I cant imagine what it must be like there but I hope things recover quickly, my condolences go out to those that have suffered and those who have lost loved ones it is a deeply tragic event that no one should have to bare
I'm afraid there will be no such thing here as a quick recovery. This one is going to take a serious length of time and much dedication to even come close to getting things back on track.
Aftershocks and other earthquakes are still a constant strain on the nerves along the entire coast from Miyagi down through Shizuoka. I mean we had one right near Mt. Fuji a few nights ago that was mighty strong and sincerely freaked me out because I could feel very strong P waves instead of the usual S waves we had been feeling from the other quakes and I knew straight away it was a new quake somewhere near. That sort of scares you first and then makes you kind of angry at whatever Gods are doing this to us. They had a very good shake a day or two before the Shizuoka one and that was in Nagano. The experts will tell you there is no connection with those that are going off all up and down the coast from Miyagi right into Tokyo Bay, but something is going on, for sure. I've been here for a couple decades and we've never had this level of intensity of quakes on Honshu from Tokai to Tohoku. Like I wrote above, it does tend to get on one's nerves.
Shortages are severe up in Miyagi and less so as one moves south into the Kanto region where it's not too rough right now, but could be in another week, if food distribution does not improve.
Obviously, everyone along the coast and further inland have very serious worries about whether they can maintain get a handle of the containment ponds holding those fuel rods. The latest efforts today seem to be providing some success and tomorrow they may get power to the cooling pumps to containment pools for reactors 5 and 6, which would be a major relief. The other four are going to require continued fire truck shooting of water because the damage to the pumps isn't clear yet, so even having power to the pumps may not help. It's a very tough job the SDF and other personnel are performing.
Unfortuanely, some lives have been lost right in the evacuation centers in the hardest areas due to lack of heat, food, and medicine. I'm referring to people that survived the initial hours of the disaster and were gotten into evacution centers, but because of a lack of supplies getting in they weakened and died. True, not a whole lot, but it shows the degree of suffering still be felt by those that are supposedly safe -- the infrastructure is just busted all to heck. And there are just so many choppers to go around.
Yep, Mother Nature kicked us real good in the butt and then add the Fukushima Plant 1 disaster on top of that and ... Well, I'm just trying to give you some idea of what we have going down here. You might think I'm painting a grim picture, but there's no other way to paint it -- it really is very bad. But if they can get control of the Fukushima Plant No. 1 (Daiichi) under control and slowly improve that situation I think we'll see a lifting of spirits and then it'll possibly make the other hardships a little easier to cope with.
Oh well, just thought you might have been asking for that sort of explanation from someone who is here.
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