Month: March 2011

  • Last Defense at Troubled Reactors: 50 Japanese Workers

    March 15, 2011
    By KEITH BRADSHER and HIROKO TABUCHI

    A small crew of technicians, braving radiation and fire, became the only people remaining at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on Tuesday — and perhaps Japan’s last chance of preventing a broader nuclear catastrophe.       

    They crawl through labyrinths of equipment in utter darkness pierced only by their flashlights, listening for periodic explosions as hydrogen gas escaping from crippled reactors ignites on contact with air.       

    They breathe through uncomfortable respirators or carry heavy oxygen tanks on their backs. They wear white, full-body jumpsuits with snug-fitting hoods that provide scant protection from the invisible radiation sleeting through their bodies.       

    They are the faceless 50, the unnamed operators who stayed behind. They have volunteered, or been assigned, to pump seawater on dangerously exposed nuclear fuel, already thought to be partly melting and spewing radioactive material, to prevent full meltdowns that could throw thousands of tons of radioactive dust high into the air and imperil millions of their compatriots.       

    They struggled on Tuesday and Wednesday to keep hundreds of gallons of seawater a minute flowing through temporary fire pumps into the three stricken reactors, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. Among the many problems that officials acknowledged on Wednesday was what appeared to be yet another fire at the plant and indications that the containment vessel surrounding a reactor may have ruptured. That reactor, No. 3, appeared to be releasing radioactive steam.       

    The workers are being asked to make escalating — and perhaps existential — sacrifices that so far are being only implicitly acknowledged: Japan’s Health Ministry said Tuesday it was raising the legal limit on the amount of radiation to which each worker could be exposed, to 250 millisieverts from 100 millisieverts, five times the maximum exposure permitted for American nuclear plant workers.       

    The change means that workers can now remain on site longer, the ministry said. “It would be unthinkable to raise it further than that, considering the health of the workers,” the health minister, Yoko Komiyama, said at a news conference. There was also a suggestion on Wednesday that more workers may be brought to help save the power station.       

    Tokyo Electric Power, the plant’s operator, has said almost nothing at all about the workers, including how long a worker is expected to endure exposure.       

    The few details Tokyo Electric has made available paint a dire picture. Five workers have died since the quake and 22 more have been injured for various reasons, while two are missing. One worker was hospitalized after suddenly grasping his chest and finding himself unable to stand, and another needed treatment after receiving a blast of radiation near a damaged reactor. Eleven workers were injured in a hydrogen explosion at reactor No. 3.       

    Nuclear reactor operators say that their profession is typified by the same kind of esprit de corps found among firefighters and elite military units. Lunchroom conversations at reactors frequently turn to what operators would do in a severe emergency.       

    The consensus is always that they would warn their families to flee before staying at their posts to the end, said Michael Friedlander, a former senior operator at three American power plants for a total of 13 years.       

    “You’re certainly worried about the health and safety of your family, but you have an obligation to stay at the facility,” he said. “There is a sense of loyalty and camaraderie when you’ve trained with guys, you’ve done shifts with them for years.”       

    Adding to this natural bonding, jobs in Japan confer identity, command loyalty and inspire a particularly fervent kind of dedication. Economic straits have chipped away at the hallowed idea of lifetime employment for many Japanese, but the workplace remains a potent source of community. Mr. Friedlander said that he had no doubt that in an identical accident in the United States, 50 volunteers could be found to stay behind after everyone else evacuated from an extremely hazardous environment. But Japanese are raised to believe that individuals sacrifice for the good of the group.       

    The reactor operators face extraordinary risks. Tokyo Electric evacuated 750 emergency staff members from the stricken plant on Tuesday, leaving only about 50, when radiation levels soared. By comparison, standard staffing levels at the three active General Electric reactors on the site would be 10 to 12 people apiece including supervisors — an indication that the small crew left behind is barely larger than the contingent on duty on a quiet day.       

    Daiichi is not synonymous with Chernobyl in terms of the severity of contamination. The Ukrainian reactor blew up and spewed huge amounts of radiation for 10 days in 1986. But workers at the plants have a bond.       

    Among plant employees and firefighters at Chernobyl, many volunteered to try to tame, and then entomb, the burning reactor — although it is not clear that all were told the truth about the risks. Within three months, 28 of them died from radiation exposure. At least 19 of them were killed by infections that resulted from having large areas of their skin burned off by radiation, according to a recent report by a United Nations scientific committee. And 106 others developed radiation sickness, with nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and dropping blood counts that left them highly vulnerable to infections.       

    The people who had suffered radiation sickness developed other problems later, according to the report: cataracts, severe scarring from the radiation burns to their skin and an increased number of deaths from leukemia and other blood cancers.       

    Some of those Chernobyl workers were exposed to levels of radiation far beyond what has been measured to date at Daiichi — especially helicopter pilots who flew through radiation-laden smoke spewing from the reactor to drop fire-extinguishing chemicals on it.       

    Radiation close to the reactors was reported to reach 400 millisieverts per hour on Tuesday after a blast inside reactor No. 2 and fire at reactor No. 4, but has since dropped back to as low as 0.6 millisieverts at the plant gate. Tokyo Electric and Japanese regulators have not released any statistics on radiation levels inside the containment buildings where engineers are desperately trying to fix electrical systems, pumps and other gear wrecked by Friday’s earthquake and tsunami.       

    But nuclear experts said that indoor radiation levels were likely to be higher because the containment buildings were probably still preventing most radiation from leaving the plant.       

    The site is now so contaminated with radiation, experts say, that it has become difficult for employees to work near the reactors for extended periods of time. According to one expert’s account of nuclear emergency procedures, workers would be cycled in and out of the worst-hit parts of the plant.       

    In some cases, when dealing with a task in a highly radioactive area of the plant, workers might line up and handle the task only for minutes at a time before passing off to the next worker, said Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a former professor in the Research Center for Urban Safety and Security at Kobe University.       

    Tokyo Electric has refused to release the names or any other information about the 50 workers who stayed behind, nor have utility executives said anything about how they are being relieved as they become tired or ill.       

    Some of those battling flames and spraying water at reactors at Daiichi are members of Japan’s Self-Defense Force, police officers or firefighters.       

    Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said Tuesday that Self-Defense Force soldiers might be called on to fly the helicopters Tokyo Electric may use to spray water onto the overheating used fuel storage pool at reactor No. 4. The same day, however, members of Japan’s nuclear watchdog group, who had been stationed about three miles from the plant, were moved to a site 18 miles away. (The authorities later said that using helicopters to put spray water on reactor No. 4 might not be feasible.) If the plant operator is limiting the exposure of each worker at Daiichi — and calling on hundreds of volunteers to make up the 50 on site at any given time — then Chernobyl may offer some consolation.       

    To clean up the Chernobyl site after the accident, the Soviet Union conscripted workers in proportion to the size of each of its republics, and developed a system to limit their exposure.       

    “They sent up to 600,000 people in to clean up the radioactive debris around the plant and build a sarcophagus,” said Dr. John Boice, an author of the study, a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt and the scientific director of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockvillle, Md. The workers were sent into contaminated zones for limited periods.       

    Keith Bradsher reported from Hong Kong, and Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo. Denise Grady contributed reporting from New York, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.
    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

  • Certainties of Modern Life Upended in Japan

    David Guttenfelder/Associated Press

    A rescue worker walked through the destroyed village of Saito in northeastern Japan on Monday. Rescue teams with sniffer dogs yelled as they dug. “Is there anyone here? Is there anyone alive?” More Photos

    March 15, 2011

    Certainties of Modern Life Upended in Japan

    By KEN BELSON

    TOKYO — Japan, a country lulled by the reassuring rhythms of order and predictability, has been jolted by earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis into an unsettling new reality: lack of control.       

    In a nation where you can set your watch by a train’s arrival and a conductor apologizes for even a one-minute delay, rolling blackouts have forced commuters to leave early so they will not be stranded when the trains stop running. Some stores have been stripped bare of essentials like rice and milk, leading the prime minister to publicly call for calm. All the while, aftershocks small and large rattle windows and fray nerves.       

    While workers struggle to avert nuclear meltdowns at stricken power plants 170 miles to the north, residents of Tokyo are wondering whether to trust the government’s assurances that they are out of harm’s way.       

    The string of disasters has revived the notion — dormant since Tokyo rose from the firebombed devastation of World War II — that this city is living on borrowed time. Many people are staying inside to avoid radiation that the wind might blow in their direction. Others are weighing whether to leave.       

    But most Japanese are trying to uphold the ethic that they are taught from childhood: to do their best, persevere and suppress their own feelings for the sake of the group.       

    “I’ve been checking the news on the Internet, and I really don’t know who to believe, because first they say it’s O.K., and then things get worse,” said Shinya Tokiwa, who lives in Yokohama and works for Fujitsu, the giant electronics maker, in Tokyo’s Shiodome district. “I can’t go anywhere because I have to work my hardest for my customers.”       

    Those customers, more than 200 miles south of the earthquake’s epicenter, are still grappling with its effects. The computerized systems that Fujitsu sells to banks have crashed under the strain of so many people trying to send money to relatives and friends in stricken areas.       

    That has kept Mr. Tokiwa busy with repairs and unable to make any sales calls. Just meeting a customer or colleague has become a chore, with trains and subways not running on schedule.       

    The Japanese are bracing for further losses. The confirmed death toll was 3,373 on Tuesday, with 7,558 people reported missing, but those numbers may well be understated, and bodies continued to wash ashore.       

    A brief ray of hope pierced the gloom on Tuesday when two people were rescued from collapsed buildings where they had been trapped for more than 90 hours. One of them was a 92-year-old man who was found alive in Ishinomaki City, the other a 70-year-old woman who was pulled from the wreckage of her home in Iwate Prefecture.       

