TSUNAMI, EARTHQUAKE INSPECTION REPORT and analysis 2011, 3.25

By Koko Kato

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Tohoku, East Kanto Earthquake, Tsunami Nuclear Reactor damage report

I. Total Damage Estimate

II. On site inspection report(Kamaishi)

III. Recommendation Note

I.1 Total Damage Estimate report on March 25rd. 2012

Damage and casualties Tohoku 6 prefecture ( Aomori, Akita, Iwate,

Yamagata Miyagi, Fukushima) Earthquake of Magnitude 9 and

Tsunami of higher than 10 m and highest 16 m hit Tohoku region

particulary Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima plus North of Kanto include

Tochigi and Ibaragi on 11th. of March.

I.2 Mostly damaged area

Most of the damage are concentrated in 3 prefecture out of 8 prefectures

particularly on Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima.

However, nature of casualties are diversified depending on the region.

Missing and death number based on NHK news on 2011/03/25

Prefecture Death Missing Total

Casualties

% Coast

towns

Coastal

population

Pref.

population

Coast

line

Iwate 3025 4869 7894 2.44 12 309,466 1,330,530 710km

Miyagi 6097 6671 12768 0.74 15 1,708,963

2,347,975 842km

Fukushima 839 5997 6836 0.13 10 529,867

2,028,752 167km

Total casualties are over 27,498 including death(9961) and missing

(17537) in addition, there are more or less of 250,000 people who are

now spending shelter life according to statistics reported National Police on

March 24th . 2011 . Total number of casualties will be expected to raise

despite the desperate search and rescue operation by military, police and

firemen as time goes by. Tohoku temperature is below zero in the night and

it is sometimes snowy even in March. We cannot collect nor identify the

bodies on the coast line of Sanriku coast spread over 3 prefectures in Iwate,

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Miyagi and Fukushima in Tohoku facing Pacific Ocean. Many towns were

lost in 10 minutes in the three consecutive tsunami wave one of the highest

was 16 m which took away thousands of lives just in 10 minutes and left

only sand and mad and garbages to the town . Those are only the figures

which has been reported to the police and particularly missing numbers of

Miyagi prefecture will increase as time goes by. Ishinomaki city and

Megawa city located in OJIKA peninsula are particulary damaged by

Tsunami wave and Ishinomaki is very difficult to have transportation access

therefore the number of casualties is not known.

Damage are beyond the scale and whole coastal villages in Sanriku coast of

35,236km length in TOHOKU except for kamaishi are fishery and sea food

towns.

Currently 37 communities on the coast, some of them are still isolated from

the rest of the world with no Telephone communication, no electricity, no

water and no gas, no petro for days. One city in Iwate was also gone with

registration of residence. Main streets, backroad, whole towns are covered by

with sands and mad after Tsunami are gone.

One of the issue is petro. Oil terminal in TOHOKU are located by the coast

and lost in Tsunami with hundreds of tank rollies. Gasoline disappeared

from petro station in east of Japan in one day due to TOHOKU crisis now

recovered to be normal. We confirmed oil reserve in the underground was

safe from Tsunami. However, amazing progress we see from Port recovery

and Road recovery by the 24 hours full reconstruction efforts of engineers

and workers in MLIT (Ministry of Land, Infrustructure, Transport and

Tourism).

Fukushima is the anther area which we cannot confirm the exact casualties

due to nuclear reactor issues. Police has not entered in the vicinity of 20 km.

of Nuclear reactor for search operation. Therefore we cannot identify the

exact number of tall.

What we found in Kamaishi was worth the reporting. So I would like to

send you this report and share the news with you. There were the kilos of

rubbles, destroyed and demolished building, piece of houses and abandoned

car on the street in the black sand with smells of sea fish and mad. After 6

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days, city started to resume its functions slowly but their first priority is

rescue operation and as rescue operations move on, we find the scale of

casualties bigger and bigger.

You will not imagine train cars, houses, towns disappeared in 10 minutes.

