March 15, 2011
Dear all:
Thank you very much for your continuing support for the disaster response and recovery effort in Japan.
I would like to update the most current situation as of 18:00 pm 15 March 2011.
The largest earthquake which caused the worst Tsunami was Magnitude 9.0, the highest Tsunami as high as 20 meters which destroyed 10 meters high seawalls, series of aftershocks of Magnitude 7+, fires fueled by oil tanks in harbors and chemical plants, and potential meltdown of nuclear reactors are the challenges we are struggling in Japan now.
Total 500,000 people are staying at shelters still now and wait for foods, water and oils for heating. In addition, 150,000 people had to evacuate from nuclear reactors sites. We lost thousands of victims of Tsunami and quake. 15,000 people are missing.
Most needed by people in hit zone now is information on the situation of families and friends. Recovery of lifelines is the first priority along with rescue effort for those still missing. Planned rotating blackout affects Eastern part of Japan including Metropolitan Tokyo.
Our ongoing concern is aftershocks including those of Magnitude 7+ and potential meltdown of nuclear reactors that are damaged by the quake and Tsunami. Total 6 reactors were damaged. All of them has been successfully stopped their operation. However, the cooling down process is not completely successful because of the damages of pumps to supply water to cooling system. 2 reactors seem to be safely cooling down. 4 of them lost the water in the core unit and the operation team is struggling against potential meltdown which might result in the worst scenario because they are located in 250 km from Metropolitan Tokyo. I fully trust the operation team but it is our duty as DAISY Consortium members to provide people with print disabilities with accurate key information in timely manner in the right accessible format. In particular, information for radiation safety need to be available in DAISY format for people with print disabilities immediately.
In addition, local information in Tsunami hit zone is disparately required in DAISY format too.
We are going to mobilize our resources to meet the immediate information needs to help people with print disabilities and foreign travelers by provision of DAISY format information resources.
I am establishing initial contacts with partners to set up a server based information support including DAISY conversion services and twitter link.
DAISY Consortium members in Japan will do our best to save human lives and reconstruct our inclusive society in collaboration with friends and colleagues around the world including those who are suffering from disasters in their own community.
Best
Hiroshi Kawamura, in Tokyo
President, DAISY Consortium
PS.
The Japanese DAISY members are not located in the severely hit zones so far but some of us including JSRPD, ATDO, JBL, Shinanokenshi (Plextor), and Olympus experienced grade 5 earthquake without serious damage.
We are concerned with the situation of nuclear reactors located in Fukushima, 250 km North East of Tokyo, where some radiation leak is reported. I don’t think that we are facing “meltdown” but I keep my eyes on the situation of reactors and plan to disseminate necessary information on how to protect ourselves from radiation in particular for children and people with print disabilities in multimedia DAISY format through the internet because it is extremely important but not well known. Unfortunately some people living nearby the reactors are found exposed to radiation already. Without relevant knowledge, people don’t know even the fact that they are exposed to fatal radiation.
People in Urakawa, collaborators of the Urakawa Project to identify use cases for accessible multimedia in particular based on Tsunami evacuation of persons with severe psychiatric or cognitive disabilities including all members of the Bethel’s House reportedly showed a good model of Tsunami evacuation in the community. They are users of their home-made evacuation manual in multimedia DAISY format that show their own group-home, exact evacuation route and good smiles shown when they reach the safe zone identified for each group-home with a narration of familiar member’s voice. Bethel members conduct Tsunami evacuation drill 4 times per year including in the evening in winter. The evacuation target we set out is “reaching higher than 10 m from the sea level within 4 minutes after the earthquake” to save everybody.
With the devastating giant Tsunami, I now reconfirm that the use case development of the Urakawa Project to save everybody in potential Tsunami zone in Urakawa was valid. The Urakawa Project greatly contributed to SMIL 3.0 which is the basis of the “media overlays” of the EPUB3 co-edited by Marisa, Daniel, Markus and George. Since accessible information for knowledge is essential to save lives in disasters, DAISY4 and EPUB3 accessibility features should contribute to develop accessible disaster preparedness/response/reconstruction information.