THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Japan was in a race to prevent a humanitarian disaster as rescuers struggled to reach tens of thousands of people left homeless by the tsunami.
The world’s third richest country was forced to send out an urgent international appeal for tents, blankets and other life-saving supplies to prevent the death toll rising beyond the current estimate of 10,000.
With night-time temperatures dropping below zero in some of the isolated towns and villages worst-affected by the disaster, charities warned that further lives could be lost if survivors were not given food and shelter quickly.
Last night 590,000 people, many of whom have lost their homes, were living in temporary shelters, including 210,000 people evacuated from the area around the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which suffered an explosion in a reactor building at the weekend.
Officials admitted that a second reactor at Fukushima could explode. A state of emergency was also declared at a separate site in Onagawa because of unusually high levels of radioactivity, while engineers reported problems with the cooling system at a third site in Tokai.
Although the official death toll stood at 1,596, the true scale of the tragedy remained unclear last night, with tens of thousands of people — including hundreds of Britons — still unaccounted for. >>> Gordon Rayner and Harry Wallop | Sunday, March 13, 2011
