I was holding off on blogging about this to talk to Dan and my family first, but I have decided to spend a week being part of a tsunami disaster cleanup team in Ishinomaki, one of the hardest hit areas from the March 11th devastation.
And now some facts…
Ishinomaki is a city in Miyagi, and as of January had a population of 164,294. As the most seriously affected city by the 2011 TÅhoku earthquake/ tsunami, people guesstimate 80% of the 700 houses in the city were destroyed. The tsunami was about 10 meters high and traveled 600 meters inland. In April the death toll for the city of Ishinomaki was at 2750. It’s just tragic.
So, what’s it like out there now?
Utter devastation. Nothing is where it should be. Collapsed houses. Cars on top of buildings, in ditches and atop one another. The street is full of rubble that was once a family’s treasured belongings- photo albums, plates, books, stuffed animals. There was a high amount of soil liquefaction, where the ground is shaken so much it just turned to sand, causing building foundations to crumble and houses to topple. The majority of roads and housing areas are covered in a thick sludge that looks like mud- it’s a toxic sludge containing debris, sewage, and whatever else got in the tsunami’s way.
In short, it’s not pretty over there. The homeless shelters are packed, and many people sleep on the streets or in turned over cars.
What am I gonna do?
Fix it ALL! No, I really wish I could. I am joining up with a great NGO called Peace Boat, and they send groups of people out to Ishinomaki one week at a time. Most the groups are Japanese people, and I will be on an international team, with others that speak English but are from all over the globe. Exciting! We all want to help, and it’s a great first thing to have in common with people you’ll be living with for 8 days!
We will all meet up Friday the 17th in Tokyo and bus out to Ishinomaki. We’ll be camping in tents (though I’ve heard some groups were able to stay in gutted factory buildings) and working long hours during the day. Some of those things include…
scooping toxic sludge
sorting through rubble
rebuilding/ fixing floor foundations
pulling cars out of ditches, getting them right side up
preparing/ serving food to the homeless
handing out blankets/ supplies (homeless people are allowed to enter their housing area to attempt to salvage any belongings
I have a lot of work ahead of me! But I haven’t volunteered for anything in a very long time, in fact it’s been about a year now, as my last volunteer position were my Daisy Girl Scouts in Redmond WA! I’m incredibly excited to embark on this adventure. This Sunday I have an information briefing here in town to learn more about my assignment and get a “to buy” list… I’ve sneaked a peek at the list on the website and there’s a lot of haz mat gear needed! Yikes!
Hopefully I will have more to update about after the meeting Sunday.
Until then, random photo time! Here is Dan and I at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, fall 2009
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