Weather is not in favor of survivors of the victims of Tsunami. It is snowy in

Iwate and water is freezingly cold. Recovery of 2 survivors after 9 days were

miracle but we do not give up the hope. After tsunami, construction

demand will increase and government plan to spend 10 trillion yen to Tohoku.

Building houses takes time and people has to sustain their lives in very hard

condition. Temporary Housing development is urgent for people staying

in shelter house but we need their psychological support in addition to

physical support. Lives of family, relatives and friends lost in Tsunami will

never come back. It will take years to find the missing people and find the

identification of bodies temporarily buried. We are all shocked without any

words to console bereaved family who lost everything. They also need time

to digest their sadness and sorrow but very calm because all the neighbors

share the same hardship.

In addition, Tsunami damage weaken economic base of Tohoku by losing

fishery and farming population. Commercial and some manufacturing

basis are heavily damaged by Tsunami wave. Forestry and public service

will be recovered and may have construction demand in the future but they

will not be sufficient enough to support local economy, Tokyo has to support

TOHOKU area in the generations to come. Despite the pessimism in Tokyo

about TOHOKU’s future, I found many survivors in Tohoku Tsunami

incredible optimism, they are much much stronger than I expected.

Nature of the damage differs depending on the three prefecture.

Among three prefectures, Fukushima has the deepest issues due to

nuclear reactor problems caused by Tsunami. Farmers away from nuclear

reactor area will not be able to sell the products for many years due to the

fear of contamination of consumers. According to today’s news

approximately 30,000 population from FUKUSHIMA are forced to evacuate

to Saitama prefecture or to relative’ house in Tokyo or adjacent provinces

vicinity to Fukushima. I encountered the busses from Futaba city where

nuclear reactors are located in service station of TOHOKU. They need

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psychological care since they have trauma from nuclear reactor in addition

to their loss of their houses in Tsunami.

.

II. 1. Kamaishi Inspection

Date： March 18th

Company: Nittetsu Mining Co. OB (ex president Mr. Hamabe)

Hamayurikai( Mr. Onozaki) Care Japan (Ms. Kaiharazuka) Cordinator

Koko Kato,

Relief Aid: 6 ton Cargo (List of items in the separate page)

Purpose: Visiting

Sponsor: Nippon Steel mining, Hamayuri-kai, Kyushu Yamaguchi modern

industrialization for WH organization、 Care Japan, Care Okayama, Care

Kumamoto, Morinaga confectionary company, Daio seishi, Yoko Abe,

Mutsuko Kato, Kazuhiko Morinaga, Ryoji Nagata, Tatsuo Aso, Anrakuji,

Iwate prefecture, many villages just disappeared in 10 minutes in Tsunami

more than any other area that is why we see 5018 people missing and still

under the search. According to NHK news, among all 12 coastal towns,

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Rikuzentakada city was the worst hit area with loss estimated to 1000 and

police cannot grasp the accurate figure now bassed on NHK news this

evening. Generally speaking, the mad and sand cover the whole coasts, it is

very hard to recover the body and cannot identify the countless bodies on the

beach therefore, those bodies they found are temporary buried for future

identification work instead of cremating. No electricity, no water and many

city hall and government people are also victims of tsunami tidal wave but

instead of going to find their own family, they dedicated their lives to rescue

school children, conducting search operation, helping citizens from their

shelter house. But when I visit Kamaishi on 18th. of March after 7 days of

Tsunami for 13 hours of drive from TOKYO, they are strong and never lose

the hope for future. Kamaishi is different from neighboring fishery towns.

It is the steel mill town and the first town where Japanese iron and steel

industry started however due to the production shift of Nippon steel,

population of 73000 in 1970 was dropped to the half (39578) in 2010.

Industrial base is mainly iron and steel and production of heavy industry but

also fishing, sea food processing , forestry, and mining. They have 458

death and 470 people still missing on 18th report at city hall. They have

the wharf high as 10 m but Tsunami easily pass this wharf and whole town

was swollen and sand wave came up to the station.

