Police: 10,000 likely dead in one Japan region

[RandySF]

The death toll in in Japan's northeastern Miyagi prefecture — one of the areas worst affected by a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami — will likely exceed 10,000, police said Sunday.

Miyagi police spokesman Go Sugawara said Sunday that the prefecture's police chief told a gathering of disaster relief officials that his estimate for deaths in the prefecture was more than that figure.

There were only 379 officially confirmed deaths in Miyagi out of a total of 801 as of Sunday afternoon.

Millions of people were without drinking water, electricty or adequate food Sunday following Friday's disaster.

Thousands of survivors huddled over heaters in emergency shelters through a second freezing night.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42056235/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

[Skip Intro]

1. My God. No words.

[aquart]

2. They are starting to ask about food on Twitter.

Asking for any local place where they can get some. This is where it starts to get very dicey.

[RandySF]

3. I know the scale of this disaster is huge

But I would have thought Japan, of all countries, was better prepared than this.

[aquart]

4. Nobody can prepare for this.

Say you store food and water. Where is safe? Transportation is knocked out, how do you get what you've stored, which wasn't damaged, to your people? How do you find them? When you find them, where do you put them?

Reports are contradictory but I'm thinking there are over half a million displaced Japanese people, many of whom can never go home again. They need food, water, beds, clothing...... HALF A MILLION. And those are the ones without homes. The other people still in their homes need power, food, water, all of which has been disrupted.

And Toyota has closed its factories for now which means no income for many. So the entire economic chain
is disrupted.