Towns Hit by Tsunami Still Digging Out

Now over three months since the March 11, 2011 9.0 Magnitude earthquake triggered a huge tsunami that devastated the north east coast of Japan, over 90,000 people remain displaced, living in shelters.

The death toll is a confirmed 15,413 as of June 11, 2011, with about 13 per cent or 2,000 bodies still unidentified.  According to the National Police Agency, another 8,069 people remain are still officially missing. 

TheLand, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry recently stated that 28,280temporary housing units for survivors had been completed in Iwate-ken,Miyagi-ken, Fukushima-ken, Ibaraki-ken, Chiba-ken, Nagano-ken and Tochigi-ken ('ken' means 'prefecture').But 12,028 of these units were occupied as of June 15, 2011, mostly due to an inconvenient location. A total of 52,500 units are expected to be built bymid-August. 

As of May 11, 2011, 117,000 people were living in shelters--that number has dropped by 27,000 to 90,109 as of June 11.

Electricity had been restored to most afflicted areas, though some 57,900 homes in Iwate-ken, Miyagi-ken and Fukushima-ken still do not have runningwater.

TheEnvironment Ministry estimated 23.92 million metric tonnes (or 23,920 million kilograms or 52,735 million pounds) of debris were initially left these prefectures, with just 22 per cent removed. 

In Ishinomaki, Miyagi-ken, thecity that had the most debris dumped on it by the tsunami, only seven per cent had been cleared. 

And, like in any disaster, financial aid has been forthcoming.TheJapan Red Cross Society and three other organizations had receiveddonations of about ¥250 billion ($2.95 billion). About ¥82.3 billion (~US/Cdn $1 billion) ofthis had been passed on to Tokyo, Hokkaido and 13 prefectures affectedby the disaster but only ¥37 billion (~ US/Cdn $453 million) had reached survivors.

Files compiled by Andrew Joseph