rescue after japanese earthquake.pdf

8/14/2019 rescue after Japanese earthquake.pdf

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msnbc.com staff and new s service reports

updated 3/13/2011 1:20:08 PM ET

A 60-year-old man was rescued two days

after he was swept miles out to sea on the roof

of his house by the huge tsunami which hit

Japan Friday, the Agence France-Presse news

agency reported.

Hiromitsu Shinkawa was plucked to safety at

12:40 p.m. local time Sunday (10:40 p.m.

Saturday ET) after he was spotted nine miles

off shore by the crew of a Maritime Self-

Defense Force destroyer, the AFP said.

Shinkawa, from the devastated city of

Minamisoma, was conscious and in "good

condition," the agency reported citing ministry

officials.

"I ran away after learning that the tsunami was

coming," Shinkawa told rescuers, AFP said,

citing Jiji Press. "But I turned back to pick up

something at home, when I was washed away.

I was rescued while I was hanging to the roof

from my house."

Other survivors caught up in the devastating

earthquake and tsunami shared harrowing

stories and their fears.

Among the voices:

Harumi Watanabe

She told the U.K.-based Guardian newspaper

that she had driven "as quickly as I could" to

her elderly parents' house in the coastal townof Shintona after the earthquake, arriving

shortly before the tsunami wave struck.

"There wasn't time to save them. They were

old and too weak to walk so I couldn't get

them in the car in time," she told the paper.

Her parents were ripped from her grasp and

dragged down by the water.

She was trapped in the house and said the

water rose up to her neck as she stood on

furniture. "There was only a narrow band of

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/Jiji Press AFP - Getty ImagesSixty-year-old survivor Hiromitsu Shinkawa waves from wreckage, as crew members of JapanMaritime Self-Defence Force (JMSDF) Aegis vessel Choukai rescue him.

Man rescued from sea 9 miles off Japan coastThe 60-year-old was found clinging to his house's roof, two days after it was swept

away

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air below the ceiling. I thought I would die,"

she told The Guardian.

Ichiro Sakamoto

"Is it a dream? I just feel like I am in a movie or

something," said Sakamoto, 50, in Hitachi, acity in Ibaraki Prefecture. "Whenever I am

alone I have to pinch my cheek to check

whether it's a dream or not."

Yuko Abe

"I am looking for my parents and my older

brother," Yuko Abe, 54, said in tears in

Rikuzentakata, a nearly flattened village in far-

northern Iwate prefecture. "Seeing the way the

area is, I thought that perhaps they did not

make it....I also cannot tell my siblings that liveaway that I am safe, as mobile phones and

telephones are not working."

Satako Yusawa

She teared up as she scanned the landscape of

debris and destruction, looking at the patch of

earth where Japan's massive tsunami erased

her son's newly built house.

Despite destruction and loss, the 69-year-oldwidow said she was thankful: Her son and his f

amily were out of town when Friday's

offshore, 8.9-magnitude quake sparked huge

surges of water that washed fleets of cars,

boats and entire houses across coastal Sendai

like detritus perched on lava.

"This," she said, "is life."

Yusawa said she was having tea at a friend's

house when the main quake struck, shaking

the ground massively for more than two

horrifying minutes.

"We were desperately trying to hold the

furniture up," she said, "but the shaking was

so fierce that we just panicked."

Video: U.S. rescue teams dispatch for

Japan (on this page)

Koichi Takairin

The 34-year-old truck driver from Sendai

spent the day recounting his harrowing ordeal.

"The tsunami was unbelievably fast — cars

were swept around me. All I could do was sit

in my truck and pray," he said.

He hunkered down inside his sturdy 4-ton

truck as homes, cars, and trees swept past

him.

Hours after waters receded, Takairin said hewalked out of his wrecked truck and joined

scores of others who were as stunned by loss.

Fumiaki Yamato

The 70-year-old was inside his vacation home

in a mountain village outside of Sendai when

the temblor struck, The New York Times

reported. He was driving toward Sendai trying

to find the rest of his family when he spoke w

ith a reporter. "I’m getting worried,” he said,

adding, "I don’t know how many hours it’s

going to take." Roads were impassable.

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Lucy Craft

After the quake, the freelance correspondent

in Tokyo spent each moment trying to locate

her teenage son.

"The phone lines are still down ... I haven't been able to get in touch with him by cell

phone, I haven't been able to contact anybody

there. I have his teacher's phone number ...

the phones aren't working," Craft told CNN on

Saturday. Her son was attending a high school

near the epicenter in Sendai. "It's a very

upsetting situation, as you can imagine."

