Daybreak in Japan revealed the true horror of Friday’s huge earthquake and series of tsunamis, its northeast coast reduced to a swampy wasteland of splintered houses, smashed cars and debris-filled sludge.
Thousands of troops, 300 planes and 40 ships have been mobilised to the towns worst hit by the 33 foot tsunami that swept three miles inshore, destroying everything in its wake. The official death toll from the 8.9 quake rose to 400 but it is expected that the true number of dead is closer to 1000. There are 725 missing, 1025 injured and 300 bodies have been discovered along the coast in Sendai, the city that bore the brunt of the tsunami. A ship with 100 passengers has disappeared as has four passenger trains.
The earthquake that struck off the northeastern coast was the biggest recorded quake ever to hit Japan. It ranked as the fifth-largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, last month, scientists said.
Thorugh Saturday morning fires burned out of control, entire towns lay in ruins while survivors gathered on rooftops waiting for help. On one building, an SOS had been painted on the roof while those trapped inside buildings desperately waved sheets and towels to attract attention.
Television footage showed the wave destroying entire towns in its awful wake. Light planes were strewn through the rubble along with cars and ships that were swept miles inland.
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Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said an initial assessment found “enormous damage,” adding that the Defence Ministry was sending troops to the hardest-hit region.
Japan also declared its first-ever states of emergency for five nuclear reactors at two power plants after the cooling systems failed in the aftermath of the earthquake, and workers struggled to prevent meltdowns.
At the Fukushima Daiichi plant where a backup generator failed, the cooling system was unable to supply water to cool reactors at two units. Although a backup cooling system was being used, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said pressure inside the reactor had risen to 1.5 times the level considered normal.
Radiation levels inside the plant leapt 1,000 times the normal level were measured at eight times normal outside the plant. An earlier evacuation zone was expanded more than threefold, from two miles to six miles. Around 20,000 people were evacuated from the area.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. warned of power shortages and an “extremely challenging situation in power supply for a while.”
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The Defence Ministry said it had sent troops trained to deal with chemical disasters to the plants in case of a radiation leak.
Meanwhile, black smoke could still be seen in the skies around Sendai, presumably from gas pipes snapped by the quake or tsunami.
Early today, it was reported that at least 2-300 people were still waiting for rescue on the top of a department stores in Sendai.
The town of Rikuzentakada, in northern Iwate prefecture, looked largely submerged in muddy water, with hardly a trace of houses or buildings of any kind.
Earlier, the entire Pacific had been put on alert , including coastal areas of South America, Canada and Alaska but waves were not as bad as expected.
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The U.S. Geological Survey said that after the initial huge quake, there were 123 aftershocks off Japan’s main island of Honshu, 110 of them of magnitude 5.0 or higher