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ahorbinskiIt's been difficult to pull myself away from watching NHK to make this post. On 11 March northeastern Japan was struck by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake offshore, followed by a tsunami with wave heights in excess of 10 meters in places. 400,000 people are displaced and more than 10,000 are missing or dead. Furthermore, the tsunami disabled cooling systems on three reactors at the Fukushima One nuclear plant, all of which are now in some stage of partial meltdown. People within 20 km of the plant have been told to evacuate, complicating the disaster response in the same area.
I don't know anyone who lives north of Utsunomiya, so everyone I know in Japan is fine, but heartsick over the news out of the Tôhoku, and the feeling that there's little they can do--I feel the same way. Many people I know outside of Japan are also waiting to hear from friends and family in and around Sendai, where communications have been almost entirely knocked out. People in the Kantô and northeast have also been coping with numerous powerful aftershocks, the strongest of which was a 7.8; eastern Shizuoka was also struck by a 6.4 temblor early this morning. There's a lot of misinformation floating around the English-language media (don't get me started on CNN); this post offers a trenchant reminder that Japan's emergency preparedness procedures by and large went right.
NHK is streaming live in Japanese here; NHK World is streaming in English here. The International Atomic Energy Agency is the single best English-language source on the ongoing nuclear situation, though it updates infrequently.
Donations will emphatically make a positive difference to the people affected by these disasters, particularly donations to charities that can funnel money directly to Japan. The Japanese Red Cross may be donated to here; the NGO JEN has a donation page here.
I don't know anyone who lives north of Utsunomiya, so everyone I know in Japan is fine, but heartsick over the news out of the Tôhoku, and the feeling that there's little they can do--I feel the same way. Many people I know outside of Japan are also waiting to hear from friends and family in and around Sendai, where communications have been almost entirely knocked out. People in the Kantô and northeast have also been coping with numerous powerful aftershocks, the strongest of which was a 7.8; eastern Shizuoka was also struck by a 6.4 temblor early this morning. There's a lot of misinformation floating around the English-language media (don't get me started on CNN); this post offers a trenchant reminder that Japan's emergency preparedness procedures by and large went right.
NHK is streaming live in Japanese here; NHK World is streaming in English here. The International Atomic Energy Agency is the single best English-language source on the ongoing nuclear situation, though it updates infrequently.
Donations will emphatically make a positive difference to the people affected by these disasters, particularly donations to charities that can funnel money directly to Japan. The Japanese Red Cross may be donated to here; the NGO JEN has a donation page here.