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Towns vanish, thousands die – but a nation begins its fightback
The cataclysm was so powerful it shifted the Earth off its axis. Then the waters hit. David Randall reports on a land in crisis
Sunday, 13 March 2011
After a cataclysm so powerful it moved the Earth 10 inches off its axis, Japan woke yesterday to find itself a country that had, literally, been knocked sideways.
With the north-east coast now shunted two metres from where it was on Friday morning, neighbourhood after neighbourhood is submerged under a grotesque soup of water and debris. Homes have been flattened as if by the swiping forearm of an angry giant. Tens of thousands of once orderly acres look like the world's ugliest landfill – a jumble of broken homes, cars, boats, and concrete, with shipping containers cluttering the landscape like Lego on an unkempt nursery floor.
And somewhere, under all this vast mess, are four entire trains, small towns, villages, and a fearful number of bodies. It could be 2,000, 10,000, or many times that number. In one town alone, 9,500 people are unaccounted for.
And, as if that were not enough, only 150 miles from Tokyo, radiation leaked from a nuclear plant crippled by an explosion. Officials were swift to assert that any meltdown, if it came, would not be on anything like the scale or severity of Chernobyl, but 170,000 were evacuated, and iodine distributed to some. It would not be the first nuclear incident where initial assurances proved optimistic.
The authorities at first said that an evacuation radius of six miles from the stricken 40-year-old Daiichi 1 reactor plant in Fukushima prefecture was adequate, but, an hour later, the boundary was extended to 13 miles. Vapour, said to consist of minimally radioactive steam, could be seen rising from the plant. And then, in the early hours this morning, there came a 6.4 Richter scale aftershock. More may come.
The explosion came as the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, (Tepco) was working desperately to reduce pressure in the core of the reactor. Lest anyone think that, in this land of commercial efficiency, the assurances of little risk can be trusted implicitly, they should remember that this is the nuclear industry they are dealing with. In 2002, the president of the country's largest power utility was forced to resign, along with four other senior executives, taking responsibility for suspected falsification of nuclear-plant safety records.
But despite everything, Japan's spirit remains intact. As one blogger wrote yesterday: "Our grandparents rebuilt Japan after the war and the growth was considered a miracle around the world. We will work to rebuild Japan in the same way again. Don't give up Japan! Don't give up Tohoku [the north-east region]!"
A stupendously large task, however, faces it. Friday's quake was the most monstrous even this, the world's most tremor-prone country, has ever recorded. This was strong enough to leave a 186-mile rupture on the ocean floor, but it was the subsequent tsunami – sending 30ft-high waves barrelling into Japan's north-east coast – which has turned a disaster into a cataclysm. The wall of water, moving at an estimated 25 mph, swallowed boats, homes, cars, trees and even small planes, and used these as battering rams as it charged up to six miles inland, demolishing all that stood in its way.
The town of Rikuzentakata, population 24,700, in northern Iwate prefecture, looked largely submerged in muddy water, with hardly a trace of houses or buildings of any kind. And in Kesennuma, where 74,000 lived, widespread fires somehow burned, despite a third of the city being submerged. And then there is – or, to be more accurate, was – the port of Sendai, which had the misfortune to be only 80 miles from the epicentre of the 8.9 quake.
Here, until Friday early afternoon, was the city of a million people. Now, at least a third of it lies beneath the filthy waters and mud, and what isn't drowned is largely destroyed. The city's Wakabayashi district, which runs directly up to the sea, remained a swampy wasteland, with murky, waist-high water. Most houses were completely flattened, as if a giant bulldozer had swept through.
Police said they found 200 to 300 bodies washed up on nearby beaches, and grief-stricken residents searched for their former homes, but, faced with dark waters where streets had been, many couldn't even tell where their houses once stood. Occasionally, there was something recognisable – a chair, a tyre, a beer-cooler. In the city's dock area, cars swept away by the waves sat on top of buildings, on the top of other cars, or jammed into staircases.
Many Sendai residents spent the night outdoors, or wandering debris-strewn streets, unable to return to homes damaged or destroyed by the quake or tsunami. Those who did find a place to rest for the night awoke to utter despair. Miles from the ocean's edge, weary, mud-spattered survivors wandered streets strewn with fallen trees, crumpled cars, and light aircraft. Relics of lives now destroyed were everywhere – half a piano, a textbook, a red sleeping bag.
etc...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 40508.html
The cataclysm was so powerful it shifted the Earth off its axis. Then the waters hit. David Randall reports on a land in crisis
Sunday, 13 March 2011
After a cataclysm so powerful it moved the Earth 10 inches off its axis, Japan woke yesterday to find itself a country that had, literally, been knocked sideways.
