FUKUSHIMA:The world bank report

The World Bank said in report Monday that Japan may need five years to rebuild from the catastrophic disasters, which caused up to $235 billion in damage, saying the cost to private insurers will be up to $33 billion and that the government will spend $12 billion on reconstruction in the current national budget and much more later.
 The toll of Japan’s triple disaster came into clearer focus Monday after police estimates showed more than 18,000 people died, the World Bank said rebuilding may cost $235 billion and more cases of radiation-tainted vegetables and tap water turned up.
Japanese officials reported progress over the weekend in their battle to gain control over a nuclear complex that began leaking radiation after suffering quake and tsunami damage, though the crisis was far from over, with a dangerous new surge in pressure reported in one of the plant’s six reactors.
The announcement by Japan’s Health Ministry late Sunday that tests had detected excess amounts of radioactive elements on canola and chrysanthemum greens marked a low moment in a day that had been peppered with bits of positive news: First, a teenager and his grandmother were found alive nine days after being trapped in their earthquake-shattered home. Then, the operator of the overheated nuclear plant said two of the six reactor units were safely cooled down.
The safety of food and water was of particular concern. The government halted shipments of spinach from one area and raw milk from another near the nuclear plant after tests found iodine exceeded safety limits. Tokyo’s tap water, where iodine turned up Friday, now has cesium. Rain and dust are also tainted.
Early Monday , the Health Ministry advised Iitate, a village of 6,000 people about 30 kilometers northwest of the Fukushima plant, not to drink tap water due to elevated levels of iodine. Ministry spokesman Takayuki Matsuda said iodine three times the normal level was detected there — about one twenty-sixth of the level of a chest X-ray in one liter of water.
In all cases, the government said the radiation levels were too small to pose an immediate health risk.
All six of the nuclear complex’s reactor units saw trouble after the disasters knocked out cooling systems. In a small advance, the plant’s operator declared Units 5 and 6 — the least troublesome — under control after their nuclear fuel storage pools cooled to safe levels. Progress was made to reconnect two other units to the electric grid and in pumping seawater to cool another reactor and replenish it and a sixth reactor’s storage pools.
Police in other parts of the disaster area declined to provide estimates, but confirmed about 3,400 deaths. Nationwide, official figures show the disasters killing more than 8,600 people, and leaving more than 13,200 people missing, but those two lists may have some overlap.
TOKYO:
 The official death toll from Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami has risen to 8,133 with 12,272 still missing.
Police earlier said they feared more than 15,000 people had died in one prefecture alone, Miyagi, in the March 11 disaster.
Some of the missing may have been out of the region at the time of the disaster. In addition, the massive power of the tsunami likely sucked many people out to sea. If the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami is any guide, most of those bodies will not be found.

Japan:Tokyo,Osaka earthquake,tsunami update

TOKYO: Japan instructed local authorities to start screening food for radioactivity after accidents at an earthquake-hit nuclear power plant sparked fears of wider contamination.
It is the first time Japan has set radiation limits on domestically produced food, a health ministry official said.
The limits are in line with an anti-disaster programme prepared in advance by the government's atomic power safety commission, said the official.
Limits vary depending on the type of foodstuff but have been set in consultation with internationally accepted levels and average intake in the Japanese diet.
Radioactivity leaked into the air after explosions at the Fukushima No.1 plant, where last week's quake and tsunami knocked out the reactor cooling systems.
Several Asian nations have said they will screen food imported from Japan for radiation while the European Union has called for similar checks.

OSAKA:

A 5.9 magnitude earthquake rattled Japan’s Ibaraki Prefecture south of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant on Saturday, the US Geological Survey said, but no tsunami warning was issued.
The USGS said the quake struck at 6.56 pm (0956 GMT) and was centred 98 kilometres (61 miles) south of Fukushima and 142 kilometres from Tokyo.
The quake shook buildings in Tokyo, but no damage was immediately reported, public broadcaster NHK said, adding that flights at the capital’s Narita Airport were briefly suspended for safety checks before resuming.
The quake struck at a depth of 24.7 kilometres (15.3 miles).
Japan’s meteorological agency measured the quake at a magnitude of 6.1.