    In the northern Japan’s disaster zone, an estimated 440,000 people were living in makeshift shelters or evacuation centers, officials said. Bitterly cold and windy weather compounded the misery as survivors endured shortages of food, fuel and water.       

    Rescue teams from 13 nations, some assisted by dogs, continued to search for survivors, and more nations were preparing to send teams. Helicopters shuttled back and forth, part of a mobilization of some 100,000 troops, the largest in Japan since World War II, to assist in the rescue and relief work. A no-flight zone was imposed around the stricken nuclear plants.       

    Japan’s neighbors watched the crisis anxiously, with urgent meetings among Chinese officials about how to respond should radioactive fallout reach their shores. South Korea and Singapore both said they would step up inspections of food imported from Japan.       

    The Japanese are no strangers to catastrophe — earthquakes, typhoons, mudslides and other natural disasters routinely batter this archipelago, which is smaller in land area than California but is home to nearly four times as many people.       

    Japan is also the only nation to have suffered an atomic attack. But by now, most Japanese have only read about the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs in 1945, or have made the pilgrimage to Hiroshima to hang origami cranes and shudder at its museum’s graphic displays.       

    Many of the most recent natural disasters, including the earthquake in Kobe in 1995, occurred far from the capital. The last major earthquake to hit Tokyo was in 1923.       

    So for most Japanese, these hardships are entirely new.       

    “I’m a little scared,” Yuko Ota, 38, an office worker, said as she stood in a long line at Meguro Station in central Tokyo for a ticket to Osaka, her hometown.       

    “My company told me to go back now because they think the disaster will have an impact in Tokyo, and the earlier we go the better,” she said. “So for one week, to begin with, the whole company is either staying home or going away. I’m lucky because I can go be with my parents.”       

    Some foreign embassies have suggested that their citizens head south, away from Fukushima Prefecture — which is near the epicenter and home to the worst of the crippled reactors — or leave the country, directives that have led to a rush of departures this week at Narita Airport, Tokyo’s main international gateway. (The United States Embassy has not advised Americans to leave, but it is warning against departing for Japan.)       

    A number of foreign airlines have suspended flights to Tokyo and have shifted operations to cities farther south, and some expatriates left on Tuesday.       

    Ben Applegate, 27, an American freelance translator, editor and tour guide, said he and his girlfriend, Winnie Chang, 28, of Taiwan, left Tokyo to stay with a family he knew in the ancient capital, Kyoto.       

    “I realize that everything is probably going to be fine,” he said, but the forecast of another major quake, which has since been revised, and the nuclear accidents were strong incentives to leave. “Plus, our families were calling once every couple of hours,” he said. “So we thought everyone would feel better if we went to Kyoto.”       

    For many Japanese, the options were more limited, and excruciating. Even those with second homes or family and friends in safer locations are torn between their deep-rooted loyalty to their families and their employers and their fears that worse is in store.       

    Experts predicated that despite Japan’s ethos of “gaman,” or endurance, signs of trauma would surface, particularly among those who saw relatives washed away by the tsunami.       

    “In the tsunami they could see people dying right in front of them,” said Susumu Hirakawa, a clinical psychologist in Tokyo who specializes in post-traumatic stress and has been advising Japan’s Coast Guard.       

    He said the people of northeast Japan have a reputation as patient, reserved, and stoic, but “now there are too many hardships and struggles for them.”       

    One taxi driver taking passengers through the largely deserted streets of downtown Tokyo on Tuesday compared the rising uneasiness to the shortages during the OPEC-led oil embargo nearly 40 years ago, when a spike in prices led the Japanese to stockpile essentials like rice and toilet paper.       

    It has not helped that government officials and executives at the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the nuclear power plants in Fukushima, have offered conflicting reports and often declined to answer hypothetical questions or discuss worst-case scenarios.       

    “I’m not sure if what they’re saying is true or not, and that makes me nervous,” said Tetsu Ichiura, a life insurance salesman in Tokyo. “I want to know why they won’t provide the answers.”       

    Like many Japanese, Mr. Ichiura is transfixed by the bad news. At home, he keeps his television tuned to NHK, the national broadcaster. Even his 7-year old daughter, Hana, has sensed that something unusual is happening, prompted partly by the recurrent aftershocks. She cried, he said, before going to bed the other night.       

    “She understands that this is serious.”       

    Reporting was contributed by Mark McDonald and David Jolly from Tokyo; Sharon LaFraniere and Li Bibo from Beijing; Su-Hyun Lee from Seoul, South Korea; and Kevin Drew from Hong Kong.
    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Compant. All Rights Reserved

  • At P. J. Clarke’s, the Bartender of Your Dreams

    Joshua Bright for The New York Times

    Doug Quinn, at P.J. Clarke’s on the East Side, is the quintessential bartenders’ bartender.

    Joshua Bright for The New York Times

    Mr. Quinn, behind the bar.                           

     

    May 27, 2010

    At P. J. Clarke’s, the Bartender of Your Dreams

    By FRANK BRUNI

    My mother had eyes in the back of her head; Doug Quinn must have them in the palms of his hands. How else to explain the way he muddled mint for a mojito — and went on to make the rest of the cocktail — while glancing alternately at the door to see if anyone new was coming in, at the far end of the bar to see if anyone was telegraphing thirst, and at the guy in front of him, who was babbling anew about something or other? Not once did Mr. Quinn look down at the drink. It was like bartending in Braille.

    He filled beer mugs without watching what he was doing. He could apparently tell, by the weight of them, when to stop. He plucked bottles from their perches without pausing to check labels. He apparently had, in his head, the whole liquor layout at P.J. Clarke’s, on the East Side.

    And he remembered what my companion and I were drinking, even though we had ordered just one round so far, and there were at least 35 people clumped around the bar on this  early May night, and he was dealing — alone — with all the tickets from all the servers in the adjacent dining rooms, and he wasn’t writing anything down, not that I could see.

    “Another?” was all he asked, and a half minute later I had a Hendrick’s gin martini, up, with olives and jagged little floes of ice, just like the martini before it. My companion was sipping a second Manhattan with rye, not bourbon, per his initial request. Mr. Quinn works quickly, and he works without error.

    It is legend, this efficiency of his. I learned of it one night at PDT, a faux speakeasy in the East Village — secret entrance, abundant taxidermy — that’s about as far in spirit (and spirits) from the blunt, timeless rough-and-tumble of P. J. Clarke’s as you can get. I asked Jim Meehan, the cocktail shaman there, whom he and other celebrated young mixologists of the moment looked up to.

    Without hesitation he named Mr. Quinn, 42, and not because Mr. Quinn had pioneered some clever infusion or paired two ingredients no one had thought to pair before. Mr. Quinn, he said, did right by the classics and could handle (and coddle) a teeming crowd. He had speed, stamina, dexterity, personality and an awe-inspiring memory: the essentials of bartending, without which the cheeky chemistry is meaningless. Mr. Quinn was the bartenders’ bartender.

    Dale DeGroff, arguably the city’s dean of mixology, told me that if he’s not away on business, he drops in on Mr. Quinn at least once a week, often past 2 a.m., when bartenders getting off work elsewhere congregate at P. J. Clarke’s — the original one on Third Avenue at 55th Street, not the spinoffs near Lincoln Center or at the World Financial Center. It serves food until 3 a.m. and drinks until 4 a.m., the legal limit, and isn’t as jammed in the wee hours as it is between 6 and 11 p.m.

    “You’re not going to get a yuzu gimlet from the guy,” Mr. DeGroff said. “Ain’t going to happen. But you’re going to get a damned good martini.”

    Mr. DeGroff actually prefers Glenlivet on the rocks, and said that a freshly made one will be waiting for him by the time he walks from the entrance to  a barstool. More than that, he knows that if there’s someone at the bar whom he might enjoy talking to, Mr. Quinn will figure that out and make it happen, a master of human mixology above all.

    You need to see him in action, not least because his  126-year-old stage is one of the city’s classic bars, what he calls “the Vatican of saloons,” a living diorama of a certain era and sensibility, with its penny-tile floors, carved mahogany bar, tin ceiling and stained-glass transoms.

    Other servers there wear white shirts with dark neckties; Mr. Quinn wears pastels, sometimes with French cuffs and cufflinks, and always, always with a vividly colored bow tie — it’s his thing, plus a bow tie never flies up, flaps around or otherwise slows him down. A forelock of his hair, glistening with product, usually dangles low across his brow. He should be in a carrel at Oxford.

    Or on a cricket field there. Along with the coordination of an athlete, he has the build of one: 6 feet 2 inches, broad-shouldered, trim. He has been known to leave P. J. Clarke’s after his 6 p.m.-to-4 a.m. shift, which he works Monday through Friday, and hit the 24 Hour Fitness club nearby before heading to the Upper East Side, where he lives with his wife and their sons, ages 5 and 3.

    He grew up in Rockland County, majored in economics at Vassar, began bartending before graduation and never stopped. He popped up behind the bar at P. J. Clarke’s in 2003, when it reopened after a meticulous restoration.

    It’s a lucrative gig. On many nights about 500 customers will cycle through, and while there are stretches when he has help, there are also stretches when he doesn’t. Most customers have more than one drink. Virtually all leave tips.

    But to talk to him — as I did after two stealth visits when I merely drank and watched — is to know that money isn’t his main thing. He’s testing himself. Performing. Making people marvel at him. Making people love him.

    “When they come here, they’re in my home,” he said. “They’re in my church.”

