Wednesday 16 March 2011

Hiro is a Hero / Home assessment & pictures / some useful websites

Hiro is a Hero:  So Hiro who hasn't been around to date comes from nowhere and arrives at his family house and starts to help clear the debris.  His wife Keiko was also fantastic as she brought some onigidi (rice balls with meat in side) with her and everybody had some nice food.  Hiro was involved in removing the lose stones and cinder block in the wall that was built between the neighbors house.  He also worked with everyone to assess ways to remove some of the broken elements of the house.

Keiko Chan's cousin is an archetect and came as well to do some temporary water proofing.   This couldn't have come at a better time as, there was some rain later that afternoon which turned to a light snow.  Later in the afternoon, they were visited by the fire department to check on the foundation of the house.  This was apparently very difficult to schedule and Mayumi's father, Katsumi has been after them all day longs.  They came and assessed the house, they said that the house was not stable but they couldn't tell for sure.  I am not sure how helpful this visit was.

Nobody is sleeping or visiting the 2nd level of the house to be safe.  Currently Katsumi, Yuki, Yukari ) and Noa (daughter of Yukari) are all sleeping on the lower level which comprises 3 bedrooms, 1 living area and 1 kitchen.  Here is a pic I took in the past few years...

Who is Hiro?  Hiro is Mayumi's 2nd youngest brother (#4 in the pecking order).  He is an engineer by day for Hitachi and family man at night.  His son, Haruto is now 6 years old.  He is not around much but when he is, his impact has always felt as seen above.

Today we tried to find out a way to send some food to them but the area they are in is not accessible for delivery by the Japanese transportation companies.

I managed to find some pictures I took a few years ago on their home.  Today we were told they took pics from their phone but then tried to get it from their digicam but had no batteries.  Here are 12 pictures that will give you a pretty good idea of their home before the earthquake.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/slideShow/Main.jsp?sourceId=533754321803&cm_mmc=eMail-_-Share-_-Photos-_-Sharer

Here are a few websites I found of the immediate area that may give you some insight.  Each person in Hitachinaka City is allowed 2 litres of water daily.  Highways are all down except emergency vehicles.




The nuclear situation seems to be accepted by the local community to be what it is.  Mayumi's family is  not in a danger zone at the present time and while it does concern us to no end, they are safe from harms way.  The nuclear power plants seem to be stabilizing from what we are reading but we are far from being out of the woods.  Having said that, who the hell knows.   There are some serious contradictions out there and I don't know who to believe.  Mayumi and I just watched this report from the FT which we think is a reliable source and found this Science editor to be completely clueless on what he is talking about.  Take a look for yourself...

2 comments:

  1. your photograph link did not come up. Try to make the blog clickable as then you dont have to cut and past the link to make it work. I think that is pretty easy becayse when I posted links on mine they all were clickable.

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