MEMO-050211-A
A brief memo on my trip to Miyagi for the last week of April:
My trip to the coastal areas of Miyagi was… eye-opening and shocking. Things are still way worse out there than I imagined. I thought Miyagi was recovering faster. Iwate still seems to be worse, but Miyagi’s road to recovery is still very rough.
But in terms of food and supplies, and also water, electricity, gas, cell phone lines, even the most devastated areas have them for the most part. Great job done on cell phone coverage, and clearing of roads. Also water is available in almost all areas. Electricity is a little behind, but not bad. Gas is the most behind. So in hard-hit places like Ishinomaki, people still can’t take baths everyday. Still most of the stores along the coast is closed, but some are starting to open… but combinis near the coast are only half-full of food, and lacks a lot of things so one whole aisle was full of just bottled water.
One day, I helped move people’s things from an elementary school’s classrooms to the school gym. The gym was just packed with people, only cardboard walls that are lower than my height, and living like… animals almost… it was really sad. People were so stressed out.
Anyways, since they are trying to start school, seems a lot of schools that are shelters are moving people into the gym and things, so for part of the people, the living conditions will get worse. Also it is starting to get very hot (we were working outside and some of us almost got sick), so I can imagine that they will be needing more T-shirts. Doing laundry is very difficult (although they do manage to do it).
As for takidashi (cooking warm food on site and serving to people), same problem as in distribution of foods and goods. The big shelters’ got the self-defense force’s and celebrities’ help, but ones in groups of 10s and 30s are not getting warm food at all and they want takidashi.
Gasoline is adequate in Miyagi but people in the hard-hit areas don’t have cars, so that’s more like the problem now. Also, as they say on TV, road congestion is a big problem now.
The Tohoku Shinkansen has come back to full operation, but still a little unstable.
The places we’ve been using as a “hub” to send things are fairly back to normal. Actually, there is a huuuuge difference in the inland areas and the coastal areas. The coastal areas, it’s like all of a sudden there’s debris everywhere. From the hub (like Aoba-ku) to the coasts like Higashi-matsushima and Ishinomaki, it is about less than 1hr to 2hrs at most (including congestion). Even Higashi-matsushima, the inland areas look pretty much okay, and the shops are open, but when you drive 20 mins, there’s the scene you always see on TV. So I can see why and how these people can, and is good for them to, act as a hub to send goods to these places.
I know we are concentrating on Iwate in terms of shipping goods, but since it is similar in Iwate (except a little behind), I just wanted to share with you because it might be helpful to know. And to sum it up, I think we’re on the right track to be sending things to Iwate and not Miyagi, because I think Miyagi is now at the stage where people are basically all evacuated and have food, but need a LOT of work on getting rid of mud and debris.
Btw, they’re talking about moving people to temporary housing, but I haven’t seen any while I was there and from what I heard, it’s going to be a while before all the people move in.
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