    He packs a double-wide opener so he can flick the lids off two beer bottles at once. When smoking was allowed, he carried 10 lighters, because some would get wet and some lost, and he didn’t want to lose a second or a step by having to fetch another.

    But being armed and agile isn’t the half of it. “A great bartender will get you a date for the evening, get you a job and get you a new apartment,” he said.

    He is proudly anachronistic, calling female customers “doll,” “darling” and “baby,” a term of endearment he also uses for male customers, along with “brother” and “man.”

    Of course he met his wife, an advertising executive, when he was behind the bar. “She was probably one of the most beautiful women who ever set foot in here,” he said. “She couldn’t take her eyes off me. She’ll tell you I hit on her.”

    He certainly proceeded to, dispatching a barback  to a nearby bodega to fetch a dozen roses for her the third time she came in. For a while she resisted his requests for a date, but then she brought her mother around. Showtime.

    “Usually, I put the hook in someone’s mouth,” he said. “I had the hook in her mom’s belly.”

    He said there aren’t any cheats or tricks to his memory, which one P. J. Clarke’s regular, a trial lawyer named Paul Hanly, described to me as “canny, totally uncanny — truly as photographic as it gets.”

    He will brighten or dim the lighting if he senses the need, and he will nix Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” if the jukebox starts to play it when the bulk of the crowd are in their 20s and 30s.

    But he has boundaries. “I try to teach people how to behave in a saloon,” he said. “Don’t ask for a Red Bull and vodka. You want an energy drink? I have coffee.”

    The Tipsy Diaries is a new column about the city’s drinking life that will run every other week.

     

    Copyright. 2011 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved 


     

  • Tide of Death. Thousands of Bodies Washing Ashore in Aftermath of Japanese Quake.

    Jay Alabaster and Todd Pitman

         AP   
         TAKAJO, Japan – A tide of bodies washed up along Japan’s coastline Monday, overwhelming crematoriums, exhausting supplies of body bags and adding to the spiraling humanitarian, economic and nuclear crisis after the massive earthquake and tsunami.

    Millions of people faced a fourth night without water, food or heating in near-freezing temperatures along the northeast coast devastated by Friday’s disasters. Meanwhile, a third reactor at a nuclear power plant lost its cooling capacity and its fuel rods were fully exposed, raising fears of a meltdown. The stock market plunged over the likelihood of huge losses by Japanese industries including big names such as Toyota and Honda.

    On the coastline of Miyagi prefecture, which took the full force of the tsunami, a Japanese police official said 1,000 bodies were found scattered across the coastline. Kyodo, the Japanese news agency, reported that 2,000 bodies washed up on two shorelines in Miyagi.

    In one town in a neighboring prefecture, the crematorium was unable to handle the large number of bodies being brought in for funerals.

    “We have already begun cremations, but we can only handle 18 bodies a day. We are overwhelmed and are asking other cites to help us deal with bodies. We only have one crematorium in town,” Katsuhiko Abe, an official in Soma, told The Associated Press.

    While the official death toll rose to nearly 1,900, the discovery of the washed-up bodies and other reports of deaths suggest the true number is much higher. In Miyagi, the police chief has said 10,000 people are estimated to have died in his province alone.

    The outspoken governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, told reporters Monday that the disaster was “punishment from heaven” because Japanese have become greedy.

    Across Japan, most people opt to cremate their dead. With so many bodies, the government on Monday waived a rule requiring permission first from local authorities before cremation or burial to speed up funerals, said Health Ministry official Yukio Okuda.

    “The current situation is so extraordinary, and it is very likely that crematoriums are running beyond capacity,” said Okuda. “This is an emergency measure. We want to help quake-hit people as much as we can.”

    Friday’s double tragedy has caused unimaginable deprivation for people of this industrialized country – Asia’s richest – which hasn’t seen such hardship since World War II. In many areas there is no running water, no power and four- to five-hour waits for gasoline. People are suppressing hunger with instant noodles or rice balls while dealing with the loss of loved ones and homes.

    “People are surviving on little food and water. Things are simply not coming,” said Hajime Sato, a government official in Iwate prefecture, one of the hardest hit.

    Sato said deliveries of food and other supplies were just 10 percent of what is needed. Body bags and coffins were running so short that the government may turn to foreign funeral homes for help, he said.

    “We have requested funeral homes across the nation to send us many body bags and coffins. But we simply don’t have enough,” he said. “We just did not expect such a thing to happen. It’s just overwhelming.”

    The pulverized coast has been hit by hundreds of aftershocks since Friday, the latest one a 6.2 magnitude quake that was followed by a new tsunami scare Monday.

    As sirens wailed, soldiers abandoned their search operations and told residents of the devastated shoreline in Soma, the worst hit town in Fukushima prefecture, to run to safety.

    They barked out orders: “Find high ground! Get out of here!” Several soldiers were seen leading an old woman up a muddy hillside. The warning turned out to be a false alarm and interrupted the efforts of search parties who arrived in Soma for the first time since Friday to dig out bodies.

    Ambulances stood by and body bags were laid out in an area cleared of debris, as firefighters used hand picks and chain saws to clear a jumble of broken timber, plastic sheets, roofs, sludge, twisted cars, tangled power lines and household goods.

    Ships were flipped over near roads, a half-mile (a kilometer) inland. Officials said one-third of the city of 38,000 people was flooded and thousands were missing.

    Though Japanese officials have refused to speculate on how high the death toll could rise, an expert who dealt with the 2004 Asian tsunami offered a dire outlook.

    “It’s a miracle really, if it turns out to be less than 10,000″ dead, said Hery Harjono, a senior geologist with the Indonesian Science Institute, who was closely involved with the aftermath of the earlier disaster that killed 230,000 people – of which only 184,000 bodies were found.

    He drew parallels between the two disasters – notably that many bodies in Japan may have been sucked out to sea or remain trapped beneath rubble as they did in Indonesia’s hardest-hit Aceh province. But he also stressed that Japan’s infrastructure, high-level of preparedness and city planning to keep houses away from the shore could mitigate its human losses.

    According to public broadcaster NHK, some 430,000 people are living in emergency shelters or with relatives. Another 24,000 people are stranded, it said.

    One reason for the loss of power is the damage to several nuclear reactors in the area. At one plant, Fukushima Dai-ichi, three reactors have lost the ability to cool down. A building holding one of them exploded on Monday. Operators were dumping sea water into all three reactors in a final attempt to cool their superheated containers that faced possible meltdown. If that happens, they could release radioactive material in the air.

    Though people living within a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius were ordered to leave over the weekend, authorities told anyone remaining there or in nearby areas to stay inside their homes following the blast.

    Military personnel on helicopters returning to ships with the U.S. 7th Fleet registered low-level of radioactive contamination Monday, but were cleared after a scrub-down. As a precaution, the ships shifted to a different area off the coast.

    So far, Tokyo Electric Power, the nuclear plant’s operator, is holding off on imposing the rolling blackouts it earlier said it would need but the utility urged people to limit electricity use. To help reduce the power load, many regional train lines were suspended or operating on a limited schedule.

    The impact that lack of electricity, damaged roads and railways and ruined plants would have on the world’s third-largest economy helped drag down the share markets on Monday, the first business day since the disasters. The benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average fell 6.2 percent while the broader Topix index lost 7.5 percent.

    To lessen the damage, Japan’s central bank injected 15 trillion yen (US$184 billion) into money markets.

    Beyond the stock exchanges, recovering from the disaster is likely to weigh on already debt-burdened Japan, which has barely managed weak growth between slowdowns for 20 years.

    Initial estimates put repair costs in the tens of billions of dollars, costs that would likely add to a massive public debt that, at 200 percent of gross domestic product, is the biggest among industrialized nations.  
     
     
     
     
    Copyright. 2011 AP News All Rights Reserved

  • Partial Meltdowns Presumed at Crippled Reactors

    Daisuke Tomita/Yomiuri Shimbun, via Associated Press

    Hospital patients who might have been exposed to radiation were carried into a radiation treatment center in Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, on Sunday.

     

    March 13, 2011

    Partial Meltdowns Presumed at Crippled Reactors

    By HIROKO TABUCHI and MATTHEW L. WALD

    TOKYO — Japanese officials struggled on Sunday to contain a quickly escalating nuclear crisis in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake and tsunami, saying they presumed that partial meltdowns had occurred at two crippled reactors, and that they were bracing for a second explosion, even as problems were reported at two more nuclear plants.       

    That brings the total number of troubled plants to four, including one that is about 75 miles north of Tokyo.       

    The emergency at the hardest hit plant, Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, appeared to be the worst involving a nuclear plant since the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago, and at least 22 residents near the plant showed signs of radiation exposure, according to local officials. The crisis at that plant, which is much further from Tokyo, continued late Sunday.       

    A day after an explosion at one reactor there, Japanese nuclear officials said Sunday that operators at the plant had suffered a setback trying to bring the second reactor thought to be in partial meltdown there under control. The operators need to inject water to help cool the reactor and keep it from proceeding to a full meltdown, but a valve malfunctioned on Sunday, hampering their efforts for much of the day.       

    Pressure at the reactor rose during the delay, leading to increased worries of an explosion. At a late-night press conference, officials at Tokyo Electric Power Co., which runs the plant, said the valve had been fixed, but said water levels had not yet begun rising.       

    Until late Sunday, the government had declared an emergency at only two nuclear plants, Daiichi and the nearby Fukushima Daini.       

    Then, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Japan had added a third to the list because radiation had been detected outside the plant, which is about 60 miles from Sendai, a city of 1 million people in Japan’s northeast. The government did not immediately confirm the report from the I.A.E.A., which said it was not yet clear what caused the release of radiation.       