With the north-east coast now shunted two metres from where it was on Friday morning, neighbourhood after neighbourhood is submerged under a grotesque soup of water and debris. Homes have been flattened as if by the swiping forearm of an angry giant. Tens of thousands of once orderly acres look like the world's ugliest landfill – a jumble of broken homes, cars, boats, and concrete, with shipping containers cluttering the landscape like Lego on an unkempt nursery floor.
And somewhere, under all this vast mess, are four entire trains, small towns, villages, and a fearful number of bodies. It could be 2,000, 10,000, or many times that number. In one town alone, 9,500 people are unaccounted for.
And, as if that were not enough, only 150 miles from Tokyo, radiation leaked from a nuclear plant crippled by an explosion. Officials were swift to assert that any meltdown, if it came, would not be on anything like the scale or severity of Chernobyl, but 170,000 were evacuated, and iodine distributed to some. It would not be the first nuclear incident where initial assurances proved optimistic.
The authorities at first said that an evacuation radius of six miles from the stricken 40-year-old Daiichi 1 reactor plant in Fukushima prefecture was adequate, but, an hour later, the boundary was extended to 13 miles. Vapour, said to consist of minimally radioactive steam, could be seen rising from the plant. And then, in the early hours this morning, there came a 6.4 Richter scale aftershock. More may come.
The explosion came as the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, (Tepco) was working desperately to reduce pressure in the core of the reactor. Lest anyone think that, in this land of commercial efficiency, the assurances of little risk can be trusted implicitly, they should remember that this is the nuclear industry they are dealing with. In 2002, the president of the country's largest power utility was forced to resign, along with four other senior executives, taking responsibility for suspected falsification of nuclear-plant safety records.
But despite everything, Japan's spirit remains intact. As one blogger wrote yesterday: "Our grandparents rebuilt Japan after the war and the growth was considered a miracle around the world. We will work to rebuild Japan in the same way again. Don't give up Japan! Don't give up Tohoku [the north-east region]!"
A stupendously large task, however, faces it. Friday's quake was the most monstrous even this, the world's most tremor-prone country, has ever recorded. This was strong enough to leave a 186-mile rupture on the ocean floor, but it was the subsequent tsunami – sending 30ft-high waves barrelling into Japan's north-east coast – which has turned a disaster into a cataclysm. The wall of water, moving at an estimated 25 mph, swallowed boats, homes, cars, trees and even small planes, and used these as battering rams as it charged up to six miles inland, demolishing all that stood in its way.
The town of Rikuzentakata, population 24,700, in northern Iwate prefecture, looked largely submerged in muddy water, with hardly a trace of houses or buildings of any kind. And in Kesennuma, where 74,000 lived, widespread fires somehow burned, despite a third of the city being submerged. And then there is – or, to be more accurate, was – the port of Sendai, which had the misfortune to be only 80 miles from the epicentre of the 8.9 quake.
Here, until Friday early afternoon, was the city of a million people. Now, at least a third of it lies beneath the filthy waters and mud, and what isn't drowned is largely destroyed. The city's Wakabayashi district, which runs directly up to the sea, remained a swampy wasteland, with murky, waist-high water. Most houses were completely flattened, as if a giant bulldozer had swept through.
Police said they found 200 to 300 bodies washed up on nearby beaches, and grief-stricken residents searched for their former homes, but, faced with dark waters where streets had been, many couldn't even tell where their houses once stood. Occasionally, there was something recognisable – a chair, a tyre, a beer-cooler. In the city's dock area, cars swept away by the waves sat on top of buildings, on the top of other cars, or jammed into staircases.
Many Sendai residents spent the night outdoors, or wandering debris-strewn streets, unable to return to homes damaged or destroyed by the quake or tsunami. Those who did find a place to rest for the night awoke to utter despair. Miles from the ocean's edge, weary, mud-spattered survivors wandered streets strewn with fallen trees, crumpled cars, and light aircraft. Relics of lives now destroyed were everywhere – half a piano, a textbook, a red sleeping bag.
etc...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 40508.html
