Japan began on Wednesday to clean up after a powerful typhoon killed 11 people, injured hundreds and stranded thousands at a flooded airport, though when the airport in an industrial and tourist hub might reopen was not clear.
Jebi, or "swallow" in Korean, was briefly a super typhoon and is the most powerful storm to hit Japan in 25 years. It follows heavy rains, landslides, floods and record-breaking heat that killed hundreds of people this summer.
About 3,000 tourists were stuck overnight at Kansai Airport in western Japan, an important hub for companies exporting semiconductors built on reclaimed land on a bay near Osaka and connected to the mainland by a bridge that was damaged when a tanker slammed into it during the storm.
A truck is blown over on a flooded road in Osaka, September 4, 2018. /VCG Photo
But by afternoon many people had been rescued by bus or ferried by ship from the airport, where puddles still stood on the main runway after it was inundated on Tuesday.
"More than anything else, I really want to take a bath," one woman told NHK public television.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Wednesday afternoon about 470 people were injured. It was uncertain when the airport would reopen and some roads and train lines in the affected areas were still closed, he said.
But the number of households without power had been roughly halved to 530,000.
"The government will continue to do everything possible to tackle these issues with utmost urgency," Suga told a news conference earlier.
An aerial view shows damage to a container yard caused by strong winds from typhoon Jebi in Osaka, September 5, 2018. /VCG Photo
Japan's JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy Corp. shut at least one of its refining units at its 135,000 barrels-per-day Sakai refinery in Osaka in western Japan due to typhoon damage to part of the cooling tower, the trade ministry said.
Many chip plants operate in the Kansai region. Toshiba Memory, the world's second-largest maker of flash memory chips, is monitoring developments closely and may need to ship products from other airports if Kansai remains closed, a spokeswoman said.
It could take several days to reopen Kansai airport depending on the damage, the Yomiuri newspaper reported from an unidentified person in the airline industry.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was criticized for an initially slow response to the devastating floods in July but has posted repeated updates on the recent rescue efforts at Kansai.
Jebi's course brought it close to parts of western Japan. Those areas have been hit by heavy rain and floods and killed more than 200 people in July but most of the damage this time appeared to be from the wind.