The search for Britons missing after Japan’s catastrophic earthquake continued on Sunday as a UK rescue mission landed in the country.
A 63-strong team of search and rescue specialists and medics has landed in the disaster zone to scour the aftermath of Friday’s 9.0 magnitude earthquake and resulting Tsunami.
The mission, drawn from across Britain, was accompanied by two rescue dogs and included heavy lifting and cutting equipment.
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There have been no confirmed British casualties, but the Foreign Office has received more than 3,200 calls from people who have been unable to contact friends and families in Japan.
Wide-scale power outages and fallen telephone lines are making communication difficult in the country.
Many of those missing, including Simon Green, 24, are teachers working in schools along Japan’s north-eastern seaboard.
Green was last heard from shortly after the quake struck, but it is believed the school where he works was then hit by the resulting tsunami that struck coastal towns.
His parents Kevin and Simon Green, in Reading, Berkshire, were still waiting by the phone on Sunday.
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“He called his girlfriend in Hiroshima as soon the quake happened to say he was okay, but of course that was before the tsunami and his school was in a village by the coast.
“All the telephone lines are down, but we think Kevin has probably been taken to one of the evacuation centres.
“We’ve put in a call to the Foreign Office and all we can do now is wait. Everything is a bit hazy at the moment.”
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Missing person websites, set up by the Red Cross and Google have been inundated with postings. Among them is an appeal for information about Anne Francis, a 24-year-old teacher from Bristol who moved to Japan seven months ago, who has not been in contact since the quake.
Anne's friend Bertie Van Der Beek said: “I’ve been in touch with her parents and they are still waiting for news, it’s very worrying for them at them moment.”
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Adding to the confusion and upset for families, anonymous hoaxers have been falsely updating the websites claiming their relatives were dead.
Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne said he was not prepared to put a definitive figure on the number of Britons caught up in the disaster, but said there would “almost certainly” be foreigners affected.
He told Sky News: “I am not in a position to make a definitive statement about the number of British nationals caught up in it but clearly it is a huge devastating disaster and there almost certainly will be foreign nationals involved.”
Some seismology experts today said the huge quake - one of the largest ever recorded actually had a magnitude of 9.0, rather than the widely reported figure of 8.9.
Estimates of the death toll from the disaster rose to more than 10,000 in one state alone, as millions of survivors remained without drinking water, electricity and food along the pulverised north-eastern coast.
Speaking following a meeting this morning of the Government’s emergency Cobra committee, Browne said: “The scale of the devastation is absolutely massive so there is plenty to discuss even from the British response level, let alone obviously what the Japanese authorities are having to deal with.”
The British Embassy in Tokyo has being “heavily reinforced” and extra staff were being flown in from across Asia, London and the Americas to boost the support provided to British citizens.