards the southern Okinawa island chain on Monday, with 55,000 people urged to evacuate as officials warned of one of the worst storms in decades.

The top-level warning means a threat to life, as well as the risk of massive damage from torrential rains and gusts of up to 270 kilometres per hour.

The Japan Meteorological Agency issued the alert for Okinawa’s main island, home to around 1.2 million people, as well as the outlying Miyako islands, where all 55,000 residents were ordered to evacuate.

“We advised all 55,000 people in Miyako at 10:00 pm (1300 GMT) to evacuate to facilities such as community centres and municipal buildings,” Miyako disaster official Katsuhiro Koja said.

The biggest US Air Force base in the Pacific, located on Okinawa’s main island, evacuated some of its aircraft as officers stressed that Neoguri may be deadly.

Waves could reach as high as 14 metres, a weather agency official said in a warning that was likely to revive memories of Japan’s quake-tsunami disaster in 2011.

The typhoon was some 500 kilometres south of the main Okinawan island at 1200 GMT and was moving north northwest at 25kms per hour.

Miyako, in the centre of the archipelago, was in the expected path of the massive storm.

“Record-level violent winds and high waves are posing a serious danger to the Miyako island region,” Satoshi Ebihara, the weather agency’s chief forecaster, told an evening news conference.—AFP

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2014