Japan quake dead, missing nears 21,000
KAMAISHI, Japan : Workers were close to restoring
power to a nuclear plant's overheating reactors on Sunday as the
toll of dead or missing from Japan's worst natural disaster in
nearly a century neared 21,000.
Amid the devastation on the northeast coast left by
a March 11 quake and tsunami, police reported an astonishing tale
of survival with the discovery of an 80-year-old woman and her
16-year-old grandson alive under the rubble.
"Their temperatures were quite low but they were
conscious. Details of their condition are not immediately known.
They have been already rescued and sent to hospital," a spokesman
for the Ishinomaki Police Department said.
They were in the kitchen when their house collapsed but the
teenager was able to reach food from the refrigerator, helping them
survive for nine days, broadcaster NHK quoted rescuers as
saying.
But with half a million tsunami survivors huddled in threadbare,
chilly shelters and the threat of disaster at the Fukushima No. 1
nuclear plant stretching frayed nerves, the mood in the world's
third-biggest economy remained grim.
Food contaminated with radiation was found for the first time
outside Japan - where milk and spinach have already been tainted by
a plume from Fukushima - as Taiwan detected radioactivity in a
batch of imported Japanese fava beans.
The discovery of traces of radioactive iodine in Tokyo tap water,
well to the southwest of the crippled atomic power plant on the
Pacific coast, compounded public anxiety but authorities said there
was no danger to health.
The Fukushima plant was struck on March 11 by a
massive earthquake and tsunami which, with 8,199 people confirmed
killed, is Japan's deadliest natural disaster since the Great Kanto
quake levelled much of Tokyo in 1923.
Another 12,722 are missing, feared swept out to sea by the 10-metre
(33-foot) tsunami or buried in the wreckage of buildings.
In Miyagi prefecture on the northeast coast, where the tsunami
reduced entire towns to splintered matchwood, the official death
toll stood at 4,882.
Miyagi police chief Naoto Takeuchi, however, told a task force
meeting that his prefecture alone "will need to secure facilities
to keep the bodies of more than 15,000 people", Jiji Press
reported.
Cooling systems that are meant to protect the Fukushima plant's six
reactors from a potentially disastrous meltdown were knocked out by
the tsunami, and engineers have since been battling to control
rising temperatures.
The radiation-suited crews were striving to restore electricity to
the ageing facility 250 kilometres (155 miles) northeast of Tokyo,
after extending a high-voltage cable into the site from the
national grid.
A spokesman for Japan's nuclear safety agency said electricity had
apparently reached the power distributor at the No. 2 reactor,
which in turn would feed power to the No. 1 reactor.
Plant operator TEPCO confirmed an electricity supply had been
restored to the distributor but said power at the reactor unit was
not back on yet.
Engineers were checking the cooling and other systems at the
reactor, aiming to restore power soon, TEPCO said late on
Sunday.
"It will take more time. It's not clear when we can try to restore
the systems," spokesman Naohiro Omura said.
Fire engines earlier aimed their water jets at the reactors and
fuel rod pools, where overheating is an equal concern, dumping
thousands of tonnes of seawater from the Pacific.
Six workers at the Fukushima plant have been exposed to high levels
of radiation but are continuing to work and have suffered no health
problems, TEPCO said.
According to the charity Save the Children, around 100,000 children
were displaced by the 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami, and signs of
trauma are evident among young survivors as the nuclear crisis and
countless aftershocks fuel their terror.
"We found children in desperate conditions, huddling around
kerosene lamps and wrapped in blankets," Save the Children
spokesman Ian Woolverton said after visiting a number of evacuation
centres in Japan's northeast.
"They told me about their anxieties, especially their fears about
radiation," Woolverton said, adding that several youngsters had
mentioned the US atom bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which
they know from school.
The government has insisted that there is no widespread threat of
radiation. But the discovery of the tainted fava beans by Taiwanese
customs officers will do nothing to calm public anxiety that has
already spread far beyond Japan.
Several governments in Asia have begun systematic radiation checks
on made-in-Japan goods, as well as of passengers arriving on
flights from the country.
But Tsai Shu-chen of Taiwan's Food and Drug Administration stressed
that the radioactive iodine and caesium-137 found on the fava beans
were well below national safety levels.
In the disaster epicentre of northeast Japan, authorities have been
battling to get more fuel and food to survivors enduring freezing
temperatures.
At shelters, some grandparents are telling children stories of how
they overcame hardships in their own childhood during and after
World War II, which left Japan in ruins.
"We have to live at whatever cost," said Shigenori Kikuta,
72.
"We have to tell our young people to remember this and pass on our
story to future generations, for when they become parents
themselves."
There was better news for residents in Rikuzentakata, where
construction teams began erecting 36 prefabricated units, the first
of many more temporary houses being built for the tsunami
homeless.
"They won't be very big, but whatever they are, it will be better
than being in here," said great-grandmother Tokiko Kanno, who has
been sleeping on a school stage.
- AFP/ac/ms
