Food, Fuel and Medicine Run Short in Shelters

TOKYO : One week after a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck Japan’s northeastern coast, the country was still grappling Friday with the difficult logistics of attending to half a million people in evacuation shelters running low on food, fuel and medicine.

The National Police Agency continued to raise its official death toll as search teams reached battered coastal villages and remote hamlets. By Friday afternoon, the police said, more than 6,500 people had died and more than 10,350 were registered as missing.

Cold and snowy weather was complicating the delivery of supplies to shelters in the five northern prefectures most seriously damaged by the quake and tsunami. Lines of vehicles stretching a mile or more were common in the north as people waited for gasoline. Power outages continued and propane for heating and cooking was scarce.

At one hospital that had lost electricity, patients were given bottles half-filled with pebbles to replaces call-buttons.

The twin disasters — a 9.0 magnitude earthquake that unleashed a towering tsunami last Friday — along with subsequent explosions, fires and partial meltdowns at a nuclear complex have fractured the economy and accelerated the rise of the yen, a critical factor in export-reliant Japan.

But the Group of 7 leading industrial nations announced late Thursday they would make a “concerted intervention in exchange markets” to buoy and stabilize the yen. “As Japan faces a period of adversity, it is extremely significant for the G-7 to jointly work toward stability in markets,” the Japanese finance minister, Yoshihiko Noda, told reporters here on Friday.

Late Friday afternoon in Tokyo, the yen had fallen 3.4 percent to trade at ¥81.75 per dollar, compared with ¥76.30 per dollar last week — a post-war record. The Nikkei 225 index, which had slumped more than 10 percent over the past week, rose 2.7 percent to close at 9,206.75. The broader Topix index gained 2.3 percent.

Tokyo-area residents, increasingly frustrated over confusing statements from Tokyo Electric Power Company about the location and timing of rolling power cuts, braced for possible blackouts. Most commuter railway lines continued to work on reduced schedules to conserve power, including during the rush-hour periods. Nearly 40 million people live in the Tokyo region and most rely on electrified commuter trains and subways to get to work.

Conservation measures were in widespread use. Lobbies in most large office buildings and hotels in central Tokyo were chilly and dark — the better to save electricity — and some department stores closed early. All across the capital, escalators stopped running, banks of elevators were shut down and the huge, iconic message boards in Tokyo’s shopping and nightlife areas faded to black.

Meanwhile, the Tokyo Immigration Bureau told the Kyodo news agency that it had received requests for re-entry permits from some 200,000 resident foreigners who planned to leave the country but later return.

Foreign governments took varying approaches toward the evacuation of their citizens in Japan. Some countries recommended evacuation for those anywhere near the danger zone around the crippled reactors, 140 miles north of Tokyo. Other countries made arrangements to get their residents out of Japan altogether. Japan has ordered evacuations within 12 miles of the plant while telling those in an 18-mile radius to remain inside with all vents, doors and windows closed.

France, Germany and Hong Kong, among many others, arranged charter flights for people wishing to pull back from Tokyo to Osaka — or to leave the country. China put on extra commercial flights and sent two large passenger ships for its exiting citizens. Britain said it was chartering jets to fly between Tokyo and Hong Kong, and that Britons directly affected by the tsunami would not be charged for the flight.

One Briton, Michael Tonge, said he was not about to leave. Mr. Tonge, a schoolteacher in Sendai, the closest major city to the quake’s epicenter, said many of the expatriates in his area were “forming groups using things like Facebook to try to get aid and help to the people who need it.” "Sendai has been my home for over 5 years,” Mr. Tonge said, "and the people of this area have taken me in and made me feel very welcome. I can’t leave them now, after this. I think that’s how a lot of the foreigners here feel, too.”

The United States approved plans for voluntary evacuations of families and dependents of its military personnel and embassy employees in Japan, including those at air and naval bases 200 miles or more from the plant. The American military presence in Japan includes about 38,000 troops plus nearly 50,000 dependents, civilian employees and American contractors.

President Obama signed a condolence book at the Japanese Embassy in Washington on Thursday “to communicate how heartbroken the American people are over the tragedy,” he said. Later, he emphasized that American nuclear officials were working with Japanese government and industry officials on the evolving and problematic situation at the nuclear plants.

He said the United States had no plans to extend its evacuation order beyond a 50-mile radius.

“I know that many Americans are also worried about the potential risks to the United States,” Mr. Obama said. “So I want to be very clear: We do not expect harmful levels of radiation to reach the United States, whether it’s the West Coast, Hawaii, Alaska, or U.S. territories in the Pacific.”

Martin Fackler contributed reporting from Yamagata, Japan, and Patrick J. Lyons contributed from New York.

Read more at:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/world/asia/19search.html?_r=1