    Soon after that announcement, Kyodo News reported that a plant about 75 miles north of Tokyo was having cooling system problems.       

    The government was scrambling Sunday to test people who lived near the Daiichi plant, with local officials saying that about 170 people had likely been exposed, but it was unclear if they or the 22 who showed signs of exposure had received dangerous doses. Early Sunday, the government said three workers were suffering full-out radiation illness.       

    The developments at Daiichi and Daini prompted the evacuation of about 80,000 people.       

    On Sunday, Kumiko Fukaya, 48, who fled the area with several family members, she had been lulled into a false sense of complacency because, she said, the plant 12 miles from her home had not had serious problems before. Then, on 7:30 Saturday morning, loudspeakers throughout her town of Tomioka blared a call for evacuation.       

    “The entire town was enriched by Tokyo Power,” she said. “I thought they picked a safe and secure location. So instead of opposing the nuclear plant, I felt more security.       

    “Now I realize it’s a scary thing.”       

    Japanese officials said they had also ordered up the largest mobilization of their Self-Defense Forces since World War II to assist in the quake relief effort, including helping with the evacuation of people around the plants.       

    On Saturday, Japanese officials took the extraordinary step of flooding the crippled No. 1 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, 170 miles north of Tokyo, with seawater in a last-ditch effort to avoid a nuclear meltdown. That came after an explosion caused by hydrogen that tore the outer wall and roof off the building housing the reactor, although the steel containment of the reactor remained in place.       

    Then on Sunday, cooling failed at a second reactor there — No. 3 — and core melting was presumed at both, said the top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano. Even before the valve problem at that reaction, Mr. Edano warned of a possible explosion at that reactor because of a buildup of hydrogen.       

    “The possibility that hydrogen is building up in the upper parts of the reactor building cannot be denied. There is a possibility of a hydrogen explosion,” Mr. Edano said. He stressed that as in the No. 1 unit, the reactor’s steel containment would withstand the explosion.       

    “It is designed to withstand shocks,” he said.       

    Officials also said they would release steam and inject water into a third reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant after temperatures rose and water levels fell around the fuel rods.       

    Cooling had failed at another three reactors at Fukushima Daini, although he said conditions there were considered less dire for now.       

    With high pressure inside the reactors at Daiichi hampering efforts to pump in cooling water, plant operators had to release radioactive vapor into the atmosphere. Radiation levels outside the plant, which had retreated overnight, shot up to 1,204 microsieverts per hour, or over twice Japan’s legal limit, Mr. Edano said.       

    NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster, flashed instructions to evacuees: close doors and windows; place a wet towel over the nose and mouth; cover up as much as possible. At a news conference, Mr. Edano called for calm. “If measures can be taken, we will be able to ensure the safety of the reactor,” he said.       

    Before Mr. Edano’s statement on Sunday, it was clear from the radioactive materials turning up in trace amounts outside the reactors that fuel damage had occurred. The existence or extent of melting might not be clear until workers can open the reactors and examine the fuel, which could be months from now.       

    Even before the explosion on Saturday, officials said they had detected radioactive cesium, which is created when uranium fuel is split, an indication that some of the nuclear fuel in the reactor was already damaged.       

    How much damage the fuel suffered remained uncertain, though safety officials insisted repeatedly through the day that radiation leaks outside the plant remained small and did not pose a major health risk.       

    However, they also told the I.A.E.A. that they were distributing iodine, which can help protect the thyroid gland from radiation exposure, to people living near Daiichi and Daini.       

    Worries about the safety of the two plants worsened on Saturday because executives of the company that runs them, Tokyo Electric Power, and government officials gave confusing accounts of the location and causes of the dramatic midday explosion and the damage it caused.       

    Late Saturday night, officials said that the explosion at Daiichi occurred in a structure housing turbines near its No. 1 reactor at the plant, rather than inside the reactor itself. But photographs of the damage did not make clear that this was the case.       

    They said that the blast, which may have been caused by a sharp buildup of hydrogen when the reactor’s cooling system failed, destroyed the concrete structure surrounding the reactor but did not collapse the critical steel container inside. This pattern of damage cast doubt on the idea that the explosion was in the turbine building.       

    “We’ve confirmed that the reactor container was not damaged,” Mr. Edano said in a news conference on Saturday night. “The explosion didn’t occur inside the reactor container. As such there was no large amount of radiation leakage outside. At this point, there has been no major change to the level of radiation leakage outside, so we’d like everyone to respond calmly.”       

    On Sunday morning, an official with Tokyo Electric Power said that the emergency cooling system at the No. 3 reactor at Daiichi had stopped working. The official, Atsushi Sugiyama, said that urgent efforts were being made to cool the reactor with water, and that, as with the first reactor, there would be a release of vapor containing trace amounts of radiation to relieve a buildup of pressure.       

    Japanese nuclear safety officials and international experts said that because of crucial design differences, the release of radiation at Daiichi would most likely be much smaller than at Chernobyl even if the plant had a complete core meltdown, which they said it had not.       

    After a full day of worries about the radiation leaking at Daiichi, Tokyo Electric Power said an explosion occurred “near” the No. 1 reactor at Daiichi around 3:40 p.m. Japan time on Saturday. It said four of its workers were injured in the blast.       

    The decision to flood the reactor core with corrosive seawater, experts said, was an indication that Tokyo Electric Power and Japanese authorities had probably decided to scrap the plant. “This plant is almost 40 years old, and now it’s over for that place,” said Olli Heinonen, the former chief inspector for the I.A.E.A., and now a visiting scholar at Harvard.       

    Mr. Heinonen lived in Japan in the 1980s, monitoring its nuclear industry, and visited the stricken plant many times. Based on the reports he was seeing, he said he believed that the explosion was caused by a hydrogen formation, which could have begun inside the reactor core. “Now, every hour they gain in keeping the reactor cooling down is crucial,” he said.       

    But he was also concerned about the presence of spent nuclear fuel in a pool inside the same reactor building. The pool, too, needs to remain full of water to suppress gamma radiation and prevent the old fuel from melting. If the spent fuel is also exposed — and so far there are only sketchy reports about the condition of that building — it could also pose a significant risk to the workers trying to prevent a meltdown.       

    Both Daiichi and Daini were shut down by Friday’s earthquake, but the loss of power in the area and damage to the plants’ generators from the ensuing tsunami crippled the cooling systems. Those are crucial after a shutdown to cool down the nuclear fuel rods.       

    The malfunctions allowed pressure to build up beyond the design capacity of the reactors. Early Saturday, officials had said that small amounts of radioactive vapor were expected to be released into the atmosphere to prevent damage to the containment systems and to lower the pressure enough so they could pump in cooling water. They said they were evacuating people in the area as a precaution.       

    Those releases apparently did not prevent the buildup of hydrogen inside the plant, which ignited and exploded Saturday afternoon, government officials said. They said the explosion itself did not increase the amount of radioactive material being released into the atmosphere. However, safety officials urged people who were not evacuating but still lived relatively nearby to cover their mouths and stay indoors.       

    David Lochbaum, who worked at three reactors in the United States with designs similar to Daiichi, and who was later hired by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to teach its personnel about that technology, said that judging by photographs of the stricken plant, the explosion appeared to have occurred in the turbine hall, not the reactor vessel or the containment that surrounds the vessel.       

    The Daiichi reactor is a boiling-water reactor. Inside the containment, the reactor sends its steam out to a turbine. The turbine converts the steam’s energy into rotary motion, which turns a generator and makes electricity.       

    But as the water goes through the reactor, some water molecules break up into hydrogen and oxygen. A system in the turbine hall usually scrubs out those gases. Hydrogen is also used in the turbine hall to cool the electric generator. Hydrogen from both sources has sometimes escaped and exploded, Mr. Lochbaum said, but in this case, there is an additional source of hydrogen: interaction of steam with the metal of the fuel rods. Operators may have vented that hydrogen into the turbine hall.       

    Earlier Saturday, before the explosion, a Japanese nuclear safety panel said the radiation levels were 1,000 times above normal in a reactor control room at Daiichi. Some radioactive material had also seeped outside, with radiation levels near the main gate measured at eight times normal levels, NHK quoted nuclear safety officials as saying.       

    The emergency at Daiichi began shortly after the earthquake struck Friday afternoon. Emergency diesel generators, which kicked in to run the cooling system after the electrical power grid failed, shut down about an hour after the earthquake. There was speculation that the tsunami had flooded the generators, knocking them out of service.       

    For some time, the plant was able to operate in a battery-controlled cooling mode. Tokyo Electric Power said that by Saturday morning it had also installed a mobile generator to ensure that the cooling system would continue operating even after reserve battery power was depleted. Even so, the company said it needed to conduct “controlled containment venting” in order to avoid an “uncontrolled rupture and damage” to the containment unit.       

    Why the controlled release of pressure did not succeed in addressing the problem was not immediately explained. Tokyo Electric Power and government nuclear safety officials also did not explain the precise sequence of failures at the plant.       

    Daiichi and other nuclear facilities are designed with extensive backup systems that are supposed to function in emergencies to ensure the plants can be shut down safely.       

    Hiroko Tabuchi reported from Tokyo, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington. Martin Fackler contributed reporting from Nakaminato, Japan, David E. Sanger from Washington, and Michael Wines from Tokyo.
    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

  • Death Toll Estimate in Japan Soars as Relief Efforts Intensify

    Kyodo News, via Associated Press

    Parents look at the body of their daughter they found in the vehicle of a driving school in Yamamoto, Miyagi Prefecture. More Photos »

     

    March 13, 2011

    Death Toll Estimate in Japan Soars as Relief Efforts Intensify

    By MARTIN FACKLER and MARK McDONALD

    SENDAI, Japan — Japan faced mounting humanitarian and nuclear emergencies Sunday as the death toll from Friday’s earthquake and tsunami climbed astronomically, partial meltdowns occurred at two crippled plants and cooling problems struck four more reactors.       

