TENS OF THOUSANDS Unaccounted For ... (News release from Kyodo News out of Japan)

Here's a piece from Kyodo News in Japan:



Japan grapples with mega quake-tsunami disaster, nuclear emergency

SENDAI, March 13, Kyodo

Japan continued to grapple Sunday with widespread damage from a magnitude 8.8 earthquake and massive tsunami that hit northeastern and eastern regions two days ago, including an escalating crisis at two nuclear plants where six reactors lost cooling functions.

The number of people who had died or remained unaccounted for exceeded 2,000, police said, while the official death toll neared 700. In Fukushima Prefecture alone, 1,167 were unaccounted for and well over 600 corpses had been found in both Fukushima and Miyazaki prefectures.

There are also tens of thousands of people that local governments have been unable to contact, police and local officials said.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. reported to the government earlier Sunday that another reactor had lost its cooling functions, making it the sixth at its Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear power plants, which shut down automatically after the quake.

At the Fukushima No. 1 plant, one of the reactors partially melted Saturday and operations to fill the reactor with sea water for emergency cooling continued Sunday to prevent an occurrence of criticality, but the utility also reported another rise in radiation surpassing the legal limit in the morning.

At least 22 people are known to have been exposed to radiation near the plant.

Go to this link for the rest of the story:
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]

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Last Edited by Aquarius 7 on 03/12/2011 11:15 PM