March 24, 2011
Dear all:
Thank you very much for your encouraging support for our combat against disasters in Japan.
Our very difficult struggle against 4 monstrous nuclear reactors is still going on with potential “meltdown” risk which might trigger a global crisis.
Good news is the reconstruction of the electric power supply for the Nuclear Plant. While cooling down the core unit by ad-hoc water supply by hyper fire brigade, etc. is successful, the whole cooling system for 6 reactors is going to be reassembled within next few days. The experts are struggling with deadly radiation at the plant site to save Japan and the Pacific Ocean from the worst nuclear contamination.
We had 736 earthquakes in Japan since 11 March 2011, 194 in the last 7 days and 20 quakes in the last 24 hours. Most of them occurred within 300 km areas of the Fukushima Nuclear Plant. Some of them happened just underneath of the Nuclear Plant. We cross our fingers for no damage of those aftershocks. You can see the visual presentation of those quakes at http://www.japanquakemap.com/
The radiation monitoring reported contamination of some vegetables, milk and even drinking waters in Tokyo area at dangerous level for babies younger than 12 months. The Metropolitan Tokyo distributes bottles of drinking water for babies today. Foreign citizens within 80 km from the Fukushima Nuclear plant are recommended to evacuate respectively by their government.
Transportation and office work in Metropolitan Tokyo seems normal even though electricity consumption is made significantly lower than normal level.
While numbers of shelters for earthquake-tsunami hit zone has been increased to 2500 where some 300,000 people are surviving, the death or missing toll rises up more than 25,000. Nobody knows exact number of missing people. Lives in hit zone are still at risk because many people survives in either shelters or in their home without electricity, water or food. Many old people and people with disabilities who require medical care have severely difficult situation to survive. A massive rescue work in wide range of Tsunami hit zone still going on in cold weather.
Information access is even more critical for everybody in the current situation in Japan. We are trying to establish a nation-wide DAISY contents distribution system for everybody to share necessary knowledge for survival in an accessible format for every individual. It is not easy to establish a consensus and get necessary resources but the DAISY Consortium members in Japan will carry out our responsibility in this critical moment.
Best
Hiroshi in Tokyo
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Hiroshi Kawamura, President of the DAISY Consortium
http://www.daisy.org/