    In one town alone, the port of Minamisanriku, a senior police official said the number of dead would “certainly be more than 10,000.” The overall number is also certain to climb as searchers began to reach coastal villages that essentially vanished under the first muddy surge of the tsunami, which struck the nation’s northern Pacific coast. Prime Minister Naoto Kan told anews conference late Sunday: “I think that the earthquake, tsunami and the situation at our nuclear reactors makes up the worst crisis in the 65 years since the war. If the nation works together, we will overcome.”       

    The government ordered 100,000 troops into relief roles in the field — nearly half the country’s active military force and the largest mobilization in postwar Japan. An American naval strike group led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan also arrived off Japan on Sunday to help with refueling, supply and rescue duties.       

    Amid the despair and mourning, amid the worry over an unrelenting series of strong aftershocks, there was one bright moment on Sunday morning as Japanese naval forces rescued a 60-year-old man who had been riding the roof of his house for the past two days.       

    Hiromitsu Arakawa’s tiny home in the town of Minami-soma was torn from its foundations by the first wave of the tsunami that crashed ashore Friday afternoon, the defense ministry said. Mr. Arakawa saw his wife slip away in the deluge, and he clung to the roof as the house drifted away. He was discovered late Sunday morning, still on his roof, 9 miles south of his hometown and 9 miles out to sea.       

    The quake was the strongest ever recorded to hit Japan, which sits astride the notorious “ring of fire” that marks the most violent seismic activity in the Pacific Basin. On Sunday, the Japanese Meteorological Agency “upgraded” the quake’s magnitude from 8.8 to 9.0, an effective doubling of its recorded power.Nuclear officials in Fukushima shut down three reactors after the tsunami on Friday but an explosion tore through the No. 1 reactor building on Saturday.       

    When the cooling system on the No. 3 reactor also began to fail Sunday, workers pumped seawater and boron into it. Yukio Edano, the government’s chief cabinet secretary, warned Sunday of the possibility of an explosion at No. 3 — and the chance of meltdowns at both reactors.       

    Some 80,000 people were ordered to evacuate danger zones around two atomic facilities in Fukushima. Japanese officials reported that 19 people showed signs of radiation exposure and as many as another 141 were feared to have been exposed, including some who had been outside the plant waiting to be evacuated. . Three workers are suffering from full-on radiation sickness.       

    Northern Japan relies heavily on nuclear power for its electricity, and the government said it was instituting a series of rolling blackouts across the country starting Monday to make up for the diminished capacity from the reactor failures at Fukushima.       

    In a televised address the trade minister, Banri Kaieda, asked businesses to limit their use of power as they returned to operation on Monday. He asked specifically for nighttime cutbacks of lights and heating.       

    In Sendai, a city of roughly a million people in the region at the center of the catastrophe, many buildings cracked but none had collapsed. Still, city officials said that more than 500,000 households and businesses were without water, and many more lacked electricity as well.       

    Soldiers surrounded Sendai’s City Hall, where officials converted two floors to treat evacuees and drew power from a generator. Thousands of residents sought refuge inside waiting anxiously for word from their relatives. A line of people waited outside with plastic bottles and buckets in hand to collect water from a pump.       

    Masaki Kokubum, 35, has been living in City Hall since the quake. He works at a supermarket, and his neighborhood lost power and water. He said he had not slept in three days, and as he spoke he seemed dazed.       

    “I can’t sleep,” he said as he sat in a chair in a hallway. “I just sit here and wait.” Aerial photos on Sunday showed floodwaters receding from the runways at the airport in Sendai, which is the capital of Miyagi prefecture.       

    “The rescue is going on through the night, of course,” Michael Tonge, a teacher from Britain, said early Sunday morning from his home in the city.       

    No buildings had collapsed in his neighborhood, Mr. Tonge said, and people were not panicking — typical of a nation accustomed to order and schooled to stay calm and constructive.       

    “The few shops open have people queuing nicely,” he said, “with no pushing or fighting or anything.” Tokyo and central Japan continued to be struck by aftershocks from quakes off the eastern coast of Honshu Island, and United States agencies recorded 90 smaller quakes throughout the day Saturday. A long tremor registering 6.2 caused buildings in central Tokyo to sway dramatically on Sunday morning.       

    Search teams from more than a dozen nations were bound for Japan, including a unit from New Zealand, which suffered a devastating quake last month in Christchurch. A Japanese team that had been working in New Zealand also was called home.       

    A combined search squad from Los Angeles County and Fairfax County, Va., arrived from the United States with 150 personnel and a dozen sniffer dogs.       

    Assistance teams also were due from China and South Korea, two of Japan’s traditional and most bitter rivals. Tokyo’s acceptance of these offers of help —along with a parade of senior officials offering updates at televised news conferences on Sunday —was in marked contrast to government policies after the 1995 Kobe earthquake, which killed more than 6,000 people. The government refused most offers of aid at the time, put restrictions on foreign aid operations and offered little information about the disaster.       

    .       

    Martin Fackler reported from Sendai, Japan, and Mark McDonald from Tokyo. Moshe Komata and Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo.

     

    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

  • Tsunami surge deals blow to struggling Calif. town

    First Person: California harbor hit by tsunamiPlay VideoAP         – First Person: California harbor hit by tsunami       
    Crescent City port damagedAP – ** RETRANSMISSION TO CORRECT STATE ** Boats and debris litter the water, Friday, March 11, 2011 at the …
    By JEFF BARNARD, Associated Press        Jeff Barnard, Associated Press–    44 mins ago

    CRESCENT CITY, Calif. – Harbor crews are assessing the damage caused by powerful tsunami surges that pounded this northern California port, sinking or damaging dozens of boats and wreaking havoc on port facilities.

    “This harbor is the lifeblood of our community,” Del Norte County Sheriff Dean Wilson said as he scanned the wreckage from waves touched off by a massive earthquake in Japan late last week.

    Last year saw landings of crab and fish worth $12.5 million. “The fishing industry is the identity and soul of this community, besides tourism,” he said Saturday.

    The region has never recovered from the loss of the timber industry in the 1980s and 1990s, and downturns in salmon fishing, said Wilson, who fished on his father’s boats as a young man.

    A series of powerful surges generated by the quake arrived about 7:30 a.m. Friday and pounded the harbor. Eight boats were believed sunk and dozens of others damaged; an unmanned sailboat sucked out of the harbor ran aground on the coast.

    Crews are beginning the enormous task of determining and then repairing the damage to the port, where a sheen of oil floated in the basin. Seagulls feasted on mussels exposed by upended docks. About 80 percent of the docks that once sheltered 140 boats were gone.

    “Our port is struggling,” said Kevin Wilson, manager of Nor-Cal Seafood Inc. “Since the last tsunami in ’06, they secured the funds to fix it, and this took away all the stuff they were gonna build off.”

    Crab fisherman Lee Wilson returned to find his boat, the Gold Coast, mostly unscathed. It has survived its second tsunami — the first, a 1964 swarm that killed 11 in the city, had pushed it up on the rocks of the break wall.

    Despite the severity of the damage that has drawn curious onlookers to survey the port even in the rain, Kevin Wilson has returned to business. He bought crab from fishermen who decided to work after leaving in the early Friday darkness to escape the waves.

    “We’ve been down here in hurricane-force winds before, and we’ll keep working,” he said.

    For the crews tasked with repairs, it would be a longer wait. Divers could not go into the water and workboats could not maneuver until the tsunami surges end, said Alexia Retallack, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Fish and Game. Local officials were keeping a close eye on Japan through the weekend, in case aftershocks cause another tidal surge.

    About 20 miles south, the family of a 25-year-old Oregon man combed the beach looking for signs of him. Authorities say Dustin Weber was swept away as he and two friends photographed the waves.

    “He just didn’t respect the ocean and didn’t understand the tsunami,” his father, Jon Weber, said. “The (first surge) hit about 7:30. It was the second wave that hit at 9:30 that got him.”

    “I think he expected the wave to come out of the ocean, but it didn’t. It came down the shore,” he said.

    Santa Cruz harbor, 350 miles to the south, was the only other California port hard-hit by the waves. But the commercial fishing industry was minimally affected. Most of the 850 boats were pleasure boats, including 60 that are lived in full-time.

    Cranes hauled up sunken boats — some possibly salvageable, others snapped into pieces — while crews in life jackets and rubber boots waded near the shore, yanking chunks of broken docks, floating hunks of foam and other trash from the water.

    Port Director Lisa Ekers said the tsunami caused at least $17.1 million in damage to the harbor, and another $4 million to private boats. Gov. Jerry Brown issued an emergency declaration for the harbor, which can expedite funding for repairs.

    One dock, with close to 40 boats, was ripped out during the surges. So far, they found 18 vessels “sitting on the bottom,” creating an environmental risk from leaking fuel, Ekers said.

    A dock-load of high-end rowing boats and kayaks also was washed away, and dozens more boats that smashed into each other or were hit by debris, would need major repairs.

    Across the ocean in Hawaii, the waves damaged at least 60 homes, sank up to 15 boats, and battered hundreds of vessels. But authorities said they were thankful there was no loss of life or injuries reported; residents had hours to prepare or evacuate as the tsunami rushed from Japan at 500 mph.

    Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark said that in addition to evacuating residents in low-lying areas, his officers had to do crowd control as townspeople gathered to watch the swells.

