Tetsu finally came home yesterday afternoon and related the headaches of making decisions about 50 some elderly people's health and safety. Take them back into a shaking building? Leave them out in the open with only a few blankets? Everyone was routed to a room (without cracks) where there was no second story over their heads.
Lorraine and I made a jaunt to the supermarket (Lorraine paid for our week's worth of groceries) and I was surprised to see that the shelves were fairly well stocked still. But surely that won't last for long. There was no bread however and the milk was almost gone. I talked with a neighbor this morning whose family runs a gasoline station and she said that they have hit the bottom of their supply because the cars were lined up in the street yesterday. I hadn't thought of that. My neighbor's advice was to sit tight and not try moving around since gasoline won't probably be available until next week or later.
Lorraine had some trouble sending word to her son and daughter-in-law that she was still in Nikko (with me) because of course they were gathering up their children from school and for many hours the phones and cell phones weren't working. It was agreed that we should all sit tight and see what the next day brings.
The elementary school principal called me (when the phones started working again) to say that the school had held the children on the grounds without shoes (they'd all run out of the building) and without their back packs for two or three hours until all the parents came to pick them up. That sounds smart because Lorraine and I had been surprised to see jr. high school kids riding home on their bicycles immediately after the first earthquake and what with tiles falling from roofs and walls tumbling, it seemed to us that students would be safer at school. Anyway, the principal was just checking his staff (including me) so see that everyone was okay and to ask that I report for crosswalk duty as usual on Monday as the children were to have regular school and get an education in how one picks up and cleans the mess in a school building after an earthquake.
The nuclear explosion plant is a few hundred miles north of us and as Tetsu says, we can't be worrying about everything at once. Takumi gives me regular, if not too comforting, updates from the States. What the world view is of our situation. What the Japanese government is doing right or wrong. His advice to me was
"I heard that you should protect yourself from the rain. If it rains don't go outside. There might be a radiator in it. Don't go outside."
Thank you Takumi. Tetsu and I feel all your love and concern in those few words. Gave me a laugh too. The word is radiation.
No comments:
Post a Comment