Japan Typhoon: 6 Killed as Winds Hit 100 MPH

Typhoon Roke hit central Japan on Wednesday. The storm made landfall near the city of Hamamatsu, about 125 miles west of Tokyo, and it's expected to move toward the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, which was the site of a nuclear disaster after an earthquake and tsunami caused a reactor meltdown earlier this year.

Six people were reported dead after they were caught in a river overflowing with water due to rain. In the Gifu prefecture, a nine-year-old boy and an 84-year-old man have been reported missing.

About 250,000 households in central Japan are without power, and the government is trying to evacuate a million people from the Aichi and Gifu prefectures, which are in the storm's path. The city of Nagoya, in Aichi, has experienced severe flooding and many roads have been damaged. The city called for an evacuation of 800,000 people earlier, but the warning has been momentarily called off.

Hundreds of flights have been canceled and bullet train lines between Tokyo, Osaka and Honshu have been suspended. The Toyota Motor Corp., headquartered in Aichi, temporarily closed it plants.

With winds reaching upwards of 100 miles per hour, the storm is in Category 2 status.

Japan still has the March 11 earthquake, which resulted in more than 20,000 deaths, fresh in its memory. The 9.0 magnitude quake also caused the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, and there's still radiation in the area around the Fukushima plant. Workers are putting covers over the plant's destroyed reactors to keep out rain water.

Water running through reactor basements has contaminated 102 million liters of water as of Sept. 13, according to the San Fransisco Chronicle, and leakage from the storm could drastically set back clean up efforts.

Western Japan was also hit by Typhoon Talas earlier this month. Around 80 people were killed and ruined roads isolated about 4,000 people. Typhoon Roke is the fifteenth named storm of the Pacific typhoon season.