    “A tsunami watch doesn’t mean go watch the tsunami,” he said.

    On a boat ride through the harbor, Assistant Harbormaster Larry White pointed to buckled piers, snapped masts and hulls of flipped boats bobbing in the brown, pungent water, which rose and fell in usually strong swells generated in Japan.

    He shook his head, remembering the moment when the tsunami first sucked the water out of the harbor out to sea — a sudden 9-foot drop.

    “It was like the earth opening up,” he said. “It was incredible.”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Martha Mendoza in Santa Cruz, Calif., contributed to this report

     

    Copyright. 2011. Yahoonews.com. All Rights Reserved

  • Carnage on I-95 After Crash Rips Bus Apart

    David Karp/Associated Press

    The top of the charter bus was sliced open by a sign stanchion.

    A passenger on the bus said that those at the back were not as severely injured as those at the front, some of whom were mangled by the inrushing pole.                           

    March 12, 2011

    Carnage on I-95 After Crash Rips Bus Apart

    By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

    A tour bus barreling south for Manhattan overturned at high speed on a highway in the Bronx early Saturday and was sliced open by a sign stanchion in a shriek of rending metal that hurled riders about like rag dolls. Fourteen people were killed and 19 were injured, 5 of them critically, the authorities said.       

    Victims of the accident, which happened about 5:30 a.m. on Interstate 95 just across the Bronx line from Westchester County, were returning to Chinatown on a chartered bus from the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Conn. Some described grisly scenes of mayhem: at least one person decapitated, others maimed, people hanging upside down, victims gashed by flying glass, screaming in the darkness and struggling to get out. Some were thrown out on the ground, others were trapped in a maze of metal.       

    The crash cast a grim light on a nocturnal New York City subculture of overnight gamblers, many of them older Asian and Hispanic people, who take cheap buses from Chinatown to casinos in Connecticut and New Jersey, play the slots and tables for a few hours and catch an after-midnight bus home, usually sleeping on the trip back and often arriving just in time to get to return to work.       

    The driver, Ophadell Williams, 40, survived. He told the authorities that his bus was clipped by a passing tractor-trailer, which sped away, an assertion that the police later said was under investigation.       

    Out of control, the bus began swerving, toppled on its right side and skidded for 100 yards along a guardrail in showers of sparks, then rammed into the support pole of a large green sign pointing to the Hutchinson River Parkway exit.       

    The pole burst through the front window and sheared the bus in half laterally, from front to back, along the passenger window line, the police said. Firefighters found a section of guardrail inside the shattered bus amid unspeakable carnage.       

    “It was a pile of humans, either still in their seats or on the floor, wrapped in the metal, wrapped in the wreckage,” said Capt. James Ellson, 42, a 20-year veteran of rescues and fires who was among the first on the scene. “They were in the full length of the bus, from the front to the rear there were bodies. It was just a pile.”       

    Captain Ellson said body parts were strewn about, and he described the rescue of a man trapped between the pole and the roofline with a two-inch-square chunk of roof metal impaled in his back. The man was alive, his eyes open, but trapped under three bodies — “two of them were obviously dead, and one of them was alive,” the captain said.       

    One passenger, Jose Hernandez, said people were “screaming for help.” He saw a woman whose arm was missing. “We tried to help people, but there was twisted metal in the way,” he said.       

    One city official, who asked not to be identified, said that the sign post “had come through at midchest, on the seat-high level, and had killed people.”       

    The dead were taken to morgues and the injured were taken to Jacobi Medical Center and St. Barnabas Hospital, both in the Bronx. The identities of the victims were not released. Thirty-two people were on board, in addition to Mr. Williams. They ranged in age from their 20s to their 50s, officials said. Nine of those who were taken to hospitals had been released by Saturday night.       

    Dennis Yeh, 62, of Queens, said that his brother, Michael Yeh, 66, a retired supermarket worker who lived in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, was among those killed in the crash. Mr. Yeh, who was at Bellevue Hospital Center on Saturday night, said that the authorities had shown him a photograph of his brother that had been taken after the crash. “The impact was so bad” that it was difficult to identify him, Mr. Yeh said.       

    Investigators said the bus was apparently in the right-hand lane and the tractor-trailer was in the center lane, passing the bus. At the rear of the tractor-trailer was a step, on the right-hand side, and the driver said he believed the step clipped his front bumper.       

    The police said that it had not yet been determined whether the bus was actually hit by the tractor-trailer, or whether the bus driver, upon seeing it, himself began to swerve.       

    Later, at an evening news conference, Major Michael Kopy of the State Police said that the authorities had seized a trailer on Long Island and a tractor in Westchester County, and taken them to a police compound in Farmingdale to determine if they may have clipped the bus.       

    Major Kopy also said that the police had received several reports that the bus driver had been speeding on the Interstate, where the limit is 55 miles per hour. The bus driver’s blood was tested for alcohol and drugs, and the results are pending.       

    The police have obtained a video taken from inside the bus but have not yet reviewed it, Major Kopy said.       

    For hours after the crash, investigators examined the wreckage of the black bus, which lay on its side on a highway strewn with shattered glass, passenger bags, shreds of clothing and other debris.       

    The stretch of highway near the crash is dotted with surveillance cameras, but most are traffic cameras with no recording capability. Those with recording devices will be examined by investigators.       

    Officials of the National Transportation Safety Board were en route to New York. Initial interviews with passengers were difficult, in part because survivors who had been seated in the front, and were thus more likely to have seen what happened, were the most traumatized and severely injured, while those at the back were less seriously hurt but had no clear view of the crash.       

    Language difficulties also hampered the early police interviews. However, two Chinese-speaking state troopers and some Asian auxiliary police officers from the Fifth Precinct in Chinatown were sent to the hospitals to talk to survivors.       

    At St. Barnabas Hospital, Dr. Ernest F. Patti, the senior attending physician of emergency medicine, said five trauma patients, including the bus driver, had been admitted with injuries that included skull and rib fractures and lung and internal injuries.       

    Two of them, a man described as very critically injured, and a women, were being sustained by life-support mechanisms, he said.       

    Dr. Patti said the bus driver was in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries and was being interviewed by the authorities. “He’s obviously very much in distress,” the doctor said. He noted that an accident like Saturday’s “will put anybody into shock,” and that post-traumatic stress disorder might be common in the survivors.       

    The wife of a Jacobi Medical Center surgeon said her husband called her from work and described a passenger with a crushed skull and others with hand and arm amputations. She showed an iPhone photo, texted from Jacobi, of a hand and forearm, severed just below the elbow, lying on an operating table.       

    At Jacobi, Kevin Ng, who said his grandmother had been on the bus, said after a brief visit with her: “She’s O.K. for now. She’s about to go into surgery.” He said she had suffered a broken ankle and a minor concussion. “She was just in pain,” he added.       

    Gang Luo, who identified himself as the Chinese consul in New York, visited Jacobi and spoke to hospital officials. He quoted them as saying at least three people were in critical condition at the hospital. Fifteen people were taken to Jacobi after the accident, said a spokeswoman, Barbara Delorio.       

    Investigators said the bus, operated by World Wide Tours, a company based in Brooklyn, had picked up passengers at the Mohegan Sun casino for the three-hour trip to Manhattan. The charter was to make its first stop at Allen Street on the Lower East Side, and then was to end its run at the Bowery, in Chinatown.       

    The owners of World Side Tours issued a statement saying that the company was cooperating with investigators and expressing sympathy for the victims and their families.       

    World Wide Tours was recently flagged by federal regulators for troubles with fatigued drivers, although its overall safety record was satisfactory, according to the federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The company’s buses were involved in two crashes in the past two years that resulted in passenger injuries.       

    A city official said the accident on Saturday began in Westchester County but ended in the Bronx. Specialized rescue units from the New York Police and Fire Departments helped extricate victims and survivors, but the State Police were serving as the lead investigators of the accident.       

    The city’s Office of Emergency Management said it was opening a family assistance center to aid the victims’ families. The mayor said other city agencies would also offer assistance.       

    Reporting was contributed by Al Baker, Michael M. Grynbaum, Colin Moynihan, Nate Schweber, Tim Stelloh and Karen Zraick.

     Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

  • Japan Floods Nuclear Reactor Crippled by Quake in Effort to Avert Meltdown

    Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

    Officials checked for signs of radiation on children from the evacuation area near the Fukushima Daini nuclear plant in Koriyama. More Photos »

     

    March 12, 2011

    Japan Floods Nuclear Reactor Crippled by Quake in Effort to Avert Meltdown

    By MICHAEL WINES  and MATTHEW L. WALD

    TOKYO — Japanese officials took the extraordinary step on Saturday of flooding a crippled nuclear reactor with seawater in a last-ditch effort to avoid a nuclear meltdown, as the nation grappled simultaneously with its worst nuclear accident and the aftermath of its largest recorded earthquake.       

    A radiation leak and explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on Saturday prompted the government to expand an evacuation order to affect 170,000 people in the plant’s vicinity. And the plant’s operator issued an emergency notice early Sunday morning that a second reactor at the same aging plant was also experiencing critical failures of its cooling system, and that a way to inject water into the reactor to cool it was urgently being sought.       

    The government said that radiation emanating from the first reactor appeared to be decreasing after the blast on Saturday afternoon destroyed part of the facility, and they said that they had filled it with seawater to prevent full meltdown of the nuclear fuel. That step would be taken only in extreme circumstances because ocean water is likely to permanently disable the reactor.       

    The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial safety agency said as many as 160 people may have been exposed to radiation around the plant, and Japanese news media said three workers at the facility were suffering from full-on radiation sickness.       

