Millions need help
Millions of people in Japan have spent a fourth night without water, food or heating in near-freezing temperatures.
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HUMANITARIAN CRISIS DEEPENS IN QUAKE-HIT JAPAN
Yoko Kubota, Reuters
March 15, 2011, 4:12 am
Snapshot
- Japan battles twin disasters, trying to stop a radiation leak at a nuclear plant after an 9.0 quake triggers tsunami up to 10 meters (30 feet), with waves sweeping away homes, crops, vehicles and submerging farmland.
- More than 1300 confirmed killed in quake-tsunami, 10,000 people unaccounted for.
- Cooling system of a reactor at Fukushima No. 1 atomic plant fails on Saturday and a second reactor malfunctions on Sunday morning.
- Smoke billows after an explosion at the plant located about 250 kilometres (160 miles) northeast of Tokyo.
- Workers douse the stricken reactor with sea water to try to avert catastrophe.
- The number of people exposed to radiation was expected to climb to at least 90.
- 300,000 people evacuated from 20-km radius of the stricken plant.
- Number of dead or missing feared to exceed 10,000.
- Nuclear safety agency rates the accident at four on the international scale from 0 to 7.
- Dazed residents hoard water and huddle in makeshift shelters in near-freezing temperatures.
- 5.5 million people without power, while 3,400 buildings either destroyed or damaged.
- Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan says the chaos is an "unprecedented national disaster".
- Contact lost with four trains along the coast area of northeastern Japan, Kyodo news agency says.
- International search and rescue teams rush to Japan, one of Afghanistan's most violent provinces offers $50,000 in aid.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
*Donate to Save the Children's Japan Earthquake Appeal: Call 1800 76 00 11
*Online at www.savethechildren.org.au
*DFAT assistance helpline: +61 2 6261 3305
*DFAT hotline for Australians concerned about family and friends: 1300 555 135
*Online at http://www.dfat.gov.au/
MORE
PMwon't back nuclear power
Japan 'asked US for help'
Damage to cost insurers billions
[http://au.news.yahoo.com/japan-tsunami/a/-/article/9009892/japan-distributes-iodine-to-evacuation-centers-iaea/Iodine distributed to residents
RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan (Reuters) - Millions of people in Japan's devastated northeast were spending a fourth night without water, food or heating in near-freezing temperatures, as tens of thousands of rescue workers struggled to reach them.
As bodies washed up on the coast, injured survivors, children and elderly crammed into makeshift shelters, often without medicine. By Monday, 550,000 people had been evacuated after the earthquake and tsunami that killed at least 10,000.
The humanitarian crisis was unfolding on multiple fronts -- from a sudden rise in newly orphaned children to shortages of water, food, fuel and electricity to overflowing toilets in overwhelmed shelters and erratic care of traumatized survivors.
"It is the elderly who have been hit the hardest," said Patrick Fuller of the International Federation of Red Cross, in a memo written from Ishinomaki, one of several coastal cities brutalized by the swirling wall of waves.
"The tsunami engulfed half the town and many lie shivering uncontrollably under blankets. They are suffering from hypothermia having been stranded in their homes without water or electricity."
Local officials had lost contact with about 30,000 people, according to a survey by Kyodo News, raising concerns of a dramatic increase in the number of dead as authorities grapple with Japan's biggest emergency since World War Two.
Roads and rail, power and ports have been crippled across much of the northeast of Japan's main island Honshu, hampering relief efforts. The government has mobilized 100,000 soldiers to deliver food, water and fuel. Around 70 countries have offered assistance.
Hundreds of foreign rescue workers are assisting quake and tsunami victims but the United Nations does not plan to mount a bigger relief operation unless requested, U.N. aid officials said on Monday.
"EXHAUSTED BOTH PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY"
"People are exhausted both physically and mentally," said Yasunobu Sasaki, the principal of a school converted into a shelter in Rikuzentakata, a nearly flattened village of 24,500 people in far-northern Iwate prefecture.
There was not enough food for three meals a day and no heating, he said. Sanitation was a also problem. His shelter has fewer than 10 temporary toilets and several makeshift wooden toilets with a hole in the ground.
"That's not enough for the around 1,800 people here," he said, adding medicine for the chronically ill was dwindling.
All along the ravaged northeastern coast, there were similar scenes of desperation and destruction. The wall of water transported homes inland, swept ships into fields, upended cars and left trains scattered across fields like toys.
Toshiyuki Suzuki, 61, has a heart pacemaker in his body and takes about seven kinds of medicine a day. He lost all of them when the waves swept away his home, along with his 91-year-old father and 25-year-old son.
He cannot go to hospitals because there is no gasoline at local fuel stations. "I am having problems with walking and with my heartbeat. I absolutely need medicine."
Emergency workers have so far rescued 15,000 people and about 550,000 had been evacuated by Monday to about 2,600 shelters in six prefectures, Kyodo said.
Snow or rain is expected on Wednesday in some regions, adding urgency to relief efforts.
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