Powerful Typhoon Chaba tore across southwestern Japan yesterday, killing four people and knocking out electricty for thousands as it made its way across the island of Kyushu, home to about a tenth of Japan’s population.

The typhoon, one of the strongest to hit Japan this year, generated winds of up to 210 km (130 miles) per hour, near the highest on record for the area, public broadcaster NHK said.

More than 350 000 households in Kyushu, one of Japan’s four main islands, were without power, Kyushu Electric Power Co. said.

About 6 000 people had left their homes to wait out the storm in shelters as authorities warned of flooding and landslides.

Television pictures showed people wading through knee-deep water in the streets of the city of Kagoshima, on the southern tip of Kyushu, while huge waves battered seaside buildings. One elderly man was shown in his flooded house after the roof had been ripped off.

“Nothing like this has ever happened before,” he told NHK.

Transport was severely disrupted, with hundreds of flights cancelled in and out of southern Japan.

Many train and ferry services were cancelled and sections of motorways were closed due to the high winds.

An empty Vietnamese-flagged cargo ship ran aground near the neighbouring island of Shikoku but there were no reports of deaths or injuries among the 20 crew, the Japan Coast Guard said.

A 71-year-old man was killed when he fell from the roof of a storehouse on Kyushu and an 82-year-old man died after falling from a ladder, local authorities said. One man was dead and another missing after a truck was washed away in a swollen river, Kyodo news agency said.

A 51-year-old woman was killed when she fell from a roof on Shikoku. About 35 people had been injured, NHK said. Two others were killed by high waves as the storm approached last week.

Some areas of Kyushu, a mixed industrial-farming region, were hit with more than 100 millimetres (4 inches) of rain in an hour.

The north-west Pacific is regularly hit by typhoons in the summer and autumn, and Chaba which means “hibiscus” in Thai is the 16th to affect the region this year.

The arrival of the storm coincides with the highest tides of the year, increasing concerns about flood damage.