Masanori Ono

The 17-year-old watched workers wearing

white masks and protective clothing usehandheld scanners to check everyone arriving

for radiation exposure from evacuated areas

around a crippled nuclear power plant.

"There is radiation leaking out, and since the

possibility (of exposure) is high, it's quite

scary," said Masanori Ono, queuing at a center

in Koriyama city, in Fukushima prefecture.

Yohei YonekuraThe 31-year-old entrepreneur at one

emergency center, a baseball practice facility

in Koriyama, was among dozens of people

huddled under blankets and tried to sleep.

"My home is in Minami Soma and I still have

people who I haven't been able to contact and

there have been reports of the nuclear leak.

I'm really concerned about their safety."

Reiko Takagi

Like 51,000 other people around the nuclear

plant, the middle-age woman struggled to get

away.

"Everyone wants to get out of the town. But the

roads are terrible," said Takagi, standing

outside a taxi company. "It is too dangerous to

go anywhere. But we are afraid that winds may

change and bring radiation toward us."

Yoshio Miura

The 65-year-old man was in his small truckingcompany office when the rumbling started,

sending him under a table and dislodging

heavy metal cabinets.

"These cabinets fell down right on top of me,

and luckily they were stopped by this table,"

he said, gesturing across an office in

shambles, its contents strewn across the floor

by the quake and then coated in a thick layer

of grime from the tsunami.

"The shaking was mostly side to side, it was

very strong. ... Look at what it did to this

building!" He points to a large shed that was

lifted off its foundation.

Then came the water — massive waves that

swept some 6 miles inland — and chaos.

Naomi Ishizawa

The cell phone saleswoman was working whenthe quake hit in the mid afternoon. She said it

took until nightfall to reach her house just

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outside Sendai and check on her parents, who

were both OK. Their home was still standing,

but the walls of a bedroom and bathroom had

collapsed and debris was strewn throughout.

And yet, she was lucky. The tsunami's inlandmarch stopped just short of her residence;

other houses in her neighborhood were totally

destroyed.

Like many people throughout Japan's

northeast, she had not heard from others in

her family and was worried.

"My uncle and his family live in an area near

the shore where there were a lot of deaths,"

Ishizawa, 24, said. "We can't reach them."

Michiko Yamada

The 75-year-old spoke from Rikuzentakata,

where several neighborhoods were completely

swept away.

"The tsunami was black and I saw people on

cars and an old couple get swept away right in

front of me."

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed

to this report.

© 2011 msnbc.com

A look at the worst earthquakes in recorded

history, in loss of human life. (These figures do

not include the March 11, 2011, temblor off

eastern Japan, the death toll of which is still

not known.) Sources: United States Geological

Survey, Encyclopedia Britannica

Magnitude about 8, about 830,000 deaths.

This earthquake occurred in the Shaanxi

province (formerly Shensi), China, about 50

miles east-northeast of Xi'an, the capital of

Shaanxi. More than 830,000 people are

estimated to have been killed. Damage

extended as far away as about 270 miles

northeast of the epicenter, with reports as far

as Liuyang in Hunan, more than 500 miles

away. Geological effects reported with this

earthquake included ground fissures, uplift,subsidence, liquefaction and landslides. Most

towns in the damage area reported city walls

collapsed, most to all houses collapsed and

many of the towns reported ground fissures

with water gushing out.

Magnitude 7.5. Official casualty figure is

255,000 deaths. Estimated death toll as highas 655,000.

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/Keystone Getty Images1976: Workers start rebuilding work following earthquake damage in the Chinese city of Tangshan, 100 miles east of Pekin, with a wrecked train carriage behind them. (Photo byKeystone/Getty Images)





Damage extended as far as Beijing. This is

probably the greatest death toll from an

earthquake in the last four centuries, and the

second greatest in recorded history.

Magnitude not known, about 230,000 deaths.

Contemporary accounts said the walls of

Syria’s second-largest city crumbled and

rocks cascaded into the streets. Aleppo’s

citadel collapsed, killing hundreds of

residents. Although Aleppo was the largest

community affected by the earthquake, it likely

did not suffer the worst of the damage.

European Crusaders had constructed a citadel

at nearby Harim, which was leveled by the

quake. A Muslim fort at Al-Atarib wasdestroyed as well, and several smaller towns

and manned forts were reduced to rubble. The

quake was said to have been felt as far away

as Damascus, about 220 miles to the south.

The Aleppo earthquake was the first of several

occurring between 1138 and 1139 that

devastated areas in northern Syria and

western Turkey.

Magnitude 9.1, 227,898 deaths.

