Casualties and Damages

Amid disaster, every meter counts

By Kelly Macnamara (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-03-18 08:20

Japanese military personnel carry bodies of victims at a village in northeast Japan on Thursday. Lee Jae-Won / Reuters

OFUNATO, Japan - In the devastated Japanese fishing port of Ofunato, the distance between normality and mayhem can be measured in meters. Just ask Masako Sawasato.

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Her home was completely untouched by the giant tsunami that wreaked havoc on Japan's northeast coast.

But the mangled wreckage of many of her neighbors' homes is piled high in her vegetable patch, just a short distance from the door.

"My house is safe so my family will continue to live here but for my friends, it is very, very difficult to stay, to start again," Sawasato said.

When the disaster struck on Friday, she was driving but quickly realized that she needed an escape plan.

"The wave was behind me and there was a line of traffic, so I got out of the car and ran," said the middle-aged mother.

Her husband, at home, watched in horror as the churning mass of water and debris headed toward him.

The water reached the side of their house but lapped up just a few inches before retreating.

Three bodies have been found in the immediate vicinity, one of them an elderly lady who was a close friend of Sawasato and who was unable to outrun the massive rushing waves.

Sawasato tearfully said she had received no news of many other friends and was desperately concerned about those who had suffered unimaginable losses.

"My colleague lost her three children, so I am very worried for her," she said.

More than 600 people have been taken to the hospital in Ofunato since the disaster, many of them elderly who suffered injuries in the quake and tsunami, but also some who fell ill after living in the sparse evacuation centers.

Not one person has been pulled alive from the fields of rubble.

"After the earthquake, people came with broken arms or legs, but the tsunami was so huge it left nothing behind," said hospital manager Yoshiharu Murata.

Residents of Ofunato had about 13 minutes to escape the massive wave - more time than in some other places closer to the epicenter of the earthquake - but the immense size and speed of the tidal surge caught many by surprise.

Murata said the hospital, perched on a hill above the city, offered those who fled their homes the macabre opportunity to watch those houses disappear in the murky deluge.

Sabako Otu was in the crowd at the hospital, in a fluke of fate.

"My mother was due to be discharged from the hospital at the time. Had I left here five minutes earlier, I would have been hit by the tsunami," she said.

Reuters