JAPAN'S WORST NATURAL DISASTER

                                                 Japan's worst Natural Disaster

  The toll of dead or missing from Japan's worst natural disaster in nearly 21,000 with 8,199 people confirmed killed, the massive earthquake and tsunami of March 11 is Japan's deadliest natural disaster since the Great Kanto quake leveled  much of Tokyo in 1923.
   Another 12,722 are missing ,feared swept out to sea by the wreckage of buildings. In Miyagi prefecture on the northeast coast, where the tsunami reduced entire towns to splintered match wood, the official death toll stood at 4,882.  Miyagi police chief Naoto Takeuchi, however, told a task force meeting that his prefecture alone 'will need to secure facilities to keep the bodies of more than 15,000 people.
     According to the charity save the children, around 100,000 children were displaced by the quake and tsunami, and signs of trauma are evident  among young survivors as the nuclear crisis and countless after shocks fuel their terror. We found children in desperate conditions huddling around kerosene lamps and wrapped in blankets.
   Nine days after they were believed killed by the tsunami an elderly women and her teenage grandson were found alive in the rubble of their home in north east Japan on Sunday. The 80 -year old and the boys survived by eating yoghuit and other scraps of food salvaged from a refrigerator after being trapped in their home in Ishinomaki,one of the worst-hit coastal cities.
   They were founded by police when 16 year old Jin Abe called out for help from the roof of their residence after managing to pull himself form the debris. His grand mother Sumi Abe,is disabled and could not leave the property unaided. When she was found, she had lost feeling in at least one of her legs. The national broad caster, NHK, has run of danger in a yellow harness. The pair are now receiving medial treatment in the city's Red cross hospital

Prof.John Kurakar