This was the third largest earthquake in the

world since 1900 and the largest since the

1964 Prince William Sound, Alaska temblor. In

total, 227,898 people were killed or weremissing and presumed dead and about 1.7

million people were displaced by the

earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 14

countries in South Asia and East Africa. (In

January 2005, the death toll was 286,000. In

April 2005, Indonesia reduced its estimate for

the number missing by over 50,000.)

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/Getty Images Getty ImagesMEULABOH, INDONESIA - DECEMBER 29: In this handout photo taken from a print via theIndonesian Air Force, the scene of devastation in Meulaboh, the town cl osest to theSunday's earthquake epicentre, is pictured from the air on December 29, 2004, Meulaboh,

Aceh Province, Sumatra, Indonesia. T he western coas tal town in Aceh P rovinc e, only 60kilometres north-east of the epicentre, has been the hardest hit by sunday's underwater earthquake in the Indian Ocean. Officials expected to find at least 10,000 killed whic h wouldamount to a quarter of Meulaboh's population. Three-quarters of Sumatra's western coastwas destroyed and some towns were totally wiped out after the tsunamis that followed theearthquake. (Photo by Indonesian Air Force via Getty Images)

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Magnitude 7.0. According to official

estimates, 222,570 people killed.

According to official estimates, 300,000 were

also injured, 1.3 million displaced, 97,294

houses destroyed and 188,383 damaged in

the Port-au-Prince area and in much of

southern Haiti. This includes at least 4 people

killed by a local tsunami in the Petit Paradis

area near Leogane. Tsunami waves were also

reported at Jacmel, Les Cayes, Petit Goave,

Leogane, Luly and Anse a Galets.

Magnitude not known, about 200,000 deaths.

This earthquake struck a 200-mile stretch of

northeast Iran, with the epicenter directly

below the city of Demghan, which was at that

point the capital city. Most of the city was

destroyed as well as the neighboring areas.

Approximately 200,000 people were killed.

7.8 magnitude, about 200,000 deaths.

This earthquake brought total destruction to

the Lijunbu-Haiyuan-Ganyanchi area. Over

73,000 people were killed in Haiyuan County.

A landslide buried the village of Sujiahe in Xiji

County. More than 30,000 people were killed

in Guyuan County. Nearly all the houses

collapsed in the cities of Longde and Huining.

About 125 miles of surface faulting was seen

from Lijunbu through Ganyanchi to Jingtai.

There were large numbers of landslides and

ground cracks throughout the epicentral area.Some rivers were dammed, others changed

course.

Magnitude not known, about 150,000

deaths

The memories of the massive Damghan

earthquake (see above) had barely faded when

only 37 years later, Iran was again hit by ahuge earthquake. This time it cost 150,000

lives and destroyed the largest city in the

northwestern section of the country. The area

was again hit by a fatal earthquake in 1997.

7.9 magnitude, 142,800 deaths.

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/Jean-philippe Ksiazek AFP/ Get ty ImagesHaitians walk through collapsed buildings near the iron market in Port-au-Prince on Januar 31, 2010. Quake-hit Haiti will need at least a decade of painstaking reconstruction, aidchiefs and donor nations warned, as homeless, scarred survivors struggled today to rebuildtheir lives. AFP PHOTO / JEAN-PHILIPPE K SIAZEK (Photo credit should read JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK/AFP/Getty Images)

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This earthquake brought extreme destruction

in the Tokyo-Yokohama area, both from thetemblor and subsequent firestorms, which

burned about 381,000 of the more than

694,000 houses that were partially or

completely destroyed. Although often known

as the Great Tokyo Earthquake (or the Great

Tokyo Fire), the damage was most severe in

Yokohama. Nearly 6 feet of permanent uplift

was observed on the north shore of Sagami

Bay and horizontal displacements of as much

as 15 feet were measured on the BosoPeninsula.

7.3 magnitude, 110,000 deaths.

This quake brought extreme damage in

Ashgabat (Ashkhabad) and nearby villages,

where almost all the brick buildings collapsed,

concrete structures were heavily damaged and

freight trains were derailed. Damage and

casualties also occurred in the Darreh Gaz

area in neighboring Iran. Surface rupture was

observed both northwest and southeast of

Ashgabat. Many sources list the casualty total

at 10,000, but a news release from the newly

independent government on Dec. 9, 1988,

advised that the correct death toll was

110,000. (Turkmenistan had been part of the

Soviet Union, which tended to downplay the

death tolls from man-made and natural

disasters.)

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/Hulton Archive Gett y Images1923: High-angle view of earthquake and fire damage on Hongokucho Street and the KandaDistrict, taken from the Yamaguchi Bank building after the Kanto earthquake, Tokyo, Japan.(Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)



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