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| It's still a beautiful coast - we stopped for a break just south of Yamada |
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Otsuchi - the mayor of Otsuchi was among about 2,000 of the
17,000 people of Otsuchi who are dead or missing. |
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I don't have words to describe the destruction here. These are
temporarily constructed barriers at the side of the road. |
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| A drug store |
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| Otsuchi |
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| This picture in part answered one of my questions. Along the coastline, almost without exception the 'tsunami inundation zone' signs were pretty accurate indicators of the areas that were affected by tsunami. When I was up here in before, I was surprised by how far away from the coast the signs were. I was also surprised that the towns were mostly in these areas. I concluded the evacuation plans were very good. This sign marks almost exactly the extent to which the tsunami reached. On the other side of Otsuchi, just north of this sign, however, the tsunami inundation zone sign was at a guess 500 before the end of the tsunami affected area. The inaccuracy of that sign seemed to be an aberration. That's no consolation for the people who there who may have assumed they were beyond the reach of tsunami. See the next posting about Ishinomaki's Okawa primary school. |
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| The space between the coast and the hills is so narrow in places. |
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| Piles and piles and piles of rubbish..... |
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Jietai, what a tough job. They have been doing a remarkable job.
They are underpaid, under appreciated, and at the moment absolutely
stretched beyond the extent of their capacity. We saw them working in Kamaishi, this is at a
michi no eki in Tono, inland in Iwate. They have been doing an exceptional job. |
3 comments:
Thank you for posting all the pictures of your travels, very interesting. Right now I'm watching the news and they just had a story on one of the towns where most of the children at school died in the tsunami. Please, please, please don't rebuild in the same place near the river and the coast, I think to myself.
I just saw that too...
It was horrible.
Those poor poor children & their teachers.
To follow up this, more than 100 designated evacuation centres were hit by the tsunami. It presumably accounts for a lot of the 20,000 dead and missing.
RIP and may we learn.
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