Central area, commercial area are totally gone and major residential area

located to the south disappeared in 10 minutes. 10,000 people, out of 39000

population are living in shelters are from City central and southern

residential people and number of people going to shelter are increasing every

single day. People does not want to leave the houses even though it is just

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a bare shelters without electricity or hot water in the below zero temperature.

They have to move to facility for the safety.

Production facilities of Nippon steel in Kamaishi is also affected by Tunami

but prepare to resume the production in the hardship by waiting for recovery

of electricity and wharf and port facility. They are kindly providing their

facility for unidentified body’s Charnel house. Kamaishi is lucky compared

to neighboring fishery towns since Mountain side are still less damaged

including Kamaishi mining and Hashino furnace area, WH candidate area

in the forest, while neighbor fishery town of Kamaishi are totally gone and

more than half the population including city hall disappeared in the wave of

Tsunami. Just for your information, IWATE’s 98% of fishery business are

depending on those coastal towns and their damage and costs are the second

priority to discovery of the missing people. But we expect the figure to be

very very high.

Kamaishi has surprised me all the time. They do not give up the hope

and hold up with their strong spirit at the time of tragedy. I tried to reach

the mayors in every single communication method on 17th. but could not

reachable. So I have arranged 6 t truck, relief aids and foods with mining

company people to visit the towns. Port people, road construction people,

electricity repair worker, bulldozer, firefighters, civil servants are working

all night day and night non stop without having proper food and proper heat.

There were fishermen who want to go back to the ocean, company executive

who wants to resume business operation, restaurant owner camping to feed

others survivors talking about recovery of the Kamaishi, dreaming to achieve

rugby contest in 2016 in the rubbles on the coast. They are fighting so hard.

There is spirit of hope everywhere in the town.

１．City hall

All the city government officials either lost the family or house because

majority of them resides UNOSUGAI coastal residential area. They

are sacrificing themselves to work as a government responsible for relief

aid, search operation and recovery of body. (Following photo is vice

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Mayor sasaki, who also lost his house.) Mr. Kikuchi, who accompanied

my visit are formerWH officer, whose house is lost and his wife was

found on the day of my arrival after 5 days of Tusnami but serving for

the missing people day and night rescuing school children from the

bridge. Many of their employees are very tired and worn out without

proper food, no electricity no water but survive and help others. It is

matter of time to resume water, electricity but in order to recover the

capacity of city government, it takes quite long time.

（Prefectural government is located in mountain and less damaged）

Missing information board ⇔ First priority to recover

１．Relief Aid distribution（Military and volunteer）

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Relief Aid: Boxes of relief aids are shipped to the town from all over the

world： Particularly from prefectural center to C plaza run by city

government but unfortunately those boxes of food stay in the city storage and

not be distributed to the each shelters promptly and efficiently due to the

shortage of gas and lack of manpower.

Note:

(ア) Distribution is not clear（Volunteer came to pick up the box）→

Quite ineffective and inefficient（It may be just lunch time…）from

what I see, no director is in the storage, but city representative is

doing reception,and one by one volunteer come over to pick up one

box whatever necessary in 15 minutes of my stay in distribution

center. ⇔ I am sure the situation has improved since then.

(イ) If there is 63 evacuation shelters with 9800 people, you need 10 to 13 cars

to move around, and distribute the goods in the morning, lunch and dinner.

In addition, we need staffing to transport fromKamaishi to other cities since

situation on the coastal towns surrounding Kamaishi is even worse.（We do

not NGO but Locals）

Private industry located vicinity of Tsunami hitted area have manpower and

more ability to deliver and distribute products such as Michinoku Coka

Cola bottlers and Nittetsu etc. on business basis.

(ウ) Also taxi is untapped sources. There is no gas in station but Taxi is not

using the same fuel and there is no shortage of taxi gas. It costly but can be

distributed.

