Japan News 3/15
Mar. 15th, 2011 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mbarkerMore bits and pieces...
3/14
More bits.
One reporter took us to the site of a village 4 kilometers from the coast that is apparently reporting 10,000 missing. Basically a field of broken lumber, just piles and piles. WIth a yacht and another ship against the hillside behind the site of the town. So those ships had been washed four killometers away, and left sitting there.
One of the videos shows a house floating grandly along, and running into a sign with a smiling cat face on it. The house disintegrates as it grinds against the sign, while the cat smiles down on the scene.
It's been upgraded to Magnitude 9.0. And the death/missing toll is now 2,700. They're also tinkering with the name. Apparently now it's the Great Tohoku Kanto Earthquake.
They showed video from a helicopter of two schools in the middle of devastation with large SOS, need food for 500 written in giant letters on their grounds.
One of the threats of the nuclear plant problems is loss of power to Tokyo! A blackout on top of everything else...
An older man, wearing a knit cap and heavy coat, walks up the road between piles of wreckage, glancing around. His mouth works, and tears roll down his cheeks as he looks around. I don't think he even knows that he is crying.
A man and woman find each other in the street after two days. They hug, and walk away. There's piles of debris everywhere, but they don't care anymore.
A shot showing the forested foot hills, and a flat field of trash and wreckage between them that used to be farmland and villages.
Clusters of cellphones recharging, like barnacles on daisychained trees of extension cords, in refugee centers and other places.
As it got dark last night, they were going around to various reporters. One local reporter turned up with his microphone, standing not too far from a small white building in the TV lights. He looked into the camera and said, "This is difficult, but behind me, there used to be villages and farms. Now look." They panned the camera slowly across. Just darkness. No lights. Nothing.
A fireman looking at a red van, broken windows, tilted in a ditch. He looks into the camera and waves at the van. He says, "There were five people in that car. I told them to get out of here."
There was some coverage of Tokyo during the initial quake. There's a picture of a building in Tokyo clearly moving separately from the sidewalk around it. There's a crack 5 to 10 inches wide and deep grinding away. There are also shots of people running out of the buildings into the streets, then looking back. An elevated train stopped, and a conductor started getting people out of the train to walk the track to the next station -- then the ground shook again. Plenty of material that would be top news any other time, but it's been on hold.
There's talk of sending casetsu jutaku (container housing -- they used them after the Kansai earthquake). However, as one commentator asked, even if they have the units, will people who have been flooded out be comfortable living in "low land" again? There are hilly areas around the flood zones, but those are forested, and not usually considered living places.
7 AM Monday, some of the channels were back to more or less regular programming. Although most were still doing news (which is common for 7 -- but when I checked the schedule, it showed news all day, which is not normal).
PSA about power hours -- I gather they're cutting power to areas of the grid at certain times to reduce the load.
3/15
We moved yesterday, which is always strange. But with the quake news in the background, it is surreal. Sometime during the day there was some news about another 4 meter tsunami in Sendai -- which apparently turned out to be a wild rumor, although I gather many people in the area heard it and started to run.
This morning, most of the news is about the blackouts. Trains stopped, stores closed, police directing traffic with the signals off. One Mr. Donuts employee standing in front of a closed store patiently explaining to customers that yes, the power would be back, but they wouldn't open then, it would be several hours later. I guess people think that when the power comes back, everything just pops back into action. It's not quite like reset...
Lunch Time news -- now they are talking 400 MILLI Sv. I also notice that the number dead is shown as 2,500, with 17,000 missing or unknown.
They were showing the military going from pile of rubble to pile of rubble, car to car in one area. This was part of an explanation of why it's taking so much time -- they have to check every car and every pile of broken timber. At this point, I'd guess they are more likely to find bodies than survivors, so it must be extremely heartbreaking work, too.
We've had some gas explosions. One terrible one was in a shopping area that wasn't even close to the real problems -- one dead, 11 injured. Apparently someone wasn't careful about shutting off the gas (and there is a lot of natural gas used in Japan, for cooking, water heating, etc.). And in the middle of the damaged areas, they've had some big fires which are attributed to gas.
That's about it for now... sorry, very scattered.
