SURVIVORS:The rescue of one elderly couple who had been trapped in their home was a rare uplifting event, writes Jonathan Watts in Kesennuma city
THE POWER of the tsunami is horrifyingly apparent at Kesennuma harbour in Miyagi prefecture, where ships have washed up on car parks, rammed into office blocks and crashed into one another.
Nothing is where it should be. The giant pink-and-white hull of a tuna fishing ship is berthed on the tarmac, a three-storey office building has floated into the middle of the road, and cars are rammed into the sides of buildings.
The corridor of the city hall has become a lost-and-found centre for human beings. On one side is the “seeking” wall, which is home to hundreds of neatly written requests for information on missing persons; opposite is the “refugee” wall, which lists the names of those staying at the dozen or so evacuation centres around Kesennuma.
Among those looking anxiously through the inventory is 16-year-old Yuta Saito, who has not heard from his parents, brother or sister since the disaster struck. Still wearing the school uniform he left home in last Friday, he tries to retain his composure, but worry is written all over his face.
“It’s pitiful,” said Yuta’s guardian, Naomi Ogata. “The chances of survival are slim because they lived in one of the worst-hit areas.”
She has driven to the information centre with requests from 10 people who have taken temporary refuge in her neighbourhood. “I’d like to come and search more often but I don’t want to use up all the petrol,” she said. “I’m running out and must leave enough in the tank in case we need to make another emergency evacuation.”
The refugee mentality is new to this area, but understandable. Disaster has come in many forms during the past few days and constantly threatens to return.
Aftershocks continue to rattle the windows, smoke billows from half a dozen fires. A morning tsunami alert prompted a rush to high ground, then came word of a new explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, further south along the coast.
The explosion is more than 100km (62 miles) away from Kesennuma city, but the wind was blowing from the direction of the nuclear plant and radiation levels were reportedly rising at a nearby monitoring station.
The state broadcaster advised people to stay indoors and close the windows. One refugee said it was like an endless nightmare.
“It’s terrifying,” said Masaki Ohata, who sleeps without blankets on the cold floor of the city hall with a collie named Shell, which trembles nervously in his arms. “We have been hit by disasters and now we are threatened by something that we can’t even see. Any one of these dangers would be bad, but to be hit by three in a row is beyond imagination.”
Ohata risked his life for the dog. “When the tsunami hit, I was in a car trying to evacuate with my mother and my dog,” he said.
“The waters came so quickly that I could feel the car start to float. I couldn’t open the door so I climbed through the window, pulled my mother out and tried to get Shell to leave. But he was too scared. The car started to sink so I lunged in and heaved the dog into the water. We all swam together until the water subsided.”
Many others were less fortunate. In the Saiwai (happy) district of Kesennuma, large numbers drowned in their cars as the waters closed in on a deadly traffic jam of people trying to flee.
The Saiwai district resembles a war zone. From the top of a nearby hill, the carnage stretches as far as the eye can see. Shops, office blocks, roads and homes have been catastrophically rearranged as broken beams, piles of rubble and mountains of rubbish. Cars, motorbikes and fire engines lie broken and upside down like discarded toys.
Blazes rage uncontrolled on distant hills and in nearby malls. The emergency services say there is a limit to what they can do because the roads are only partially passable for 300m (984ft), and even then by climbing on foot through the rubble.
Teams frequently have to evacuate when the fire spreads, and the air is punctuated with the pops of exploding gas canisters.
It is the same story on the island of Oshima, further out in the bay, from where rescuers are ferrying people to safety.
“My home is burning. I can’t go back there. It is too dangerous,” said one evacuee, Emiko Mimura. “I’m staying with a friend, but it is tough. We have no electricity, gas or water. We can’t bathe. There are huge queues outside the shops and nothing to buy inside. We have no idea when our lifelines will return. It’s terrible, terrible.”
In Kesennuma port, Fumiko Saito and her sick husband had been trapped at home since Friday.
Teams of search dogs and rescuers had been unable to reach the area because the debris is piled so high in the streets. But rescue workers finally worked their way near enough to hear Saito’s cries for help, and then spent hours trying to arrange a helicopter rescue for the couple, who are both in their 80s.
It was slow going. Saito was unable to move, and at one point a fresh tsunami warning forced rescuers to delay their mission.
When the Saitos were finally winched to safety, Japanese camera crews ran live reports from a nearby hillside. First Lieut Kaneyama Hiroyasu, of the Yamagata 6th Division of the Self-Defence Forces, said: “It’s great that we got them out. It was tough. The husband had a bad heart so we could not move him easily. It took a long time.”
More survivors could yet be found, but the chances are diminishing with time. Apart from interruptions from aftershocks and tsunami warnings, the biggest problem for rescuers at the moment is the debris, which has piled up to more than head height on some streets. One rescue worker said it was impossible to move more than 300m into Saiwai district.
Hiroyasu said: “We’ve got to move quickly to help those who might still be alive. We will give it our utmost.”
The official death toll reached 1,833, with at least 2,369 people missing, the National Police Agency said yesterday. These figures are almost certain to rise further as more bodies are found in the hardest hit prefecture of Miyagi.
The discovery of the Saitos was a moment of rare upbeat news, but much more will be needed to lift the gloom.
“We don’t have electricity [or] gas, and only one onigiri sushi or piece of bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” said Mekaru Takashi, a professional bowler who was queuing outside the community hall for water. “The rescue is good news. We need that. But it doesn’t change how terrible things are.”