MORE than 1,000 people were feared dead after a monster tsunami unleashed by a massive quake which wreaked destruction across north-east Japan and triggered an emergency at a nuclear power plant.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Saturday that residents living within 10km of the plant must evacuate amid fears of a slight radiation leak, before stepping onto a helicopter to head for the area.
The atomic emergency came as the country struggled to assess the full extent of the devastation wrought by the massive tsunami triggered by the strongest quake ever recorded in Japan.
The towering wall of water generated by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake – the seventh biggest in history – pulverised the north-eastern city of Sendai, where police Friday reportedly said that 200-300 bodies had been found on the coast. Kyodo News said the final death toll was likely to pass 1,000.
The 10m wave of black water sent shipping containers, cars and debris crashing through the streets of Sendai and across open farmland, while a tidal wave of debris-littered mud destroyed everything in its path. At least 384 people were killed in the earthquake and subsequent tsunamis, police and press reports said.
The National Police Agency said 184 people had been confirmed dead and 707 missing, with 947 injured in the tremor, and a spokesman said this did not include the bodies reportedly found on the Sendai coast. The tsunami left Rikuzen Takata, a coastal city of some 23,000 people, ‘almost in shambles,’ the national Fire and Disaster Management Agency said.