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I visited my friend Ms. Iwasaki, restaurant owner in UMISUMAI town, outskirt

of Kamaishi, area are totally devastated and nothing remains. Her

restaurant was completely gone and you cannot recognize anything

except for shelter. Ms. Iwasaki was swept away in Tsunami wave

but survived and being rescued and stayed one night over in

mountain and going back to her Horaikan restaurant to see the

ramining shells of building. Then she started to camp with fire in

drum can, washing the rice from dirt and started to cook and cater

the food to 10 to 15 survivors in the area. I told her your daughter

was looking for you on her blog on net…. Then she said “ I cannot

contact her. But I am here. I won’t go anywhere. Kamaishi will

be my home. Kamaishi will come back, Iwate will come back and I

will be here and not going anywhere but to stay here all the time.

This is the town of iron. We won’t give up. In 2016, we have

rugby competition and triathelon competition. And we want to

make it”. Many of the mid aged ladies with her another daughter

are around fire and cooking fishes on barbaque. Most of the people

surrounding fire either lost their family or relative. This is

Kamaishi spirit.

Kamaishi is recovered from 2 big natural disasters Kamaishi will

be the first place to come back from Tsunami disaster. Government

should provide the economic assistance to the business who wants to

resume their operation.

Reason１．Industrial base is quite diversified not only fishery, farming but

also forestry, mining and manufacturing.

Reason 2. North side of Kamaishi, Kitagami, hanamaki, Tono there are no

damange. You can provide the support from inland.

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Reason 3. From the ocean, they can supply products and port people are

working days and night for the recovery.

Reason4 ．Kamaishi can be the distribution hub of relief goods for the rest of

fishery towns on the coast. They know how to handle recovery from

natural disasters and recovery

Reason5 Tohoku Highway will be deregulated right away and

Ichinoseki-Kamaishi was the first to open.

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III . RECOMMENDATION to CARE or any other NGO

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I was determined to visit Kamaishi with the encouragement of former

Nippon steel corporation mining department president Mr. Hamabe

andMr. Onozaki, with the support of headquarter of Nittettsu Corp. Mr.

matsumoto and CARE Japan’s support.

Also, mayor Noda and many city officials are my friends so as Ms. Iwasaki.

So I was determined to accompany them, even offer to chauffer them to see

my old friends in Kamaishi with CARE special pass to the traveling aids.

After 13 hours drive to Kamaishi I lost my words. What I saw in Kamaishi

is beyond my imagination, there is no Commercial zone, no residential

zone from the station, to city center to south, all the city functions

destroyed except for mountain area. This scene continues all the coastal

towns in the area.

Our government have not known the this type of tragedy at this scale. Lack

of experience delay the decision but nobody should be blamed for their job

at this emergency. We cannot expect them to do perfect job in handling

this scale of disaster. We have to do what we can do. Although capacity

is quite limited for small volunteer or NGO, and lack of experience in

working without any infrastructure, those relief organization can be

catalyst of change by tieing up with local business communities.

Everybody did the best and tried the best at the time of emergency on site.

My recommendation to CARE which supported this visit was instead of

hiring new staffs or outsource to distribution companies which have

already had experience of distribution otherwise it is not going to work

efficiently nor effectively. . Because this is not the scale of NGO

independently working by themselves.

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CARE Japan

With my observation, Oversea relief organization such as Care Japan

have experienced in raising the fund but does not seem to have capacity

to organize relief operation in Japan. I am not sure whether they can

build the capacity in the future to meet the emergency needs in short

period of time but still room to consider in case they work with the local

initiative and community. Locals and MLIT knows what to do the best

with their experience in recovery of natural disaster. But oversea relief

organization can assist them in efficient way while building their own

capacity which has experienced in the developing nation.

