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TOKYO: Japan’s coast guard halted a search for missing crew members from a cattle boat that capsized in the East China Sea earlier this week due to bad weather from a typhoon, a coast guard official said on Saturday (September 5).
A third crew member of the ship that sank in the storm off Japan with more than 40 crew members and a cargo of cattle was found alive on Friday.
The search continued until noon Japan time (0300 GMT), with no more crew found, but the boats, planes and divers were removed due to bad weather, the official told Reuters by phone.
The coast guard will resume the search when sea and weather conditions improve, the official said.
Gulf Livestock 1, which was carrying 6,000 cows and had 43 crew members on board, issued a distress call Wednesday near Amami Oshima Island as Typhoon Maysak passed through the area.
Typhoon Haishen, a much stronger storm, is expected to hit Japan from Saturday night, with winds of up to 290 kilometers per hour, making it a “violent” storm, the highest level on the scale of country classification.
“We resumed our search operation this morning sending a plane, but it came back without leads,” said a local coast guard official.
“Now we plan to suspend our entire operation” until Haishen passes over the country, the official told AFP. The storm is scheduled to pass through the country on Monday.
Graph showing the forecast trajectory of Typhoon Haishen. (Image: AFP / John SAEKI)
A first survivor was found Wednesday night, with the body of a second crew member recovered at sea on Friday.
The Philippine Foreign Ministry said the two survivors, both Filipinos, had been in contact with their respective families.
The crew consisted of 39 Filipinos, two New Zealanders and two Australians.
The ship, which had experienced engine problems before, was traveling from Napier in New Zealand to the Chinese port of Tangshan.
Haishen was rapidly heading towards Okinawa in southern Japan on Saturday morning and was expected to change course slightly north towards western Kyushu, prompting the government to warn residents to prepare.
Satoshi Sugimoto, an official with the weather agency, said the latest typhoon could generate high waves as powerful as a tsunami.
“It will be the last chance to flee” when the agency formally issues a storm warning, Sugimoto told reporters.
Authorities on the island of Minamidaitojima ordered some 1,300 residents to evacuate as the storm was expected to hit the remote island, east of Okinawa.
“We urge all our islanders to be on high alert as the winds are getting stronger and are expected to be violent,” said Hidehito Iha, a local government official.
The footage showed troops escorting dozens of people to a helipad in Kagoshima, southern Kyushu, after they were evacuated from another remote island in a military helicopter.
Toyota said it would suspend operations at three plants in Kyushu until Monday night, while other companies, including Canon and Mitsubishi Electric, reportedly planned to take similar steps.
The storm grounded nearly 100 flights, public broadcaster NHK said, while some Shinkansen bullet train services were scheduled to be suspended in western Japan on Monday.
