The quake, tsunami-torn country scrambles to avert nuclear meltdown; millions without power and drinking water
The death toll in Japan’s earthquake and tsunami will likely exceed 10,000 in one state alone, an official said yesterday, as millions of survivors were left without drinking water, electricity and proper food along the pulverized northeastern coast.
“This is Japan’s most severe crisis since the war ended 65 years ago,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan told reporters, adding that Japan’s future would be decided by the response to this crisis.
AFP reports the death toll from earthquake and tsunami is certain to exceed 10,000 in Miyagi prefecture alone, its police chief told reporters yesterday.
“There is no doubt that the number will reach the 10,000-level,” said Naoto Takeuchi, quoted by state broadcaster NHK.
Miyagi has a population of 2.3 million and is one of the three prefectures hardest hit in the disaster. Only 379 people have officially been confirmed dead in the prefecture.
According to officials, more than 1,400 people were killed — including 200 people whose bodies were found yesterday along the coast — and more than 1,000 were missing in the disasters. Another 1,700 were injured.
The US Geological Survey calculated the initial quake to have a magnitude of 8.9, while Japanese officials raised their estimate yesterday to 9.0. Either way it was the strongest quake ever recorded in Japan. It has been followed by more than 150 powerful aftershocks.
Teams searched for the missing along hundreds of miles of Japanese coastline, and hundreds of thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centres that were cut off from rescuers and aid. At least 1.4 million households had gone without water since the quake struck and some 2.5 million households were without electricity.
Trade Minister Banri Kaeda said the region was likely to face further blackouts and that power would be rationed to ensure supplies go to essential needs.
Large areas of the countryside remained surrounded by water and unreachable. Fuel stations were closed and people were running out of gasoline for their vehicles.
The government said 2,75,000 people have been evacuated to emergency shelters, many of them without power.
In Iwaki town, residents were leaving due to concerns over dwindling food and fuel supplies. The town had no electricity and all stores were closed. Local police took in about 90 people and gave them blankets and rice balls but there was no sign of government or military aid trucks.
At a large refinery on the outskirts of the hard-hit port city of Sendai, 100-foot-high bright orange flames rose in the air, spitting out dark plumes of smoke. The facility has been burning since Friday. A reporter who approached the area could hear the roaring fire from afar, and after a few minutes the gaseous stench began burning the eyes and throat.
In the small town of Tagajo, near Sendai, dazed residents roamed streets cluttered with smashed cars, broken homes and twisted metal.
Residents said the water surged in and quickly rose higher than the first floor of buildings. At Sengen General Hospital the staff worked feverishly to haul bedridden patients up the stairs one at a time. With the halls now dark, those that can leave have gone to the local community centre.
“There is still no water or power, and we’ve got some very sick people in here,” said hospital official Ikuro Matsumoto.
One older neighbourhood sits on low ground near a canal. The tsunami came in from the canal side and blasted through the frail wooden houses, coating the interiors with a thick layer of mud and spilling their contents out into the street on the other side.
“It’s been two days, and all I’ve been given so far is a piece of bread and a rice ball,” said Masashi Imai, 56.
Police cars drove slowly through the town and warned residents through loudspeakers to seek higher ground, but most simply stood by and watched them pass.
Dozens of countries have offered assistance. Two U.S. aircraft carrier groups were off Japan’s coast and ready to provide assistance. Helicopters were flying from one of the carriers, the USS Ronald Reagan, delivering food and water in Miyagi.
Two other US rescue teams of 72 personnel each and rescue dogs were scheduled to arrive later yesterday, as was a five-dog team from Singapore and a 102-member South Korean team.
In Fukushima prefecture, people said the city of Soma was hardest hit. Rubble was all that remained of one coastal housing district where some 2,000 people lived. Their houses were simply washed away.
No signs of life remained yesterday night, except for the occasional dog searching for its owner. The only lights in town came from the fire engines patrolling the area.
MELTDOWN FEAR
Japan fought yesterday to avert a disastrous meltdown at two earthquake-crippled nuclear reactors.
Officials worked desperately to stop fuel rods in the damaged reactors from overheating after some controlled radiation leaks into the air to relieve pressure.
The government said a building housing a second reactor was at risk of exploding after a blast blew the roof off the first the day before at the complex, 240 km of Tokyo, reports Reuters.
The fear is that if the fuel rods do not cool, they could melt the container that houses the core, or even explode, releasing radioactive material into the wind.
Authorities have set up a 20-km exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant and a 10 km zone around another nuclear facility close by. Around 1,40,000 people have been moved from the area, while authorities prepared to distribute iodine to protect people from radioactive exposure.
The nuclear accident, the worst since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, sparked stinging criticism that authorities were ill-prepared for such a massive quake and the threat that could pose to the country’s nuclear power industry.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said there might have been a partial meltdown of the fuel rods at the No 1 reactor at Fukushima. Engineers were pumping in seawater, trying to prevent the same happening at the No 3 reactor, he said in apparent acknowledgement they had moved too slowly on Saturday.
“Unlike the No 1 reactor, we ventilated and injected water at an early stage,” Edano told a news briefing.
The No 3 reactor uses a mixed-oxide fuel which contains plutonium, but plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said it did not present unusual problems.
Asked if fuel rods were partially melting in the No. 1 reactor, Edano said: “There is that possibility. We cannot confirm this because it is in the reactor. But we are dealing with it under that assumption.”
He said fuel rods may have partially deformed at the No. 3 reactor but a meltdown was unlikely to have occurred.
“The use of seawater means they have run out of options,” said David Lochbaum, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists Nuclear Safety Project.
TEPCO said radiation levels around the Fukushima Daiichi plant had risen above the safety limit but that it did not mean an “immediate threat” to human health.
Edano said there was a risk of an explosion at the building housing the No. 3 reactor, but that it was unlikely to affect the reactor core container.
The wind over the plant would continue blowing from the south, which could affect residents north of the facility, an official at Japan’s Meteorological Agency said.
The disaster prompted an angry response from an anti-nuclear energy NGO in Japan which said it should have been foreseen.
“A nuclear disaster which the promoters of nuclear power in Japan said wouldn’t happen is in progress,” the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre said. “It is occurring as a result of an earthquake that they said would not happen.”
Courtesy of The Daily Star
