JAPAN: Residents of earthquake and tsunami-ravaged Miyako city recount how they escaped from the surging waters

Record ID: 464849

  • Title: JAPAN: Residents of earthquake and tsunami-ravaged Miyako city recount how they escaped from the surging waters
  • Date: 15th March 2011
  • Summary: HAND OF DEAD BODY
  • Embargoed: 30th March 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Japan, Japan
  • Country: Japan
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes
  • Reuters ID: LVA7N6H7LWX0769N6R03RE9H0K8S
  • Story Text: Residents of Miyako city near the coast of eastern Japan were returning to their homes for the first time, three days after the deadly earthquake and tsunami hit Japan.
    Neighbourhoods in fishing villages and port cities near the coastline were levelled by strong tsunami waves last Friday (March 11).
    Residents said they were shocked at how quickly and far the tsunami waves came inland as they hit. Fishing boats and cars were swept into the neighbourhoods, now reduced to fields of rubble.
    Houses lay overturned, and electricity poles broken.
    Mitsuko Kimisawa, 52 years old, was not at home when the earthquake struck but rushed back to bring her 17-year-old son Kengo to safety last Friday.
    The tsunami waves struck their home just when she reached it to meet her son.
    She described the fear and panic she felt when the waves hit.
    "I thought, 'This is it. It's over.' It felt like the ground was being swept out from under our feet. I thought the wave was going to take us whole, with the house, and I was thinking, 'How are we going to get out of here' and I was just in total hysterics, grabbing onto my son's arm," she said.
    Kengo said he was taking a video of the moment with his mobile phone, when he quickly dashed away from the balcony of his second floor room, then the waves came crashing in.
    Mitsuko said she and her son spent the night trapped in their homes and worrying for their safety.
    She said she was thankful they were unharmed and later rescued by emergency workers on Saturday (March 12).
    "The next day, when we opened the window some people walked by so we shouted out to them, 'Hello! We can't get out!' I think they contacted the fire department and we were rescued with a ladder from the back, and made our way down through the house behind us," she said.
    Thousands who were on the tsunami's path did not survive.
    Across the neighbourhood on Monday (March 14), many residents had returned to find the belongings, sieving through heavy debris and mud with their bare hands.
    Officials say at least 10,000 people wre killed in the 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami that followed. Around 2,000 bodies had been found on Monday in two coastal towns alone.
    The earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world in the past century. It surpassed the Great Kanto quake of Sept. 1, 1923, which had a magnitude of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo area.
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