Death toll rises, stocks plunge, foreigners flee as nuclear crisis escalates

TOKYO — Torn up and terrified by a disaster that keeps on getting worse, Japan has transformed in just four days from one of the world’s most comfortable countries into one of its most distressed.
Thousands of people along the northeastern coast of Asia’s richest country are dead, and tens of thousands have gone days with little food, little water and almost no heat. Their towns have been demolished into soggy fields.
And Tuesday, amid an escalating nuclear emergency, a dangerous plume of radioactive material leaked from a coastal power plant, causing panic among stock traders, triggering evacuation orders from foreign companies and generating a deep sense of unease among millions of residents concerned about radiation exposure.
One catastrophe alone would have been overwhelming. But Japan, since Friday, has been hit by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and countless aftershocks, a shoreline-crushing tsunami and an evolving crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Tuesday, the related disasters caused even more complications. Radiation leakage prompted mass evacuations and a no-fly zone covering a 19-mile radius around the facility. Malfunctioning nuclear plants have left the country with an energy shortage, leading to power cuts even at some refugee shelters even as the weather turned colder. The stock market plunged more than 10 percent.
Along the coast, 6,000 are officially confirmed as either dead or missing, according to the police tally. Many more are unaccounted for. Officials in one prefecture estimate that at least 10,000 of its 2.3 million citizens were killed by the tsunami and quake.
Hospitals, short of medicine and supplies, are struggling to treat seriously injured or ill patients, news agencies said, and overwhelmed local officials have not been able to secure enough space for morgues and coffins. The continuing blackout has made it impossible to create dry ice to pack the bodies.
More than 500,000 people have been evacuated from the hardest-hit areas and 15,000 have been rescued, including a 70-year-old woman pulled from her toppled home by rescuers on Tuesday. But time is running out for rescuers to help those still stranded by flooding or trapped in debris.

In the north, a cold front was moving in, leading to a drop in temperatures and snow in some areas. In Tokyo, yet another strong aftershock hit late Tuesday night. No significant damage was reported.
Officials said about 2,000 bodies were found Monday along the coast of battered Miyagi Prefecture, and a survey of local governments conducted by the Kyodo News agency found that about 30,000 people in the devastated areas remain unaccounted for.
Those who survived now spend much of their time watching public broadcaster NHK, following frightening news about the explosions and fires at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
After a 6:14 a.m. explosion at the Unit 2 reactor Tuesday (5:14 p.m. Monday in Washington), Prime Minister Naoto Kan — wearing a durable blue work jacket — addressed the nation.
“Please listen to my message calmly,” he said, before explaining that that radiation had spread from malfunctioning reactors at Fukushima Daiichi into the environment.
Readings in the nearby area suggested very high risk, he said, although within nine hours of the blast they had dropped to lower — but still elevated — levels.
“The radiation level has risen substantially,” Kan said. “The risk that radiation will leak from now on has risen.”
The government told those within 12.5 miles of the plant to evacuate. It asked those within 19 miles to stay indoors. Those outside of that radius — including the 13 million in Tokyo, 150 miles to the south — wondered whether to trust what little information they received from the government, whose top spokesman said those in the capital would be safe.
Snaking lines formed at Tokyo’s Narita and Haneda international airports as foreigners packed the ticket counters, hoping to catch a flight far away from Japan and the lingering threat of radiation poisoning.
Many came to the airport hours or days before their scheduled flights were to leave, hoping for an earlier departure, even though they had already been told several times no earlier flights were available.
“Anywhere but here,” said Maria Sumner, a 23-year-old from Washington, Mo., who was headed to San Francisco on Tuesday after a deluge of worried e-mails from family and friends. “It just got to be a little too much,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Nikkei 225 recorded one of its largest-ever drops, closing at 8605.15 — down 10.55 percent. Coupled with Monday’s 6.2 percent drop, the index has plummeted nearly 17 points in the first two business days since the catastrophe.
Many of the losses were due to a rapid sell-off that occurred right as Kan warned about the radiation risks.
At an earlier news conference Tuesday, four officials from Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the nuclear plant, offered almost no information about the damage that occurred during the explosion or the implications.
“What has happened in the stock market reflects the amount of uncertainty — the different rumors that are floating around,” said Edwin Merner, a 30-year resident of Tokyo and president of the Atlantic Investment Research Corp. “A certain panic thinking that is going on. I think the main thing is, people just don’t know. And they don’t necessarily trust the information they have been hearing.”[http://www.washingtonpost.com]