TOKYO:

 The number of people confirmed as dead or listed as missing by Japan’s national police agency topped 18,000 on Saturday, eight days after the massive earthquake and tsunami struck.
Hopes of finding many more survivors amid the rubble have diminished amid a cold snap that has hit Japan’s northeast, covering much of the disaster area in snow earlier this week.
The death toll has surpassed that of the 7.2-magnitude quake that struck the western Japanese port city of Kobe in 1995, killing 6,434 people.
The March 11 quake is now Japan’s deadliest natural disaster since the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which killed more than 142,000 people.
The latest police figures for people missing do not include local reports from along the tsunami-hit coast of vast numbers of people unaccounted for.
The mayor of the coastal town of Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture said Wednesday that the number of missing there was likely to hit 10,000, Kyodo News reported.
On Saturday, public broadcaster NHK said that around 10,000 people were unaccounted for in the port town of Minamisanriku in the same prefecture.

 

POWERFULL EARTH QUAKE AND TSUNAMI JAPAN

TOKYO: A massive 8.9 magnitude quake hit northeast Japan on Friday, causing many injuries, fires and a four-metre (13-ft) tsunami along parts of the country's coastline.
There were several strong aftershocks and a warning of a 10-metre tsunami following the quake, which also caused buildings to shake violently in the capital Tokyo.
Public broadcaster NHK showed flames and black smoke billowing from a building in Odaiba, a Tokyo suburb, and bullet trains to the north of the country were halted.
Black smoke was also pouring out of an industrial area in Yokohama's Isogo area.  An overpass, location unknown, appeared to have collapsed into the water.
Passengers on a subway line in Tokyo screamed and grabbed other passengers' hands. The shaking was so bad it was hard to stand.
Hundreds of office workers and shoppers spilled into Hitotsugi street, a shopping street in Akasaka in downtown Tokyo.
Household goods ranging from toilet paper to clingfilm were flung into the street from outdoor shelves in front of a drugstore.
Crowds gathered in front of televisions in a shop next to the drugstore for details. After the shaking from the first quake subsided.
The U.S. Geological Survey earlier verified a magnitude of 7.9 at a depth of 15.1 miles and located the quake 81 miles east of Sendai, on the main island of Honshu. It later upgraded it to 8.8.
A police car drove down Hitotsugi Street, lights flashing, announcing through a bullhorn that there was still a danger of shaking.
The Tokyo stock market extended its losses after the quake was announced. The central bank said it would do everything to ensure financial stability.
Japan's northeast Pacific coast, called Sanriku, has suffered from quakes and tsunamis in the past and a 7.2 quake struck on Wednesday. In 1933, a magnitude 8.1 quake in the area killed more than 3,000 people. Last year fishing facilities were damaged after by a tsunami caused by a strong tremor in Chile.
Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.
Meanwhile, officials of fishermen's unions in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures said they began conducting on-the-spot examinations to check the extent of damage inflicted by the Wednesday quake on their members' farming facilities like those for oysters and scallops.
The Thursday morning quake brought the number of quakes felt in Japan since Wednesday to more than 30.

Disasters history,natrural Disasters earthquake,floods

1=    Turkmensistan (USSR), 1948
 110,000
 Earthquake

2=    Worldwide, every year
 2 to 5 million a year
 Malaria

3 =    Western Hemisphere, mostly 16th - 18th centuries
 unknown millions
 European Sicknesses

4=   Africa, 1981 - 1984 unknown millions Drought
5=   World-wide, 1918 - 19 35 to 100 million
 Influenza pandemic

6=    Europe and beyond, 1347-1350 25 million
 Bubonic plague
7=    China, 1958 - 61 20 million
 Famine

