No Good News for Iwaki

Today, my friends Lars and Heidi who used to live in Iwaki, updated their website, which they use for their Kendo Club in Australia. There are some emails on there from their friends who live in Iwaki on the situation there. The most recent one from the 18th of March made me very sad as there seems to be no progress being made in Iwaki. See their site here and go to the Iwaki tab. They are trying to repay the kindness that was shown to them when they lived in Iwaki for 5 years by helping to spread the word about a way to donate money directly to the people in Iwaki. 

Iwaki as you know is not that far from the power plant. Although the radiation levels there have so far not been anything to cause health problems, in fact radiation levels in cities north of the power station have been recorded as higher due to the prevailing winds. But unfortunately when you look on the map, there is Iwaki city, right near the power station. 

So, there has been a mass exodus from the city. When we left almost a week ago, everyone else was still there, going about their business as best they could. Today I saw the main street of the city on the news. There was one person walking down the street and no cars at all. It was a ghost town. Sure, the pavement is a bit broken up in some places but other than that there is little damage to the centre of town. Finally there are buses leaving from the main station and people queing for hours to get on so they can get to Tokyo where there is food and water.

The restoration of water and the clean up of badly affected areas, such as parts of Iwaki on the coast that were hit by the tsunami, is not proceeding since there is no-one there to do the work. We were listening the local radio station online yesterday and heard them asking for volunteers to help restore the water supply...

Why are other places getting back to normal so quickly and Iwaki not. Well its the threat from the power station. Nobody wants to go there as a contractor or to drive goods there. The banks are all closed and the phone lines also apparently not working so no way to get money out to buy the non existent food. 

One of the emails mentions that it might be a month before the water is reconnected to parts of the city. And as long as the power station remains an issue, things are probably not going to get better soon.