The devastating impact of the Japanese earthquake on the country’s ageing population was exposed on Thursday as dozens of elderly people were confirmed dead in hospitals and residential homes as heating fuel and medicine ran out.
In one particularly shocking incident, the Japan Self-Defense Forces discovered 128 elderly people abandoned by medical staff at a hospital 10km from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Most of them were comatose and 14 died shortly afterward. Eleven others were reported dead at a retirement home in Kesennuma because of freezing temperatures, six days after 47 of their fellow residents were killed in the tsunami.
The surviving residents of the retirement home in Kesennuma were described by its owner, Morimitsu Inawashida, as “alone and under high stress.”
Photo: AFP
He said fuel for their kerosene heaters was running out.
Almost a quarter of Japan’s population are 65 or over, and hypothermia, dehydration and respiratory diseases are taking hold among the elderly in shelters, many of whom lost their medication when the wave struck, according to Eric Ouannes, general director of Doctors Without Borders’ Japan affiliate.
This comes after Japan’s elderly people bore the brunt of the initial impact of the quake and tsunami, with many of them unable to flee to higher ground.
Although the people from the hospital near the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant were moved by the Self-Defense Forces to a gymnasium in Iwaki, there were reports that conditions were not much better there.
An official for the government said it felt “helpless and very sorry for them.”
“The conditions at the gymnasium were horrible,” Cheui Inamura said. “No running water, no medicine and very, very little food. We simply did not have the means to provide good care.”
Japan’s deepening humanitarian crisis came as the military was enlisted to try to douse the damaged nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools at the Fukushima plant using helicopters and high-powered hoses. Chinook helicopters dropped several tonnes of water, much of which seemed to miss its target. More workers were drafted into the danger zone to prevent the spread of radiation and the plant’s operator said it had managed to connect an electric cable to allow it to restart critical water pumps in one of the six units.
US Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Gregory Jaczko said the commission believed “radiation levels are extremely high” at the plant, while Britain said citizens should not go any closer than 80km from the plant, much farther than Japan’s recommendation to stay 19km away or take shelter indoors if evacuation was not possible within a 29km radius.
Sir John Beddington, Britain’s chief scientific adviser, also said he believed cooling water essential to preventing radioactive emissions from the spent fuel pools alongside reactor 4 had almost totally evaporated and he was “extremely worried” that the storage pools at reactors 5 and 6 were also leaking.
The Japanese government on Thursday revised the estimated disaster death toll up from 10,000 to 15,000. It confirmed that 5,178 people had died and 2,285 were injured.
The number of missing was increased to 8,913 from 7,844. Almost 200,000 households regained electricity, but this left more than 450,000 without power. Approximately 2.5 million households still did not have access to water.
Pat Fuller, of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which met on Thursday in the earthquake zone to plan longer term relief with the Red Cross of Japan, said the lack of heating oil was critical.
“They don’t have enough kerosene to run heaters for all the evacuation centers,” he said. “Only a small percentage of the petrol stations are functioning which affects efforts to get food back into the shops. There had been an outbreak of gastric flu at one health center we visited and if that hits old people there could be serious complications.”
Search and rescue teams began scaling back their operations as relatives began to lose hope of finding missing loved ones alive. In the town of Kamaishi, US and British teams completed their final sweeps, and Japanese mechanical diggers began the task of clearing collapsed homes, offices and stores.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of