Many thousands of people in Japan remain unaccounted for more than 36 hours after an 8.9 magnitude earthquake caused a tsunami, devastating the country’s Pacific coast and triggering a nuclear emergency.
Waves of up to ten metres (30ft) high left some 10,000 people missing in the coastal town of Minamisanriku alone with rescue efforts hampered by vast quantities of mud and wreckage. Minamisanriku’s pre-quake population was 17,000.
In some places the waves penetrated six miles inland.
Naoto Kan, the Japanese Prime Minister, gave a televised speech to the nation in which he appealed for the country to come together to face the crisis.
He said: “I want the people to overcome this quake, which must be called an unprecedented national disaster, by utilising the strengths of each of you, together with the utmost efforts of the government and the related agencies that it supports.”
Advertisement
The confirmed death toll is 686, but that is certain to rise as the extent of the destruction becomes apparent.
Minami Soma, Fukushima and Sendai bore the brunt of the tsunami and in the worst-hit areas people buried beneath the rubble could be heard calling for help, the Kyodo news agency reported.
The northeastern city of Kesennuma, with a population of 74,000, was hit by widespread fires and one-third of the city was under water, Jiji news agency said.
Tomohiko Kato, of the disaster bureau of Miyagi province, said that it had contacted at least 7,500 local residents at 25 shelters and individual houses. “But our monitoring operations have been hampered with debris and mud,” he said. “Even helicopters can’t approach some of the shelters. I’m afraid that it will take more time to finish our confirmation procedures.”
In Rikuzentakata, the military said it had found between 300 and 400 bodies. The coastal city had been virtually destroyed by the tidal wave, which reached the third floor of the town hall and left almost half the city submerged, local police said.
Advertisement
Four trains which were washed away have yet to be found, but Japanese naval and coastguard helicopters did locate a ship that had been swept out to sea by the tsunami, and winched all 81 people aboard to safety.
Fears of a nuclear disaster on the scale of Chernobyl had been raised today when an explosion blew apart the reactor building at the Fukushima No 1 power plant.
The site’s cooling systems had been badly damaged by the quake and tsunami but engineers later confirmed that the blast has not breached the reactor core and said a major incident had been averted.
Yukio Edano, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, said: “The nuclear reaction facility is surrounded by a steel storage machine, which is then surrounded by a concrete building. This concrete building collapsed. We learnt that the storage machine inside did not explode.”
The Japanese government confirmed that there had, however, been a radiation leak. At one point reports claimed that radiation levels at the plant, 250 kilometres (155 miles) north of Tokyo, had increased 20-fold and it was emitting as much radiation every hour as it would normally do in a year.
Advertisement
Japan’s nuclear safety agency later rated the accident as 4 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, compared with 5 for the Three Mile Island accident of 1979 and the maximum 7 for the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.
Iodine tablets have been stockpiled for distribution to people on the edge of the 20 kilometre (12 mile) evacuation zone around the plant, while the authorities and the population alike kept a close eye on forecasts of the wind direction.
Three power station workers were believed to have been exposed to radiation, as were three hospital patients who were chosen randomly for tests. They had been among a group of 90 bedridden patients left in the open air to wait for a helicopter to evacuate them from the area around the plant at about the time of the explosion.
People living within a two mile radius of a second nuclear plant in Fukushima were ordered to evacuate after its cooling system was also damaged by the earthquake. They will also receive iodine tablets.
About 140,000 people have so far been evacuated from the areas near the two Japanese nuclear power plants in Fukushima, the the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
Advertisement
In a 20-km radius around Fukushima Daiichi an estimated 110,000 people have been moved. In a 10-km radius around Fukushima Daini about 30,000 people have been cleared.
Sixty international teams from more than 45 countries are on alert to assist Japan. The British Government today dispatched a 63-strong team of fire service search and rescue experts, supported by dog handlers and medical teams, to assist the relief effort. They left Manchester airport for Japan this afternoon, after William Hague confirmed that the Japanese government had asked the UK for assistance.
“We are all appalled by the scenes of devastation, by the heavy loss of life, by the destruction we have all witnessed on our television screens,” the Foreign Secretary said. “I think all over the world, people’s hearts go out to the people of Japan.
“We have no confirmed British casualties as yet, but of course the picture will become clearer as recovery teams do their work, as communications are re-established in the affected area.”
The earthquake yesterday struck at 2.46pm local time (0546 GMT) at a depth of six miles (10km), about 80 miles (125km) off Japan’s eastern coast, about 240 miles (380km) north east of Tokyo. More than 100 aftershocks have been recorded, the most severe of which was 6.8 in magnitude.
Advertisement
Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said the earth’s axis shifted 25 cm as a result of the earthquake, and the US Geological Survey said the main island of Japan had shifted 2.4 metres. The earthquake was the world’s fifth most powerful in the past 100 years.