In first place, travelling with CARE was not easy since they are not

familiar with road and area and their team are not familiar with relief

activity inside of Japan and I was convinced to see them better to be the

assistant to locals who know the local municipalites and community better

than anybody else. Therefore, with regard to Oversea aid operation to be

used effectively and most efficiently, CARE should develop the framework

in joint operation with local business community which will be the best way

to manage the support operation in Japan.

III.2 Fukushima Nuclear Reactor

In Service station near Fukushima, there are number of people who are

fleeding from the town and quite congested. Many of them just left town

without any banknote, nothing to carry and cannot go home to collect and

being forced to evacuate to Saitama or Tokyo. They are moving to shelter

in Saitama. I do not know how much longer this traumatic experience

remains in their mind. They are psychologically damaged and it takes

time to heal them. But, I am sure it is very very deep issue and they have

no home to go back. Fukushima needs more time than any other place and

we need to support.

Currently, electricity came to 1-4 nuclear reactor power control center and

Nuclear reactors are under full control again by brave activity of firemen and

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Self Defense Forces in the threat of nuclear radiation. Cooling off operation

of firefighters will bring the stability of nuclear reactor despite serious news

from media. I am not familiar with the impact or effect of nuclear reactor

on health of human body. I am sure it is hazardous. But so as flying on

the plane and having X ray in the hospital is. Therefore, I would reserve the

comment about the impact of invisible enemy may penetrate the body any

time and what I saw from the eyes of people evacuating from Futaba city in

the bus in below picture without carrying any asset, they have anxiety and

fear for future. And cloud in the sky was the scene of the scientific fiction

movie. I sincerely hope situation will calm down and will come down.

Driving back to Tokyo where life is more normal, also people are more

indifferent to those who are suffered in Tsunami nor nuclear reactor. It

looks like totally different world. But I feel this issues very strongly as our

own issue and would like to share their problems and support them.

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GNN

They provide one third of electricity in TOKYO business activity and lives of

TOKYO we have to appreciate how hard they are working to sacrifice their

lives for our wealthy lifestyle in Tokyo. We expect Japanese economy will

slow down due to shortage of the power temporarily. But at least we are

lucky to be able to live and survive in this tragedy.

As heavy industry support our lives as production and manufacturing in

Tohoku, we hope they resume operation soon and support the economic base

of our country. It is probably the most complex problem Japan has ever had.

Our country has been innovative in technology and stand up from the bottom

after the war and earthquake. We learn the lesson from nuclear disaster

triggered by TSUNAMI and I hope we can develop the first new technology

learn from the lesson to control nuclear reactors perfectly or develop

alternative energy source in the future.

Tsunami victims, Nuclear reactor victims, sudden death of families and

friends, missing people, for sure it will be a big and long trauma for our

people, probably never be healed for generations to come. It also hurt our

country’s economy due to serious damage of production system and takes

time for full recovery and resume the operation financially and both

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physically. Many companies are expected to go bankrupt as secondary

damage in addition to this unexpected and unprecedented tragedy since we

are heavily depending on the TOHOKU for supply of many products.

Shortage of Food distribution coming from TOHOKU area to TOKYO market

will increase the food price. Japanese fishery and sea food processing, and

farming are heavily damaged by losing the best fishery and sea food

processing area.

I am not sure how long it will take for full recovery from this terrible natural

disaster but I hope we will overcome this tragedy because we are all behind

TOHOKU people. Tohoku people are strong, patient and gutsy, they have

overcomed poverty and hardship all in their lives. Perseverance are their

special character which is something I admire all the time. I am sure they

will come back by their strong efforts and we always support their strong

community leadership and guts to challenge hardship . NEVER GIVE UP!

ankThank you very much for your support and all the

message I receive from the world. I am looking

forward to seeing you and welcoming you in Japan

before too long!!

Koko Kato

PS. Neil,

Hashino was fine and no damage at all. I will keep

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on supporting Kyushu Yamaguchi and Tohoku JV

for WH initiative with you, too. It won’t die in 10

minutes of Tsunami, earthquake and nuclear reactor

problem.