Our hearts go out to the many people who lost lives, relatives, friends, or livelihood, and to the many still living in very challenging conditions in shelters. Those directly affected by the earthquake and tsunami need our support most, Please donate to a charity you trust. For people abroad, I trust betterplace to transparently coordinate relief projects and especially support the Shelterbox Project. For people in Japan, look at Second Harvest.
It is moving to see on national TV reunited families, people happy to have their first warm meal or bathe and change clothes for the first time in 10 days. Still, NHK reports 760,000 households in 11 prefectures are without running water. We all wish aid would arrive faster. This may mean civil courage to ignore a bureaucracy currently crippled, and selflessly helping where an overburdened government tries to retain "control" but surrounded by chaos, naturally cannot. This stance makes things worse.
Rely on the awesome power of self-organization.
Each day earlier that relief arrives is a day less spent in distress for many. After four days of disaster-only pictures, I refused to switch on the TV. It was comforting yesterday to see NHK reporting the number of people in shelters as 260,000, declined by 20,000 from a day earlier. At this rate, the worst-hit people would have to spend another 13 days for a total of 23 days in the cold, without water, food... How many can survive?
Nuclear Risks
A sensationalist part of media is not helping, but bloggers are. My hat is off to Michael aka @gakuranman for his informative and well-referenced work. He posted this image of relative radiation risk similar to others seen in Japanese press recently.
One of the remaining threats: what if we have meltdown of reactor cores or re-criticality explosions of spent fuel rods because cooling capability got entirely lost and could not be restored? As far as I understood the Japanese authorities and media were slow to acknowledge this threat but are aware and ordered to evacuate some 70,000 people from the 20km safety zone as a precaution. These people may lose their house, their land, and their jobs.
Desperate measures were taken to cool the nuclear fuel and prevent the worst, and to gain time for the electricians to lay new power cables to the reactor control rooms. The military dumped water from helicopters, police used water cannon trucks, a fire engine pump truck with 22 m arm appeared quite effective to bring temperatures down, and since Tuesday evening, concrete pump trucks with 50 m arms will do the dousing. Volunteering to work under such hazardous and unpredictable conditions to save people and the environment deserves medals of honor.
For the 30 million people in the Tokyo/Yokohama metropolitan area, nuclear safety experts who advise German authorities have calculated the radioactive fallout for the worst case, including wind directly from Fukushima. Their conclusion, supported by Russian nuclear experts with Chernobyl experience, some of who are relatives of a colleague:
at this distance, the expected radioactive dosage would remain below the limits where one would recommend taking iodine tablets.
The common precautions of staying indoors for a few hours with ventilation off and washing off contamination before coming inside would provide adequate protection. See Radiation Essentials / Useful Links and How to minimize exposure to radioactive substances.
Before we had this information from a trusted source, we sent our children to Germany. Facing the growing uncertainty, my wife and I made the grave decision I was to go to Germany too, to be able to support them in case the experts are wrong, so the children can finish school and begin to study with me working in Germany. My wife wanted to stay and take care of her aging mother. I was already in Osaka, ready to leave the next day, when the German expert opinion reached me. Together with the growing pain from my healing leg, I decided the risk of the long travel to my health was greater than the risk at home in Yokohama, so I returned, in effect donating the flight to Lufthansa.
[Update 2011-04-02 Lufthansa Lufthansa German Online & Direct Sales Japan mailed me back with a notice they refund the flight I did not take. Thank you for matching donation.]
Besides the risk of contamination entering the food supply - despite strict limits and careful screening, the upcoming electric power chrunch in Japan could contribute to mid-term feelings of unease in this country that has given me personally so much for my taxes, and whose people make me feel very much at home.
Why do expats leave, while nationals stay?
In such a situation of grave uncertainty, everyone decides on the basis of best available, understood, and trusted information. No one has enough of that, and it may change by the hour. So everyone decides the best they can with what info is available. Misinformed/ing media play on fear, causing more and unnecessary panic actions. The foreign companies and embassies acknowledged this stress situation by sharing reliable information and removing obstacles for those who wished to leave on a voluntary basis.
Expats, Japanese abroad as well, have a smaller support network out there and a home country they feel safer in. So... they leave at a threat level that leaves nationals largely unfazed, except for waking up to that they forgot to stock up on emergency supplies and going on a buying frenzy.
Now a few outsiders, relatively unaffected by the events, aim to judge those who decided. This does not help anyone. How about asking what support they themselves have recently given to disaster relief?
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