Gillard visits Japan's tsunami zone
Source: Agencies |
April 24, 2011, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THE first foreign leader to tour Japan's tsunami-ravaged coast, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard expressed shock and sorrow at the devastation and visited evacuees at a shelter yesterday, giving toy koalas and kangaroos to excited children.
Walking through a fishing village where hundreds of people are dead and missing, she said Minamisanriku looked as if it had been "bombed into oblivion."
Mayor Jin Sato showed her the red skeleton of the disaster management building where he was standing when the mammoth wave ripped off its shell on March 11. Exterior stairwells were ripped from the walls. A small shrine of flowers had been created on a mound of rubble.
"It's a scene of incredible tragedy and incredible sorrow," Gillard said on the last day of a four-day trip here.
More than 27,000 people are dead or missing from the earthquake and tsunami. Tens of thousands are living in shelters after an estimated 90,000 homes were destroyed.
Recovery efforts have been complicated by the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, where the tsunami wiped out power and cooling systems. Workers have struggled to stop radiation leaks, and the utility says bringing the plant fully under control may take all year.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said yesterday that 30 workers at the plant had exceeded the former limit of radiation exposure. That limit, 100 millisieverts a year, was raised amid the crisis to 250 millisieverts. None of the workers had yet reached that limit, the company said.
Walking through a fishing village where hundreds of people are dead and missing, she said Minamisanriku looked as if it had been "bombed into oblivion."
Mayor Jin Sato showed her the red skeleton of the disaster management building where he was standing when the mammoth wave ripped off its shell on March 11. Exterior stairwells were ripped from the walls. A small shrine of flowers had been created on a mound of rubble.
"It's a scene of incredible tragedy and incredible sorrow," Gillard said on the last day of a four-day trip here.
More than 27,000 people are dead or missing from the earthquake and tsunami. Tens of thousands are living in shelters after an estimated 90,000 homes were destroyed.
Recovery efforts have been complicated by the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, where the tsunami wiped out power and cooling systems. Workers have struggled to stop radiation leaks, and the utility says bringing the plant fully under control may take all year.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said yesterday that 30 workers at the plant had exceeded the former limit of radiation exposure. That limit, 100 millisieverts a year, was raised amid the crisis to 250 millisieverts. None of the workers had yet reached that limit, the company said.
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