ID :
169522
Sun, 03/20/2011 - 17:20
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https://oananews.org//node/169522
The shortlink copeid
Death toll to top 15,000 in quake-hit Miyagi alone: police+
TOKYO, March 20 Kyodo -
The death toll from last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami is expected to top 15,000 in Miyagi Prefecture alone, the local police chief said Sunday, while Self-Defense Force personnel and firefighters fought to cool hobbled nuclear power reactors in Fukushima Prefecture.
As the death toll from the disaster steadily climbed on Day 10 and exceeded 5,000 in Miyagi alone, a 16-year-old boy and an 80-year-old woman were rescued from a flattened house in Ishinomaki, Miyagi, according to the police.
The woman and her grandson survived the cold and hunger by subsisting on food left in a refrigerator, the police said, drawing from the boy's account.
About 35,500 evacuees continued to endure the cold and shortages of necessities at makeshift shelters in 15 prefectures in eastern Japan, including Tokyo, as relief materials such as blankets arrived in Japan from overseas.
The relief supplies from 14 economies included 25,000 blankets from Canada, 30,000 packets of boil-in-the-bag fried rice and 230,000 water bottles from South Korea and 500 power generators from Taiwan, according to Japanese authorities.
The evacuees included 20,000 residents from areas near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, who have moved to seven other prefectures such as Niigata, Yamagata and Tochigi.
The number of dead and missing rose to 21,381 as of Sunday 9 p.m. -- 8,450 confirmed deaths in 12 prefectures and 12,931 unaccounted for in six prefectures, according to the National Police Agency.
''Bodies washed away by the tsunami will be recovered by the thousand per day from now on,'' Miyagi prefectural police chief Naoto Takeuchi said at a meeting.
In the town of Otsuchi in Iwate Prefecture, Mayor Koki Kato was found dead Saturday, prefectural officials said. The mayor had been missing since being washed away by the tsunami during an emergency meeting held shortly after the March 11 2:46 p.m. quake.
Crematoriums in disaster-hit areas are having trouble handling work due to overcapacity and a lack of fuel, prompting some municipalities to allow burials out of hygienic consideration, including the city of Higashimatsushima, Miyagi.
In a sign of changing needs among displaced people, the need is growing in some areas of Sendai, the capital of Miyagi, for volunteers to look after elderly households, people involved in helping them said.
A total of 120,000 people from the SDF, police and fire departments have been committed to relief efforts.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan attended the graduation ceremony of the National Defense Academy in Yokosuka and urged the cadets to work together, referring to relief activities by SDF members. The graduates join the SDF in fiscal 2011, which starts April 1.
Meanwhile, SDF personnel sprayed water at the No. 3 and 4 reactors of the six-unit plant on Sunday to cool spent-fuel storage pools at each reactor building, with firefighters from Tokyo and Osaka dousing the building housing reactor No. 3 with water.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. restored access to external power at reactor No. 2, while temporarily planning to vent radioactive steam from the containment vessel of reactor No. 3 after measuring a pressure buildup inside the structure.
Damage to reactor No. 3 has been extensive, with a building housing the reactor badly broken by a hydrogen explosion. The reactor, whose fuel rods are feared to have melted partially, was using plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel, known as MOX.
After cooling functions were restored at reactors No. 5 and No. 6 on late Saturday, the reactors successfully went into cold shutdown on Sunday.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the plant is likely to be dismantled because it has caused many critical problems since it was crippled by the magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami.
Since the tsunami knocked down the facility's cooling functions, seawater has been injected into reactors No. 1 to No. 3 to prevent nuclear fuel rods inside their cores from overheating and melting down, rendering them virtually unusable.
Edano also said traces of high-level radiation have been found again in samples of spinach and raw milk from areas near the power plant, while noting that the radiation does not pose an immediate health risk.
The produce has not reached the market, he added.
Radioactive iodine and cesium, which were generated from uranium fission, have been detected in tap water, rain and air in a wide area southwest of the nuclear plant, including Tokyo, the science ministry and the Ibaraki prefectural government said Sunday, but denied any health risk.
The Fukushima headquarters of the government's disaster relief office have begun since last Tuesday advising residents who fled an area within 20 kilometers from the power plant to take nonradioactive iodide pills to prevent them from absorbing radioactive iodine, which can cause thyroid cancer.
