Several days ago, I bought a newspaper. And you know what, I was very shocked to see the headline. It said, "More than 1,300 were dead". What? 1,300 people? I then continued to read the news and I found that nothern Japan was struck by a tsunami following an earthquake. A colossal 8.9 magnitude quake (which was then considered as 9 magnitude quake by some local newspaper).
The moment I wrote this post, the number of deaths is already increasing from 1,300 to more than 8,800 deaths.
The disaster was said to be the greatest and deadliest power from the mother nature after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake which hit Kanto and destroyed Tokyo, Yokohama and the surroundings.
Lots of people have died and missing. But some of them were saved by God. Here are some remarkable survivor stories from Japan's earthquake:
- A four-month-old girl who had been swept from her parents' arms in the shattered village of Ishinomaki when the deadly wave crashed into the family home was pulled unharmed from the rubble three days later.
- As the Christian Science Monitor is reporting, Hiromitsu Shinkawa, 60, was rescued Sunday about 10 miles out to sea, sitting atop a roof that the tsunami knocked off his home two days earlier. He told rescuers that he and his wife had returned home shortly after the 8.9-magnitude quake to pick up some belongings when the tsunami slammed the city of Minamisoma.
- As the AP is reporting, Ayumi Osuga was practicing origami with her three children, aged 2 to 6, in their single-story home in the coastal city of Sendai when the ground started to shake. Then Osuga's husband called. "Get out of there now!" he yelled. Chilled by the brusque warning, the 24-year-old factory worker quickly gathered her children into the car and fled to a hilltop home belonging to her husband's family 12 miles away. Though her home was destroyed, Osuga knows she is lucky to be alive. "My family, my children ... I have come to realize what is important in life," she said.
- As the AP is reporting, pescuers pulled Sai Abe, a 70-year-old woman, from her toppled home in the port town of Otsuchi Tuesday, four days after an earthquake-spurred tsunami tossed the house off its foundation in Japan's northeast.
- Japanese naval and coastguard helicopters found a ship that was swept out to sea by a massive tsunami and successfully airlifted all 81 people aboard to safety, Jiji Press reported.
- A man was pulled from the rubble 96 hours after the earthquake struck.
- Three elderly residents in Natori were rescued from a mud-buried car after being trapped for 20 hours.
- Masaki Kikuchi and his 20-year-old daughter Koya assumed their dogs Towa, a two-year-old Sheltie and Melody, a one-year-old Golden Retriever, had perished in the tsunami. But the pooches miraculously survived and have since been reunited with the family.
Praise God!
