The hand-written messages adorn pieces of paper, boards and walls. There are hundreds or even thousands of them, hanging in the hallways of evacuation centers in Sendai, Natori and all the other devastated cities along the coastline of northeastern Japan.
Occasionally you'll find messages tinged with both hope and despair. "A heater is on in the hall of the construction company," says one. "It is warm there." And sometimes, though rarely, the messages attest to the good fortune of survivors. "Yurika and her sister aren't hurt" is written in black felt-tip pen on a whiteboard in Sendai. "Everyone is alive!" stands right next to it.
Roughly one week after the disastrous earthquake and equally devastating tsunami, it's still impossible to give anywhere close to a precise estimate of the catastrophe's full scope. More than 450,000 people are homeless; almost 90,000 homes have been damaged. On Monday, the official number of missing had risen to 12,600, and 8,800 dead had been found.
While at least the Western media had moved its focus from the suffering of the Japanese to the threatening nuclear catastrophe, a second tragedy was playing out in the shadows of Fukushima. The highly industrialized country has been forced to a standstill. The disaster has paralyzed not only the devastated northern region facing the Pacific, but also the country's industrial base further south. It's almost as if the entire country has been forced to observe a moment of silence to honor the dead.
THE SPIEGEL
MORE:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,752177,00.html
hostgator coupon 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment