Rikuzen Takata update #2

At this point we have an abundance of pictures from the city, showing what it looks like now. Before we go there, a fellow blogger posted pictures of her time there in the spring of 2006. You can see them at http://fightswithivy.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/memories-of-miyagi/. Another person commented on my last update and gives a link to more devastation, including a look at a still standing school they used to teach at. Other pictures can be seen at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/photo/2011-03/15/c_13779776.htm. Here are another couple I found.


The wide-angle view.

The scale of the disaster.


Yasunobu Sasaki is the school principal who is now basically in charge of the school-turned-shelter. He says, "The people are exhausted both physically and mentally." He says they can do nothing but shivver under blankets due to the hypothermia and low temperatures, and he cannot find enough food to give them the 3 meals a day they need to recover. Reporter Mark Mackinnon of Canada's Globe and Mail tweeted that he was told that 40% of the pre-quake population of the town is likely dead. That would be 9,200 to 9,800 in just this town.

I don't mean to make it appear that this is the only place people are suffering. The town of Minamsanriku has 1,000 confirmed dead and 8,000 still unaccounted for. In Otsuchi, 12,000 out of a population of 15,000 are missing. And it goes on.