Number of dead, missing in Japan on the rise
Posted March 17, 2011 2:39 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
JAPAN (NEWS1130) – Almost a week after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the National Police Agency says the number of dead and missing has surpassed 15,000.
Rescue teams are now able to reach some of the places hardest hit after the double disaster, but the snow and cold continues to take its toll in the disaster zones.
We are also hearing what the 9.0-magnitude earthquake on March 11 sounded like on the ground. The Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics in Spain recorded it. The sounds had to be accelerated 16 times just to make them audible to humans. Click on the “earthquake” play button to listen (courtesy of: Laboratori d’Aplicacions Bioacustiques).
Robin Gill with Global News arrived in Japan near Tokyo the day after the earthquake, and says the aftershocks are really unsettling. “I’m not used to it; it feels like vertigo. You feel a little dizzy… it’s like this low rumbling underneath your feet,” she says.
There have been hundreds of aftershocks since March 11th, some more than a magnitude-6.0. The situation is deteriorating so much, the Obama administration has authorized the first evacuations of Americans out of Japan, saying it will charter planes to help US citizens — mainly family of government personnel — wishing to escape elevated radiation levels in the country.
Canada has not followed suit, saying enough commercial flights are still available.