3/14
More bits.
One reporter took us to the site of a village 4 kilometers from the coast that is apparently reporting 10,000 missing. Basically a field of broken lumber, just piles and piles. WIth a yacht and another ship against the hillside behind the site of the town. So those ships had been washed four killometers away, and left sitting there.
One of the videos shows a house floating grandly along, and running into a sign with a smiling cat face on it. The house disintegrates as it grinds against the sign, while the cat smiles down on the scene.
It's been upgraded to Magnitude 9.0. And the death/missing toll is now 2,700. They're also tinkering with the name. Apparently now it's the Great Tohoku Kanto Earthquake.
They showed video from a helicopter of two schools in the middle of devastation with large SOS, need food for 500 written in giant letters on their grounds.
One of the threats of the nuclear plant problems is loss of power to Tokyo! A blackout on top of everything else...
An older man, wearing a knit cap and heavy coat, walks up the road between piles of wreckage, glancing around. His mouth works, and tears roll down his cheeks as he looks around. I don't think he even knows that he is crying.
A man and woman find each other in the street after two days. They hug, and walk away. There's piles of debris everywhere, but they don't care anymore.
A shot showing the forested foot hills, and a flat field of trash and wreckage between them that used to be farmland and villages.
Clusters of cellphones recharging, like barnacles on daisychained trees of extension cords, in refugee centers and other places.
As it got dark last night, they were going around to various reporters. One local reporter turned up with his microphone, standing not too far from a small white building in the TV lights. He looked into the camera and said, "This is difficult, but behind me, there used to be villages and farms. Now look." They panned the camera slowly across. Just darkness. No lights. Nothing.
A fireman looking at a red van, broken windows, tilted in a ditch. He looks into the camera and waves at the van. He says, "There were five people in that car. I told them to get out of here."
There was some coverage of Tokyo during the initial quake. There's a picture of a building in Tokyo clearly moving separately from the sidewalk around it. There's a crack 5 to 10 inches wide and deep grinding away. There are also shots of people running out of the buildings into the streets, then looking back. An elevated train stopped, and a conductor started getting people out of the train to walk the track to the next station -- then the ground shook again. Plenty of material that would be top news any other time, but it's been on hold.
There's talk of sending casetsu jutaku (container housing -- they used them after the Kansai earthquake). However, as one commentator asked, even if they have the units, will people who have been flooded out be comfortable living in "low land" again? There are hilly areas around the flood zones, but those are forested, and not usually considered living places.
7 AM Monday, some of the channels were back to more or less regular programming. Although most were still doing news (which is common for 7 -- but when I checked the schedule, it showed news all day, which is not normal).
PSA about power hours -- I gather they're cutting power to areas of the grid at certain times to reduce the load.
3/15
We moved yesterday, which is always strange. But with the quake news in the background, it is surreal. Sometime during the day there was some news about another 4 meter tsunami in Sendai -- which apparently turned out to be a wild rumor, although I gather many people in the area heard it and started to run.
This morning, most of the news is about the blackouts. Trains stopped, stores closed, police directing traffic with the signals off. One Mr. Donuts employee standing in front of a closed store patiently explaining to customers that yes, the power would be back, but they wouldn't open then, it would be several hours later. I guess people think that when the power comes back, everything just pops back into action. It's not quite like reset...
Lunch Time news -- now they are talking 400 MILLI Sv. I also notice that the number dead is shown as 2,500, with 17,000 missing or unknown.
They were showing the military going from pile of rubble to pile of rubble, car to car in one area. This was part of an explanation of why it's taking so much time -- they have to check every car and every pile of broken timber. At this point, I'd guess they are more likely to find bodies than survivors, so it must be extremely heartbreaking work, too.
We've had some gas explosions. One terrible one was in a shopping area that wasn't even close to the real problems -- one dead, 11 injured. Apparently someone wasn't careful about shutting off the gas (and there is a lot of natural gas used in Japan, for cooking, water heating, etc.). And in the middle of the damaged areas, they've had some big fires which are attributed to gas.
That's about it for now... sorry, very scattered.
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Date: 2011-03-15 02:26 pm (UTC)