World
10,000 missing in Japanese town
- From: NewsCore
- March 13, 2011
Terrible toll: A sign of "SOS" is displayed at the playground of a school in the town of Minamisanriku in Miyagi prefecture a day after a massive 8.9 magnitude quake and tsunami hit the region. Source: AFP
AS many as 10,000 people have been reported missing in a northern Japanese town as a strong aftershock hit near a nuclear plant in Fukushima.
Three people evacuated from the area near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant were exposed to radiation.
The three were randomly chosen for examination out of about 90 bedridden patients moved from the hospital in the town of Futaba-machi.
The patients had waited for rescuers outside a school, spending a long time outside and then being moved by helicopter at the time when an explosion hit the aging plant.
Up to 10,000 residents in the port town of Minamisanriku in the Miyagi prefecture - more than half of the population - were unaccounted for, highlighting the unfolding scale of the disaster.
Local authorities are trying to find their whereabouts with the help of soldiers.
Authorities confirmed that around 7500 people were evacuated to 25 shelters after the quake, but they were unable to contact the other 10,000.
"Our monitoring operations have been hampered with debris and mud," an official said.
"Even helicopters can't approach some of the shelters. I'm afraid that it will take more time to finish our confirmation procedures."
An aftershock with a magnitude of 6.4 hit near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, where nuclear officials earlier confirmed a radiation leak and doubled the evacuation zone around the crippled reactor.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Friday's 8.9-magnitude earthquake and 10-metre tsunami was an "unprecedented national disaster" and appealed for calm as fears grew amid the atomic emergency.
"By taking firm measures, we will do our best not to have even a single person suffer from health problems," he said.
"From the bottom of my heart, I would like everybody to listen to the government and to media reports and to act calmly."
Dramatic TV footage showed the blast at the nuclear plant ripping through the coastal facility, sending plumes of smoke billowing high into the air.
The operator of the plant said the reactor container was not damaged despite the large explosion, Japan's chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano told a TV briefing, adding that radiation levels fell after the blast.
"The nuclear reactor is surrounded by a steel reactor container, which is then surrounded by a concrete building. The concrete building collapsed. We found out that the reactor container inside didn't explode," Mr Edano said.
Edano said the explosion was caused by hydrogen, generated by the falling level of cooling water, pouring into space between the building and container and exploding when it mixed with oxygen.
"We've confirmed that the reactor container was not damaged … As such there was no large amount of radiation leakage outside," he said. "We've decided to fill the reactor container with sea water …. By doing this, we will use boric acid to prevent criticality," he said, adding it would take five to 10 hours to fill the reactor.
The evacuation radius around the plant was doubled to 20km.
Radioactivity at the plant, which is 250km north of capital Tokyo, was 20 times over the normal level, and hourly radiation matched the allowable annual dose.
Several workers were reported to be injured in the explosion - one seriously - and smoke was seen billowing out of the plant. Eyewitnesses reported strong shaking at the plant shortly before the blast.
TV channels warned nearby residents to stay indoors, turn off air-conditioners and not to drink tap water. People going outside were told to avoid exposing their skin and to cover their faces with masks and wet towels. They were also provided with iodine.
The plant's sister plant, Fukushima No. 2, was also experiencing cooling problems.
Loss of cooling water resulted in a near meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania in 1979, the worst nuclear incident in US history.
Entire towns remain underwater, buildings have been destroyed, landslides have wiped away huge swathes of the landscape - carrying houses with them - and fires were still burning in the middle of the water, fueled by leaking oil.
Japanese troops found 300 to 400 bodies in the coastal city of Rikuzentakata, a small city around 113km to the north of Sendai, and around 65km north of Minamisanriku.
The death toll was rising throughout Saturday with the number of people dead or missing was feared to be above 1700 - a figure that is sure to rocket.
The amazing power of the quake was made clear by the US Geological Survey (USGS), which revealed the main island had shifted 2.4 metres and shifted the Earth on its axis.
Japan mobilized 50,000 military and other rescue personnel to spearhead the Herculean rescue and recovery effort and reached out to countries including Britain for assistance.
Four trains remained unaccounted for, Kyodo reported, after they were caught in the tsunami while running in a coastal area of Miyagi and Iwate prefectures. It is not known how many people were aboard.
More than five million homes remain without power and the number of partially or completely destroyed buildings has reached 3400.
More than 215,000 people were in emergency shelters and rescue officials struggled to access most of the tsunami-hit areas.
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