8=    India, 1769 10 million
 Famine

9=    China, 1876 - 1879 9 million
 Drought

10=   Egypt and Syria, 1201 1.1 million
 Earthquake

11=    North Korea, 1995-98 3 million + Famine and Floods
12=     China, 1935 2 million + ?
 Flood
13=    Ireland, 1845 - 48 1 million +
 Famine
14     China, 1942 - 1943 1 million +
 Drought
15=   China, 1887 900,000
 Flood
16=   China, 1556 830,000
 Earthquake
 17=   China, 1976 600,000
 Earthquak



18=   China, 1920 500,000 +
 Drought

19=   Bangladesh, 1970  500,000
 Floods
20=   France, Germany, America, etc., 1870 500,000
 Smallpox

21=    Bangladesh, 1970  500,000
 Floods



22=    Japan, 1923 170,000
 Earthquake

23=    Bangladesh, 1991
 139,000
 Earthquake

24=    Japan, 1730 137,000
 Earthquake



25=    Armenia, 1988
 100,000 +
 Earthquake

natural disasters

street after eartquake

flood history 2010 pakistan

Monsoon rains were forecasted to continue into early August and were described as the worst in this area in the last 80 years.[22] The Pakistan Meteorological Department reported that over 200 mm (7.88 inches) of rain fell over a 24-hour period in a number of places in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab and more should be expected.[23] A record-breaking 274 mm (10.7 inches) of rain fell in Peshawar during 24 hours,[24] previously 187 mm (7.36 inches) of rain was recorded in April 2009.[25] So far 500,000 or more people have been displaced from their homes.[22] On 30 July, Manuel Bessler, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, stated that 36 districts were involved, and 950,000 people were affected,[26] although within a day, reports increased that number to as high as a million,[27] and by mid-August to nearly 20 million affected.[28] By mid-August, according to the governmental Federal Flood Commission (FFC), the floods had caused the deaths of at least 1,540 people, while 2,088 people had received injuries, 557,226 houses had been destroyed, and over 6 million people had been displaced.[21] One month later, the data had been updated to reveal 1,781 deaths, 2,966 people with injuries, and more than 1.89 million homes destroyed.[2]
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial minister of information, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, said "the infrastructure of this province was already destroyed by terrorism. Whatever was left was finished off by these floods."[29] He also called the floods "the worst calamity in our history."[30] Four million Pakistanis were left with food shortages.[31]
The Karakoram Highway, which connects Pakistan with China, was closed after a bridge was destroyed.[32] The ongoing devastating floods in Pakistan will have a severe impact on an already vulnerable population, says the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In addition to all the other damages the floods have caused, floodwater have destroyed much of the health care infrastructure in the worst-affected areas, leaving inhabitants especially vulnerable to water-borne disease.[33] In Sindh, the Indus River burst its banks near Sukkur on 8 August, submerging the village of Mor Khan Jatoi.[31] There is also an absence of law and order, mainly in Sindh. Looters have been taking advantage of the floods by ransacking abandoned homes using boats.[34]


Affected areas as of August 26, 2010In early August, the heaviest flooding moved southward along the Indus River from severely-affected northern regions toward western Punjab, where at least 1,400,000 acres (570,000 ha) of cropland were destroyed,[31] and the southern province of Sindh.[35] The affected crops included cotton, sugarcane, rice, pulses, tobacco and animal fodder. Floodwaters and rain destroyed 700,000 acres (3,000 km2) of cotton, 200,000 acres (800 km2) acres each of rice and cane, 500,000 tonnes of wheat and 300,000 acres (1,000 km2) of animal fodder.[36][37] According to the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association, the floods destroyed 2 million bales of cotton, which led to an increase in futures of the commodity in international market.[38][39] 170,000 citizens (or 70% of the population) of the historic Sindh town of Thatta fled advancing flood waters on 27 August 2010.[40]

By mid-September the floods generally had began to recede, although in some areas, such as Sindh, new floods were reported; the majority of the displaced persons had not been able to return home.[2]