RESCUE EFFORT:HELICOPTERS FOR plucking stranded survivors off rooftops and search teams with dogs to locate those who do not drown will be urgently needed in Japan's coastal communities, according to an expert on post-tsunami rescue.
The torrent of churning seawater, thickened by debris and mud, will have battered and smothered those caught in its path, leaving dead bodies and only a few fortunate enough to have escaped on to tall buildings or higher ground.
“It’s like a mudslide,” explained Anna Walton, of the UK aid agency Merlin who worked with emergency response teams in Sri Lanka after the tsunami on December 26th, 2004 . “It picks up rubble and mud as it forces its way inland.
“It will kill and a few people will get trapped in it. You don’t have many injuries in a tsunami; you have a high death rate. In earthquakes, you have lots of injured survivors; with a tsunami it can be more fatal.
“There’s a train missing in Japan as we had in Sri Lanka, where 2,500 people were engulfed on one railway journey; they all died.
“In a tsunami, there’s a body of water that sustains the flood. Those who survive climb trees or get up on to stable, taller buildings.
“Helicopters to get people off roofs and search and rescue teams with dogs will be the immediate priorities. The waters will recede from higher areas after a while but low-lying districts will remain flooded. And then there are the fires.”
Offers of aid poured in from heads of state, UN bodies and aid agencies and Tokyo has requested a limited number of foreign search and rescue teams.
Japan’s emergency services are highly skilled and well prepared, but some experts feared the scale of the emergency – and the variety of disasters – may yet overwhelm them.
Exposed coastlines and isolated atolls elsewhere in the Pacific could suffer severe devastation as the tsunami spreads.
Many UK aid agencies were monitoring the situation yesterday, preparing but not yet dispatching emergency relief teams. Flights to Tokyo were also disrupted.
At the Department for International Development (DfID), officials were liaising with the Red Cross, the UN emergency agency OCHA and the government in Tokyo.
“We have been in touch with the Japanese authorities,” confirmed a spokesman.
“They are not requesting assistance at the moment. They are asking rescue teams to wait in their own countries.
“UK fire and rescue teams are at the initial stage of alert, having gathered their gear.”
One of the teams on standby is Rapid UK, whose chief executive, Clive Hodges, said his group was waiting for the Japanese embassy to signal that help was needed before it acted.
“The Japanese have tremendous capabilities of their own,” he said, “and their buildings are among the best prepared against earthquakes in the world. “If they don’t request help, we won’t go.”
Hannah Reichardt, an emergency adviser with Save the Children, warned that relief efforts would be needed for months and possibly years.
“The basic requirement of food and water the Japanese government will be able to provide, but it’s niche problems – like support for children – that their services may be too busy to help.” – (Copyright: Guardian News Media 2011)