As Japan's "triple disaster" — quake, tsunami and nuclear crisis — unfolded after March 11, 2011, Associated Press journalists fanned out across the northern region of Tohoku to report and record what had happened in pictures, stories and video.
Here, some of them recall memories and scenes that haunt them to this day:
___
AN OMINOUS WARNING
I was at my desk watching the prime minister getting questioned in parliament on TV when an ominous message from Japan's disaster early-warning system flashed on the screen: A major earthquake was about to strike. Somebody in the newsroom shouted and everyone froze. About 10 seconds later, the building started shaking violently, making the blinds slam against the windows of our 7th-floor office. I could hear the building As Japan's "triple disaster" — quake, tsunami and nuclear crisis — unfolded after March 11, 2011, Associated Press journalists fanned out across the northern region of Tohoku to report and record what had happened in pictures, stories and video.
Here, some of them recall memories and scenes that haunt them to this day:
___
AN OMINOUS WARNING
I was at my desk watching the prime minister getting questioned in parliament on TV when an ominous message from Japan's disaster early-warning system flashed on the screen: A major earthquake was about to strike. Somebody in the newsroom shouted and everyone froze. About 10 seconds later, the building started shaking violently, making the blinds slam against the windows of our 7th-floor office. I could hear the building creak and groan as it rocked back and forth. Some staffers dove under their desks.
In a chat window to editors in Bangkok, I quickly messaged: "HUGE QUAKE." I started typing an alert to send on the wire, but it was hard because my keyboard was moving so much. The shaking went on and on — definitely more than a minute, perhaps two. It felt like forever. Glancing up at the ceiling, I wondered briefly if I would die. My thoughts turned to my wife and boys. "Lord, help!" I prayed. Colleague Miles Edelsten, video camera on his shoulder, came to the window behind me, filming people pouring out of the nearby building onto a plaza below.
Finally, the shaking subsided — and everyone in the bureau jumped into action.
— Malcolm Foster, editor, former Tokyo bureau chief
CARS ON ROOFTOPS
My strongest memory was a scene I photographed in Onagawa: Cars on top of a three-story apartment building. It looked like their escape had been cut off and that they had been lifted up by the tsunami more than 20 meters (65 feet) above the ground. I was struck by the enormous power and ferociousness of nature. It looked like a scene from hell as I imagined that there were probably many dead bodies in the debris all around me.
— Koji Sasahara, photographer
___
DEAD FISH ON A HILL
I still think about the tsunami some nights when I'm falling asleep. I remember standing on a hilltop looking across the flattened town of Minami-Sanriku as a line of green army trucks moved through the destruction. The hill was home to one of the town's tsunami evacuation centers, and several cars parked there had been lifted up and pushed together in the corner of a lot. It was hard to imagine the water had reached this height. The first story of a villa perched on the hilltop, facing the ocean, had been eviscerated. Dead fish were scattered in a pile of broken wooden boards nearby.
Down by the bay, four-story buildings had been reduced to ghostly steel-and-concrete frames covered in debris and sea nets. The most chilling thing to me was realizing that Minami-Sanriku had long feared such a disaster, and tried to prepare. By the water's edge, where the concrete slabs of a once-mighty seawall crumpled into the sea, tsunami evacuation routes painted into the broken road were still visible. Green arrows had pointed the way to safety — the ravaged hilltop — with the blue figure of a pedestrian running from curling blue waves.
— Todd Pitman, reporter, former Bangkok bureau chief
___
LONELY FIGUREThe first two days after the quake struck, I was on a helicopter taking aerial shots. I saw huge columns of black smoke from a flattened town. A large cargo ship was on top of a building. There was no sign of life at all. I did not want to think about thousands of people who were there when the colossal tsunami hit. I just tried to focus on what I needed to do.
But an encounter I had later with an old lady who was looking for her nephew sticks in my mind. It was a cold day and the sky was covered with dark clouds. The tsunami wiped out much of her city of Otsuchi. As she carefully walked in the mud in her rubber boots, she struggled to recognize her nephew's neighborhood because there was nothing but piles of wreckage and mud.
"He was a serious and kind person," she said with tears in her eyes. "After he became physically disabled from an injury, he was very kind to everyone." She turned away to return to her makeshift home, an evacuation center. I still remember her despondent, lonely figure treading slowly and carefully through the mud.AP
No comments :
Post a Comment