That was the most awful thing I’ve seen since 9/11.
I can’t believe they just … lay there. Like they had totally given up.
And those people who went back and were dragging them … and then to have to give up and run themselves…
I can’t even begin to imagine how awful.
All I can think of for those people on the hill below is that they must have thought that they were high enough - that must have been one of the tsunami staging points - there were people resting in blankets and clustered around - they didn’t seem to be worried about anything until the wave was almost on top of them.
Bear in mind, this isn’t like the earthquake in Haiti. Japan is rich, modern, fully industrialized country with highly efficient emergency-response services and, I have no doubt, very proficient demolition and construction industries, and a very strong social fabric. Foreign help helps, but the Japanese have got this, there’s nothing fixable about it that they can’t fix themselves. In less than week the complete death toll will be known and all survivors rescued and all the injured treated. In a few months all of the displaced will have been more or less settled somewhere semipermanent – and have an easier time of it than displaced New Orleanians had after Katrina. In a year or two all the debris will have been cleared/scavenged away, and plans being laid for the new Sendai. This is Japan, habitable land is too valuable not to use. And now the site is like, pre-earthquaked, as Garp might put it.
Actually I think the two people I was looking at did emerge right at the end. There’s an adult dressed in black who goes to grab a child wearing a grey top and black trousers. It looks like they get swept sideways but grab on to the wall. In the last second or two of the video they are both walking up the path.
Wow. You can almost feel the anguish in the woman’s voice as she wails “Hayaku! Hayaku! Hayaku!” (hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!) at the people in the path of the oncoming water.
I read somewhere that, because of the nuke plants being out of commission, Japan has lost something like 15% or 20% of its baseline electrical generation capacity until the plants are repaired or replaced. They’ll be having rolling blackouts for months.
Can someone explain to me what staying inside will do to avoid radiation exposure? It’s in the air, right? So unless your house is made of lead or has a self-contained ventilation system, I don’t understand how being inside helps anything. Maybe I’m just not getting how radiation works.
OK, my wife, the kids and grandma are going to Taiwan. The first flight we could get is Thursday.
There isn’t enough information available to make a rational judgment, but one of our friends who is a official in the government is sending his wife and kids to Taiwan, so we’re doing the same. The government can’t even get any better information than what is on the news.
His wife is Taiwanese, and works for a German company, and that company is telling employees to send dependents back home.
It’s not likely to really be dangerous, but there isn’t enough information to really know. Babies and toddlers are the most susceptible to radiation, so we’ll take them to safety.
I’m sure that some people will think we’re panicking, and the truth is that we really don’t know if this is necessary, but also we don’t know if staying is completely safe either.