Shortage of supplies to impede survivors

PEOPLE across a devastated swath of Japan suffered for a third day yesterday without water, electricity and proper food, as the country grappled with the enormity of a massive earthquake and tsunami that left more than 10,000 people dead in one area alone.

Temperatures began sinking toward freezing, compounding the misery of survivors along hundreds of kilometres of the northeastern coast battered by the tsunami that smashed inland with breathtaking fury. Rescuers pulled bodies from mud-covered jumbles of wrecked houses, shattered tree trunks, twisted cars and tangled power lines while survivors examined the ruined remains.

In Rikusentakata, a port city of over 20,000 virtually wiped out by the tsunami, Etsuko Koyama escaped the water rushing through the third flood of her home but lost her grip on her daughter’s hand and has not found her.

“I haven’t given up hope yet,” Koyama told public broadcaster NHK, wiping tears from her eyes. “I saved myself, but I couldn’t save my daughter.”

To the south, in Miyagi prefecture, or state, the police chief told a gathering of disaster relief officials that his estimate for deaths was more than 10,000, police spokesman Go Sugawara told The Associated Press.

Miyagi has a population of 2.3 million and is one of the three prefectures hardest hit in Friday’s disaster. Fewer than 400 people have officially been confirmed as dead in Miyagi.

According to officials, more than 1,400 people were killed — including 200 people whose bodies were found yesterday along the coast — and more than 1,000 were missing in the disasters. Another 1,700 were injured.

Japanese officials raised their estimate yesterday of the quake’s magnitude to 9.0, a notch above the US Geological Survey’s reading of 8.9. Either way, it was the strongest quake ever recorded in Japan

For Japan, one of the world’s leading economies with ultramodern infrastructure, the disasters plunged ordinary life into nearly unimaginable deprivation.

Hundreds of thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centres that were cut off from rescuers, aid and electricity. At least 1.4 million households had gone without water since the quake struck and some 1.9m households were without electricity.

While the government doubled the number of soldiers deployed in the aid effort to 100,000 and sent 120,000 blankets, 120,000 bottles of water and 29,000 gallons (110,000 litres) of gasoline plus food to the affected areas, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said electricity would take days to restore.