The death toll from last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami is expected to top 15,000 in Miyagi Prefecture alone, the local police chief said Sunday, while Self-Defense Force personnel and firefighters fought to cool hobbled nuclear power reactors in Fukushima Prefecture.
As the death toll from the disaster steadily climbed on Day 10 and exceeded 5,000 in Miyagi alone, a 16-year-old boy and an 80-year-old woman were rescued from a flattened house in Ishinomaki, Miyagi, according to the police.
The woman and her grandson survived the cold and hunger by subsisting on food left in a refrigerator, the police said, drawing from the boy's account.
About 35,500 evacuees continued to endure the cold and shortages of necessities at makeshift shelters in 15 prefectures in eastern Japan, including Tokyo, as relief materials such as blankets arrived in Japan from overseas.
The relief supplies from 14 economies included 25,000 blankets from Canada, 30,000 packets of boil-in-the-bag fried rice and 230,000 water bottles from South Korea and 500 power generators from Taiwan, according to Japanese authorities.
The evacuees included 20,000 residents from areas near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, who have moved to seven other prefectures such as Niigata, Yamagata and Tochigi.
The number of dead and missing rose to 21,381 as of Sunday 9 p.m. -- 8,450 confirmed deaths in 12 prefectures and 12,931 unaccounted for in six prefectures, according to the National Police Agency.
''Bodies washed away by the tsunami will be recovered by the thousand per day from now on,'' Miyagi prefectural police chief Naoto Takeuchi said at a meeting.
In the town of Otsuchi in Iwate Prefecture, Mayor Koki Kato was found dead Saturday, prefectural officials said. The mayor had been missing since being washed away by the tsunami during an emergency meeting held shortly after the March 11 2:46 p.m. quake.
Crematoriums in disaster-hit areas are having trouble handling work due to overcapacity and a lack of fuel, prompting some municipalities to allow burials out of hygienic consideration, including the city of Higashimatsushima, Miyagi.
In a sign of changing needs among displaced people, the need is growing in some areas of Sendai, the capital of Miyagi, for volunteers to look after elderly households, people involved in helping them said.
A total of 120,000 people from the SDF, police and fire departments have been committed to relief efforts.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan attended the graduation ceremony of the National Defense Academy in Yokosuka and urged the cadets to work together, referring to relief activities by SDF members. The graduates join the SDF in fiscal 2011, which starts April 1.
Meanwhile, SDF personnel sprayed water at the No. 3 and 4 reactors of the six-unit plant on Sunday to cool spent-fuel storage pools at each reactor building, with firefighters from Tokyo and Osaka dousing the building housing reactor No. 3 with water.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. restored access to external power at reactor No. 2, while temporarily planning to vent radioactive steam from the containment vessel of reactor No. 3 after measuring a pressure buildup inside the structure.
Damage to reactor No. 3 has been extensive, with a building housing the reactor badly broken by a hydrogen explosion. The reactor, whose fuel rods are feared to have melted partially, was using plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel, known as MOX.
After cooling functions were restored at reactors No. 5 and No. 6 on late Saturday, the reactors successfully went into cold shutdown on Sunday.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the plant is likely to be dismantled because it has caused many critical problems since it was crippled by the magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami.
Since the tsunami knocked down the facility's cooling functions, seawater has been injected into reactors No. 1 to No. 3 to prevent nuclear fuel rods inside their cores from overheating and melting down, rendering them virtually unusable.
Edano also said traces of high-level radiation have been found again in samples of spinach and raw milk from areas near the power plant, while noting that the radiation does not pose an immediate health risk.
The produce has not reached the market, he added.
Radioactive iodine and cesium, which were generated from uranium fission, have been detected in tap water, rain and air in a wide area southwest of the nuclear plant, including Tokyo, the science ministry and the Ibaraki prefectural government said Sunday, but denied any health risk.
The Fukushima headquarters of the government's disaster relief office have begun since last Tuesday advising residents who fled an area within 20 kilometers from the power plant to take nonradioactive iodide pills to prevent them from absorbing radioactive iodine, which can cause thyroid cancer.
