Japan earthquake

Japan is going to live with the aftermath of a quake — that is now believed to have killed at least 10,000 people — for a very long time to come. The full impact on the economy will not be known for some time, with the yen falling against the dollar; Japanese shares plunging; and some firms forced to suspend production. Far worse, however, is the toll taken by the disaster on the people caught up in it. In apocalyptic scenes reminiscent of Japan following the end of World War II — when the US conducted the atomic bombing of its cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, effects of which Japan is still suffering from — people search through the remains of towns for family members who have vanished. Like their stricken inhabitants, entire settlements have been wiped off the map, two million households lack power in the freezing winter of the north and over a million households have no running water. Despite a huge international aid effort and the mobilisation of all available resources by the Japanese government, broken road and rail links have impeded efforts to deliver blankets, food and other supplies to victims. To add to the horror of a situation created by the fifth worst quake of this century, is the continuing struggle to prevent a meltdown at a nuclear complex based in the northern quake zone. Fears of a major disaster forced experts to inject sea water into the core of one of three reactors in a desperate bid to lower temperatures. Some radiation leakage has been reported, but the Japanese government has been trying to allay fears that a major disaster is in the making, stating that levels of radiation in the air are so far low. But even without this potential catastrophe, it will take the country a very long time to recover. The people who have lost family members may never get over the trauma and the process of rebuilding lives may take far longer than the mammoth task of restoring destroyed infrastructure or offering victims a return, to some degree, of normalcy in a situation where they have suddenly found everything in their lives destroyed, within a few terrible minutes. Japanese engineers raced to prevent a meltdown at a stricken nuclear plant on Tuesday, as rescuers scrambled to help millions left without food, water or heating by a devastating earthquake and tsunami. A second explosion rocked the Fukushima nuclear complex on Monday and rapidly failing water levels exposed fuel rods in another reactor, but the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said the crisis was unlikely to turn into another Chernobyl. Rescue workers combed the tsunami-battered region north of Tokyo, where officials say at least 10,000 people were killed in the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that followed it. "It's a scene from hell, absolutely nightmarish," said Patrick Fuller of the International Red Cross Federation from the northeastern coastal town of Otsuchi. Prime Minister Naoto Kan has dubbed the multiple disasters Japan's worst crisis since World War Two and, with the financial costs estimated at up to $180 billion, analysts said it could tip the world's third biggest economy back into recession.