    The handling of the crisis and the vulnerability of Japan’s extensive nuclear facilities to earthquakes and tsunamis will also add to long-simmering grass-roots resistance against nuclear power within Japan, where people have learned to doubt the industry’s reliability as well as anodyne official statements about safety.       

    Even if Japan manages to avoid large, uncontrolled releases of radiation that would result from a meltdown, the problems at the Fukushima facility already amounted to the worst nuclear accident in Japan’s history and perhaps the biggest accident at a nuclear plant since the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago, the worst ever.       

    Even before the explosion on Saturday, officials said they had detected radioactive cesium, which is created when uranium fuel is split, an indication that some of the nuclear fuel in the reactor was already damaged — a situation sometimes referred to as a partial meltdown. How much damage the fuel suffered remained uncertain, though safety officials insisted repeatedly through the day that radiation leaks outside the plant remained small and did not pose a major health risk.       

    However, they also told the International Atomic Energy Agency that they were making preparations to distribute iodine, which helps protect the thyroid gland from radiation exposure, to people living near the Daiichi (or No. 1) plant and a second nuclear plant that suffered damage in the quake, Daini (or No. 2), about 10 miles away.       

    Worries about the safety of the two plants worsened on Saturday because government officials and executives of the company that runs them, Tokyo Electric Power, gave confusing accounts of the causes of the dramatic midday explosion and the damage it caused. Late Saturday night, officials said that the explosion at Daiichi occurred in a structure housing turbines near its No. 1 reactor at the plant, rather than inside the reactor itself.       

    They said that the blast — apparently caused by a sharp buildup of hydrogen when the reactor’s cooling system failed after the quake — destroyed the concrete structure surrounding the reactor but did not collapse the critical steel container inside. They said that raised the chances that they could continue cooling the core, and thereby prevent the release of large amounts of radioactive material and a full core meltdown.       

    “We’ve confirmed that the reactor container was not damaged,” Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, said in a news conference on Saturday night. “The explosion didn’t occur inside the reactor container. As such there was no large amount of radiation leakage outside. At this point, there has been no major change to the level of radiation leakage outside, so we’d like everyone to respond calmly.”       

    Mr. Edano said that, in addition to filling the reactor with seawater, Tokyo Electric Power workers also added boric acid to the containment vessel on Saturday night to interrupt the nuclear chain reaction. Mr. Edano said that the operation could “prevent criticality.”       

    He said that radioactive materials had leaked outside the plant before the explosion, but that the blast did not worsen the leak and, in fact, measured levels of radioactive emission had been decreasing. He did not specify the levels of radiation involved.       

    On Sunday morning, an official with Tokyo Electric Power said that the emergency cooling system at the No. 3 reactor at Daiichi had stopped working. The official, Atsushi Sugiyama, said that urgent efforts were being made to cool the reactor with water, and that, as with the first reactor, there would be a release of vapor containing trace amounts of radiation to relieve a buildup of pressure.       

    Japanese nuclear safety officials and international experts said that because of crucial design differences, the release of radiation at Daiichi would most likely be much smaller than at Chernobyl even if the plant had a complete core meltdown, which they said it had not.       

    But the vulnerability of nuclear plants to earthquakes was underscored by the continuing problems with the cooling systems of reactors at the Daini plant, which prompted a evacuation of 30,000 from surrounding communities. Together, the authorities sought to move about 200,000 people around the two plants, an enormous logistical task at a time when rescue workers also sought to help people trapped or injured in the earthquake.       

    After a full day of worries about the radiation leaking at Daiichi, Tokyo Electric Power said an explosion occurred “near” the No. 1 reactor at Daiichi around 3:40 p.m. Japan time on Saturday. It said four of its workers were injured in the blast.       

    The decision to flood the reactor core with corrosive seawater, experts said, was an indication that Tokyo Electric Power and Japanese authorities had probably decided to scrap the plant. “This plant is almost 40 years old, and now it’s over for that place,” said Olli Heinonen, the former chief inspector for the I.A.E.A., and now a visiting scholar at Harvard.       

    Mr. Heinonen lived in Japan in the 1980s, monitoring its nuclear industry, and visited the stricken plant many times. Based on the reports he was seeing, he said he believed that the explosion was caused by a hydrogen formation, which could have begun inside the reactor core. “Now, every hour they gain in keeping the reactor cooling down is crucial,” he said.       

    But he was also concerned about the presence of spent nuclear fuel in a pool inside the same reactor building. The pool, too, needs to remain full of water to suppress gamma radiation and prevent the old fuel from melting. If the spent fuel is also exposed — and so far there are only sketchy reports about the condition of that building — it could also pose a significant risk to the workers trying to prevent a meltdown.       

    Both Daiichi and Daini were shut down by Friday’s earthquake, but the loss of power in the area and damage to the plants’ generators from the ensuing tsunami crippled the cooling systems. Those are crucial after a shutdown to cool down the nuclear fuel rods.       

    The malfunctions allowed pressure to build up beyond the design capacity of the reactors. Early Saturday, officials had said that small amounts of radioactive vapor were expected to be released into the atmosphere to prevent damage to the containment systems and that they were evacuating people in the area as a precaution.       

    Those releases apparently did not prevent the buildup of hydrogen inside the plant, which ignited and exploded Saturday afternoon, government officials said. They said the explosion itself did not increase the amount of radioactive material being released into the atmosphere. However, safety officials urged people who were not evacuating but still lived relatively nearby to cover their mouths and stay indoors.       

    David Lochbaum, who worked at three reactors in the United States with designs similar to Daiichi, and who was later hired by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to teach its personnel about that technology, said that judging by photographs of the stricken plant, the explosion appeared to have occurred in the turbine hall, not the reactor vessel or the containment that surrounds the vessel.       

    The Daiichi reactor is a boiling-water reactor. Inside the containment, the reactor sends its steam out to a turbine. The turbine converts the steam’s energy into rotary motion, which turns a generator and makes electricity.       

    But as the water goes through the reactor, some water molecules break up into hydrogen and oxygen. A system in the turbine hall usually scrubs out those gases. Hydrogen is also used in the turbine hall to cool the electric generator. Hydrogen from both sources has sometimes escaped and exploded, Mr. Lochbaum said, but in this case, there is an additional source of hydrogen: interaction of steam with the metal of the fuel rods. Operators may have vented that hydrogen into the turbine hall.       

    Earlier Saturday, before the explosion, a Japanese nuclear safety panel said the radiation levels were 1,000 times above normal in a reactor control room at Daiichi. Some radioactive material had also seeped outside, with radiation levels near the main gate measured at eight times normal levels, NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster, quoted nuclear safety officials as saying.       

    The emergency at Daiichi began shortly after the earthquake struck Friday afternoon. Emergency diesel generators, which kicked in to run the cooling system after the electrical power grid failed, shut down about an hour after the earthquake. There was speculation that the tsunami had flooded the generators, knocking them out of service.       

    For some time, the plant was able to operate in a battery-controlled cooling mode. Tokyo Electric Power said that by Saturday morning it had also installed a mobile generator to ensure that the cooling system would continue operating even after reserve battery power was depleted. Even so, the company said it needed to conduct “controlled containment venting” in order to avoid an “uncontrolled rupture and damage” to the containment unit.       

    Why the controlled release of pressure did not succeed in addressing the problem was not immediately explained. Tokyo Electric Power and government nuclear safety officials also did not explain the precise sequence of failures at the plant.       

    Daiichi and other nuclear facilities are designed with extensive backup systems that are supposed to function in emergencies to ensure the plants can be shut down safely.       

    At Daiichi, a pump run by steam, designed to function in the absence of electricity, was adding water to the reactor vessel, and as that water boiled off, the steam was being released. Such water is usually only slightly radioactive, according to nuclear experts.       

    As long as the fuel stays covered by water, it will remain intact, and the bulk of the radioactive material will stay inside. But if fresh water cannot be pumped into the containment vessel and the cooling water evaporates, the nuclear fuel is exposed, which can result in a meltdown.       

    Michael Wines reported from Tokyo, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington. Martin Fackler contributed reporting from Nakaminato, Japan, and David E. Sanger from Washington.
    Copyright. 2011. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

  • Updates and Video of Japanese Earthquake’s Aftermath


    March 12, 2011, 5:37 am
    By J. DAVID GOODMAN
    On Saturday, The Lede is continuing to track news out of Japan a day after a devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake and a deadly tsunami. Updates below mix news alerts with reports from bloggers and journalists on the ground.

    Auto-refresh is: ONTurn ONTurn OFF
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    1:58 P.M. |More on the Damaged Nuclear Reactor
    Despite an explosion this morning, the health risk from radiation leaking out of the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant is likely low, the World Health Organization said on Saturday.
    “At this moment it appears to be the case that the public health risk is probably quite low,” Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the organization, told Reuters. “We understand radiation that has escaped from the plant is very small in amount,”
    As the situation evolves in Fukushima, here’s some more information on the facility and the nuclear industry in Japan. The plant has six reactors, though only one appears to have suffered significant damage.
    According to a chart published by the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency, the damaged reactor was the first in operation at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s facility in Fukushima and began operating in 1971. Here’s an aerial view of the facility from the Japanese government:
    Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport An aerial view of the nuclear facility damaged in Friday’s tsunami.
    The plant’s current problems, stemming from the earthquake and tsunami, appeared likely to increase safety concerns over Japan’s extensive nuclear power facilities, which have been criticized for major safety violations in the past.
    Reuters reports that the company that operates the Fukushima facility and many others, know by its acronym TEPCO, has had its own troubles over the years, including falsified repair records and other safety issues.
    According to the World Nuclear Association, there are 54 nuclear reactors in Japan providing approximately 30 percent of the country’s electricity, with several more planned.
    Below is a map published by the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organziation of the locations of the country’s nuclear power plants.
    Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organziation Labels mark the locations of nuclear power plants around Japan.
    1:05 P.M. |Videos of a Narrow Escape and a Rescue in Japan
    Toward the end of this short news clip — in which a Japanese news anchor discusses the assistance to be provided by American rescue teams in the coming days — there is dramatic footage from Friday of a bus that appears to drive to higher ground only seconds before a wall of water rushes in:

    More than 300,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, according to Kyodo News, and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces are using helicopters to rescue many of those who are still trapped.
    The video below shows a helicopter rescuing a family on Saturday from their home in Souma City in the Fukushima prefecture.

