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Japan quake-tsunami death toll likely over 10,000
Death toll in Japan quake-tsunami likely to top 10,000; millions without
water, power
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Minamisanriku town is submerged after Friday's strong earthquake-triggered
tsunami in Miyagi prefecture, northern Japan, Saturday, March 12, 2011. (AP
Photo/Kyodo News) MANDATORY CREDIT, NO LICENSING ALLOWED IN CHINA, HONG KONG
, JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA AND FRANCE
Jay Alabaster, Associated Press, On Sunday March 13, 2011, 7:22 am
TAGAJO, Japan (AP) -- The death toll in Japan's earthquake and tsunami will
likely exceed 10,000 in one state alone, an official said Sunday, 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.
Although the government doubled the number of soldiers deployed in the aid
effort to 100,000, it seemed overwhelmed by what's turning out to be a
triple disaster: Friday's quake and tsunami damaged two nuclear reactors at
a power plant on the coast, and at least one of them appeared to be going
through a partial meltdown, raising fears of a radiation leak.
The police chief of Miyagi prefecture, or state, told a gathering of
disaster relief officials that his estimate for deaths was more than 10,000,
police spokesman Go Sugawara told The Associated Press. Miyagi has a
population of 2.3 million and is one of the three prefectures hardest hit in
Friday's disaster. Only 379 people have officially been confirmed dead in
Miyagi.
The nuclear crisis posed fresh concerns for those who survived the
earthquake and tsunami, which hit with breathtaking force and speed,
breaking or sweeping away everything in its path.
"First I was worried about the quake, now I'm worried about radiation. I
live near the plants, so I came here to find out if I'm OK. I tested
negative, but I don't know what to do next," Kenji Koshiba, a construction
worker, said at an emergency center in Koriyama town near the power plant in
Fukushima.
According to officials, more than 1,400 people were killed -- including 200
people whose bodies were found Sunday along the coast -- and more than 1,000
were missing in the disasters. Another 1,700 were injured.
In a rare piece of good news, the Defense Ministry said a military vessel on
Sunday rescued a 60-year-old man floating off the coast of Fukushima on the
roof of his house after being swept away in the tsunami. He was in good
condition.
The U.S. Geological Survey calculated the initial quake to have a magnitude
of 8.9, while Japanese officials raised their estimate on Sunday 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 (kilometers) of
Japanese coastline, and hundreds of thousands of hungry survivors huddled in
darkened emergency centers 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.
Temperatures were to dip near freezing overnight, but the prime minister
warned that electricity would not be restored for days.
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.
The government says it has sent 120,000 blankets, 120,000 bottles of water
and 110,000 liters of gasoline in addition to bread, rice balls, instant cup
noodles and diapers to the affected areas.
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 275,000 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 (30-meter) -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.
"My water is cut off," said Kenji Fukuda, who lives in the rural town of
Sukugawa. It "is a little bit rural and there is natural well water. We take
it and put it through the water purifier and warm it up and use it in
various ways," he said.
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 center.
"There is still no water or power, and we've got some very sick people in
here," said hospital official Ikuro Matsumoto.
One older neighborhood 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 U.S. rescue teams of 72 personnel each and rescue dogs were
scheduled to arrive later Sunday, 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 Sunday night, except for the occasional dog
searching for its owner. The only lights in town came from the fire engines
patrolling the area.
In Sendai, firefighters with wooden picks dug through a devastated
neighborhood. One of them yelled: "A corpse." Inside a house, he had found
the body of a gray-haired woman under a blanket.
A few minutes later, the firefighters spotted another -- that of a man in
black fleece jacket and pants, crumpled in a partial fetal position at the
bottom of a wooden stairwell. From outside, the house seemed almost
untouched, two cracks in the white walls the only signs of damage.
The man's neighbor, 24-year-old Ayumi Osuga, dug through the completely
destroyed remains of her own house, her white mittens covered by dark mud.
Osuga said she had been playing origami, the Japanese art of folding paper
into figures, with her three children when the quake stuck. She recalled her
husband's shouted warning from outside: "'GET OUT OF THERE NOW!'"
She gathered her children -- aged 2 to 6 -- and fled in her car to higher
ground with her husband. They spent the night huddled in a hilltop home
belonging to her husband's family about 12 miles (20 kilometers) away.
"My family, my children. We are lucky to be alive," she told The Associated
Press.
"I have come to realize what is important in life," Osuga said, nervously
flicking ashes from a cigarette onto the rubble at her feet as a giant
column of black smoke billowed in the distance.
Associated Press writers Eric Talmadge and Kelly Olsen in Koriyama, Todd
Pitman in Sendai, and Malcolm J. Foster, Mari Yamaguchi, Tomoko A. Hosaka
and Shino Yuasa in Tokyo contributed to this report. |
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