No home. No help. No hope: Now Japan's despair turns to anger
Tempers fray as the homeless wait for food and medicine
By Andrew Buncombe in Sendai
Thursday, 17 March 2011
As it struggles to gain control of a nuclear crisis and to feed and shelter the thousands of people left homeless by last week's devastating tsunami, the Japanese government is facing a growing chorus of criticism for its handling of the catastrophe.
Amid vociferous unease in the Japanese media at the apparent lack of progress in providing people in the country's stricken north-east with the bare essentials they need to survive, the governor of Fukushima prefecture, Yuhei Sato, has voiced frustration at shortages that were slowing evacuations. "Anxiety and anger felt by people have reached boiling point," he said. He warned evacuation centres did not have enough hot meals, medicine or petrol.
Meanwhile, in the first sign that international frustration at the Japanese government's reticence on the status of the stricken Fukushima power plant has reached a critical moment, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a thinly-veiled rebuke to Prime Minister Naoto Kan's administration.
By Andrew Buncombe in Sendai
Thursday, 17 March 2011
As it struggles to gain control of a nuclear crisis and to feed and shelter the thousands of people left homeless by last week's devastating tsunami, the Japanese government is facing a growing chorus of criticism for its handling of the catastrophe.
Amid vociferous unease in the Japanese media at the apparent lack of progress in providing people in the country's stricken north-east with the bare essentials they need to survive, the governor of Fukushima prefecture, Yuhei Sato, has voiced frustration at shortages that were slowing evacuations. "Anxiety and anger felt by people have reached boiling point," he said. He warned evacuation centres did not have enough hot meals, medicine or petrol.
Meanwhile, in the first sign that international frustration at the Japanese government's reticence on the status of the stricken Fukushima power plant has reached a critical moment, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a thinly-veiled rebuke to Prime Minister Naoto Kan's administration.
I didn't know that people were looting but I gathered that desperate times would make it inevitable. I'm wondering whether or not Japan will become a Chernobyl? Where will the people go and what countries will be taking them? I think that's the next step in the process for them now or least heads of countries and states need to be thinking along those lines. Wow. There is just so much unrest. The people are still trying to gather themselves after the Earthquakes in Chile and Haiti. What's next? Oh my goodness it all can be so overwhelming if we just focus our minds on the shear magnitude of the Tsunami in Japan not even thinking about the Nuclear threat. There's no time to even think of looking for survivors. What a horrible way to die. God help us to help Japan.