QUAKE UPDATE Day 17
 
Apartments around here and throughout Shiga and surrounding prefectures are filled now, usual vacancies now all filled by refugees and folks from Tokyo and closer to radiation who don’t want to stay there, living here if only until the threat is erased, which may in effect be never...

"The Japanese government intends to at least make an effort. The first 36 prefabricated homes set up in the tsunami-battered northeast have been deployed in Rikuzen-Takata, and on Saturday a draw will be held to decide who among the wider region’s 430,000 suddenly homeless survivors will be the first to have four walls of their own again."

Fear grows near another nuclear plant in Japan

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As with the 8-hour battery-operated backup cooling generators that failed because of the tsunami that was unexpected (in the nation that came up with the name! + the word "tsunami" did not even appear in government nuclear reactor guidelines until 2006!?#) and the unexpected failure of this wet thing and that bent glowing stuff  and those molten items over there, and the too-short boots, now it’s unexpectedly inadequate storage tanks for surprisingly huge amounts of who in the industry would ever have guessed there might be such a quantity of: contaminated water! Am I glowing yet?

Also for several whiles there, the public was in danger of thinking they were really in way more danger than they were, which I suppose couldn't be all that bad a mental state to be in, given the circs-- it's best to plan for the worst, unlike the nuclear officials... Turns out the spike was false, though, so you can all stop running... Officials calculated the radiation at 100 times higher than actual, several hours later apologized for the miscalculation and the major world headlines after the public had an ulcer... seekers can find no one really in charge...

“The day began with company officials reporting that radiation in leaking water in the Unit 2 reactor was 10 million times above normal, a spike that forced employees to flee the unit. The day ended with officials saying the huge figure had been miscalculated and offering apologies.'The number is not credible,[but we did not know that?! "not credible" is "not credible" from the beginning, isn't it?]' said Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita. 'We are very sorry.'
A few hours later, TEPCO Vice President Sakae Muto said a new test had found radiation levels 100,000 times above normal-- far better than the first results, though still very high.
But he ruled out having an independent monitor oversee the various checks despite the errors."

Likely because it appears they never make the same terrible mistake twice.

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Okawa Primary School in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture was totally destroyed by the tsunami and of its 108 pupils; only 30% have been confirmed safe. Many children in the region have lost their parents.

Hundreds of kids... and that school was only a few kms from the twins and Kaya in their schools... unbearable to think about... how that pain can be lived is incomprehensible, let alone in the midst of all the rest that's happening... it can't be lived... it can only be borne, as time takes it slowly away...

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"Mourners took lids off the coffins, placing inside food, flowers, pictures, a fresh set of clothes and other keepsakes for their departed loved ones to take with them.

There was little time to linger. The burial for the next 10 people was about to start in a few minutes in similar funerals expected to run for weeks at the wooded hilltop a few kilometres away from where the tsunami tore through the city."

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Here's a great idea for those who want to help surviving Japanese victims in a fast, direct and personal way. I can vouch that this gift would be most welcome these cold days and nights, even for those living in shelters:

Socks for Japan