    11:53 A.M. |Satellite Images Reveal Extent of Flooding
    Japan Satellite EarthquakeNASA via Reuters
    Satellite images of the Sendai region captured by NASA on Feb. 26, above left, and on Saturday reveal the extent of flooding along the northeastern coast nearest to the epicenter of Friday’s earthquake.
    11:28 A.M. |No Imminent Meltdown, but Plenty of Aftershocks
    U.S.G.S.The United States Geological Survey has been updating a Google map with aftershocks.
    The ground continued to shake in Japan from a series of aftershocks on Saturday, and the United States Geological Survey reported a new earthquake of 6.4 magnitude about 52 miles off the coast of Fukushima, where a damaged nuclear plant has been leaking radiation.
    Officials had announced plans to head off any threat of meltdown by cooling the reactor by pumping in sea water, but there were indications that the effort had to be put on hold because of new tsunami warnings after the large aftershocks off the coast.

    UPDATE 10: Sea water injection put on hold Battle to stabilise earthquake reactors http://bit.ly/eGgu4h #fukushima #nuclear #japanSat Mar 12 16:10:03 via TweetDeckWorld Nuclear News
    W_Nuclear_News


    As my colleague Matthew L. Wald writes, officials said that a major meltdown was not imminent. Reuters has been posting live updates on the reactor situation, but reliable information has been in short supply so far.
    Even the best tsunami defense in the world — at the plant and throughout Japan — appeared to be no match for seas that surged as high as 30 feet, effectively moving the ocean over top of the land.
    The Guardian posted satellite images of how the coastline was changed during the tsunami, along with the following amateur video of the water as it rushed through a parking long in Sendai airport. Shocked travelers watched from inside a terminal as cars wash away:

    As my colleague John Schwartz writes for the Week in Review:
    Japan is a rich, high-tech nation with much rough experience of seismic rumblings: those factors have led it to plan, and plan well, for disaster, with billions spent over the years on developing and deploying technologies to limit the damage from temblors and tsunamis.
    Those steps almost certainly kept the death count lower than it might otherwise be – especially in comparison with the multitudes lost in recent earthquakes in China and Haiti. Last Friday, however, showed the limits of what even the best preparation can do.
    “I’m still in shock,” said Ivan G. Wong, the principal seismologist of URS Corporation in Oakland, Calif., contemplating Japan’s efforts to resist earthquake damage and its parallels to building standards in this country.
    “This is really the best analogue we have for the United States,” he said, and “I’m just flabbergasted by the amount of damage we’re seeing.”
    10:42 A.M. |Thousands Missing After Quake
    NHK via Agence France-Presse A television image shows overturned train cars in Fukushima Prefecture on Saturday.
    Thousands of Japanese remain unaccounted for on Saturday, a day after an earthquake and tsunami flattened large sections of coastal towns across the country’s northeast.

    NHK reports that 5,000 homes in Rikuzentakada City, Iwate Prefecture, have been flooded. In Arahama, 2,700 homes are missing.Sat Mar 12 15:26:38 via webTimeOutTokyo
    TimeOutTokyo


    The Kyodo news agency reports that roughly 9,500 people are still missing in the town of Minamisanriku, according to local officials in Miyagi Prefecture; that number represents more than half of the town’s population.
    At the same time, the news agency put the number of dead in all of Japan at 1,700 people.
    On Saturday, NHK television was broadcasting the names of those who had been confirmed dead — along with their ages, where they lived and where they died — during its live newscast on a blue bar at the top of the screen.
    The Web-based tool created by Google on Friday to locate those missing during the earthquake and tsunami had logged more than 60,000 entries by Saturday morning, Eastern time.
    9:44 A.M. |Viral Video From Moment of Quake in Sendai
    One of the most viewed videos from the Japanese earthquake so far features no scenes of heroism or vistas of tsunami devastation, only quavering images of a teenager’s room, shaking cars and a woman crouching in the middle of an empty suburban road.
    Yet nearly seven million people have been drawn to this emotional video from the Aoba neighborhood of Sendai, recorded at the moment the earthquake struck.

    “Mom, mom, are you ok!” a boy — possibly a teenager based on the sound of his voice — calls out as he shakily films the quake.
    His mother is on the ground outside, apparently unhurt. Neighbors come out to check on the family as the boy goes back into and out of the house in search of car keys and a cell phone.
    The video captures a moment of fear that many who live in earthquake-prone areas have experienced themselves. That may account for its viral quality, especially among Japanese viewers.
    “When we grew up, we had this training,” said my colleague Hiroko Masuike, who was born and raised in Tokyo but now lives in New York. “All the time were were told, ‘Go lower.’”
    Of course, it is hard to know precisely why the woman crouches: “Maybe she couldn’t walk, because of the shaking,” Ms. Masuike said.
    As the earthquake passes, the boy and his mother wonder if their grandmother is safe and try to call her, only to find the networks jammed.
    Some on YouTube have questioned the authenticity of the video, claiming that its shaking cars and wobbly camera could have been faked. But for those who speak Japanese, the emotions expressed in it are very real.
    8:55 A.M. |Major League Baseball Feels Impact of Quake
    Among those in the United States watching reports on the tsunami and earthquake on Friday were the dozens of Japanese-born Major League Baseball players getting ready for the 2011-12 season at spring training in Florida.
    MLB.com talked to Hiroki Kuroda, a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers and a native of Osaka, in a video interview. Like many with friends and family in Japan, he was struggling to make contact with his brother.
    At least two players left training camp on Friday to head for home, the Yankees minor league pitcher Kei Igawa, from the city of Oarai, and the Milwaukee Brewers reliever Takashi Saito, who is from northeastern Japan. Both left after failing to make contact with members of their families, my colleagues Ben Shpigel and Richard Sandomir report.
    The league has vowed to provide assistance in the aftermath of the quake; the Yankees donated $100,000 split between the Salvation Army and Red Cross, The Associated Press reported, while the Oakland Athletics and the San Diego Padres said they would raise funds during upcoming home games celebrating Japanese heritage.
    “Through our shared love of baseball for more than a century, Japan is a particularly special place to us, and we are deeply saddened by the disaster that has confronted the nation,” Bud Selig, the baseball commissioner, said in a statement on Friday. “Major League Baseball will certainly provide aid with the relief efforts in the days and weeks ahead. We will do everything we can to help Japan.”
    8:14 A.M. |Energy Agency’s Facebook Updates
    The International Atomic Energy Agency is providing updates on the Japanese nuclear plant on its Facebook page.
    Here’s the latest update, from 7:47 a.m. Eastern:
    Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) has informed the IAEA’s Incident and Emergency Centre (IEC) that there has been an explosion at the Unit 1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and that they are assessing the condition of the reactor core. The explosion was reported to NISA by the plant operator, TEPCO, at 0730 CET. Further details were not immediately available.
    Japanese authorities have extended the evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant to a 20-kilometre radius from the previous 10 kilometres. At the nearby Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant, the evacuation zone has been extended to a 10-kilometre radius from the previous three kilometres.
    The authorities also say they are making preparations to distribute iodine to residents in the area of both the plants.
    7:48 A.M. |Questions Surround Explosion at Nuclear Plant
    There is still a question over what part of a Japanese nuclear reactor damaged by the earthquake and tsunami on Friday had exploded on Saturday.
    Japan’s Kyodo News agency reports that “there was no explosion at the troubled No. 1 reactor of Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant,” according to Yukio Edano, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary.
    Mr. Edano said at a news conference that the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said that the steel container housing the reactor had not been damaged.
    My colleague Matthew L. Wald, who is reporting on the developing situation, writes:
    Images on Japanese television showed that the walls of one building had crumbled, leaving only a skeletal metal frame standing with smoke billowing from the plant. The Associated Press reported that the damaged building housed a nuclear reactor, though that report was not immediately verified by nuclear officials. The cause of the explosion was unclear, with some experts speculating that it may have resulted from a hydrogen build-up.
    There was no immediate confirmation of news reports that the container of the nuclear reactor itself had escaped damage.
    At the same time, The Associated Press reports that shifting winds are threatening areas north of the plant with radiation as it leaks from the hobble plant, according to Japan’s national weather bureau.
    Mr. Edano, speaking at the news conference, said radiation levels around the plant were decreasing, as was the pressure on the reactor, news agencies reported.
    5:43 A.M. |Video of Nuclear Plant Explosion
    Shortly after a 8.9 magnitude earthquake on Friday that shook Japan and generated tsunami waves across the Pacific Ocean, reports emerged of damage at one of Japan’s nuclear power plants. On Saturday, Japanese authorities began evacuating residents nearby the Fukushima nuclear power plant due to the release of radioactive elements into the environment, signs of a possible meltdown at one of the reactors.
    As officials worked to repair damage Saturday afternoon, an explosion occurred at the nuclear power plant, damaging one of the buildings.
    The English-language news service Russia Today posted video of the explosion as it occurred to its YouTube channel.

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