3.11

It's hard to believe a whole year has passed since the 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the Tohoku coast of Japan triggered a massive tsunami - with waves that reached up to 40 metres high and travelled 10km inland, obliterating everything in it's path, and killing nearly 20 000 people.  

At about 2.30 this afternoon, I thought about how a year before, everyone affected would have been going about their business not realising that their lives were about to be changed (or lost) forever, just sixteen minutes later.

Other things I often think about when my mind wanders back to the 11th of March last year, are how freezing cold that black water must have been; all the little children who are now orphans; the elderly people that had no hope of running away; the people that rushed to the tsunami barriers for safety only to be swept away; and a woman who was seen clinging to a piece of debris, being carried away by the water, screaming and screaming.

They are still searching for bodies a year later.  Many of the 250 000 people who remain in shelters will do so for at least another five years.  Some towns may never actually be rebuilt.

It's not over for so many people, and it never will be.  

Due to the subsequent meltdown of three core reactors, at the Fukushima plant; 80 000 people had to evacuate their homes, and it will be 20 years before the land will once again be habitable by humans.  Actually dismantling the plants will take between 30-40 years.  Although the plant achieved core shutdown last December, more than a hundred thousand gallons of water have had to be pumped into the reactors everyday to keep things in check.  Last month, radiation was discovered leaking from the plant.  It's certainly not over there either.

I saw an article in the paper a couple of days ago which exposed how dangerously close the government was to evacuating Tokyo following the nuclear disaster, but kept this threat from the public, as not to generate mass panic.  While, just yesterday, an article highlighted the predicted numbers of dead and injured people if an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck Tokyo.  They are expecting this within the next three decades.  In fact it is already overdue.  I wonder what residents of Tokyo think about this; are they afraid?  I suppose they are all too used to living with the threat of earthquakes.  

Life must go on.........