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Japan earthquake: tens of thousands missing as full devastation emerges
Tens of thousands were unaccounted for and whole towns wiped off the map as the full horror of Japan's "super-earthquake" began to emerge on Saturday.
A soldier carries an elderly woman to an evacuation shelter in Kesennuma Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Fears were compounded by a massive explosion on Saturday morning at a nuclear reactor, 160 miles north-east of Tokyo. Seawater was being pumped into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in an attempt to cool the radioactive core, while 90,000 people were evacuated from within a 12-mile radius.
Local authorities reported that almost 10,000 people ? out of a population of 17,000 ? were missing from the fishing port of Minamisanriku, which was engulfed by huge waves that swept inland for six miles. The earthquake was so powerful that Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said the Earth's axis shifted 9.8in [25cm]. The US Geological Survey said the main island of Japan had moved 7.8ft [2.4m].
David Warren, the UK's ambassador to Japan, said hundreds of Britons were still unaccounted for but officials were frantically trying "to make contact with British people who may have been caught up in this terrible event".
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Tens of thousands were unaccounted for and whole towns wiped off the map as the full horror of Japan's "super-earthquake" began to emerge on Saturday.
A soldier carries an elderly woman to an evacuation shelter in Kesennuma Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Fears were compounded by a massive explosion on Saturday morning at a nuclear reactor, 160 miles north-east of Tokyo. Seawater was being pumped into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in an attempt to cool the radioactive core, while 90,000 people were evacuated from within a 12-mile radius.
Local authorities reported that almost 10,000 people ? out of a population of 17,000 ? were missing from the fishing port of Minamisanriku, which was engulfed by huge waves that swept inland for six miles. The earthquake was so powerful that Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said the Earth's axis shifted 9.8in [25cm]. The US Geological Survey said the main island of Japan had moved 7.8ft [2.4m].
David Warren, the UK's ambassador to Japan, said hundreds of Britons were still unaccounted for but officials were frantically trying "to make contact with British people who may have been caught up in this terrible event".
More...
