Japan Pushes to Rescue Survivors as Quake Toll Rises /N Y Times

NAKAMINATO, Japan — While nuclear experts were grappling with possible meltdowns at two reactors after the devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami in northern Japan, the country was mobilizing a nationwide rescue effort to pluck survivors from collapsed buildings and rush food and water to hundreds of thousands of people without water, electricity, heat or telephone service.


Entire villages in parts of Japan’s northern Pacific coast have vanished under a wall of water, and many communities are cut off, leaving the country trying to absorb the scale of the destruction even as fears grew over the unfolding nuclear emergency.


Japanese news media estimates of the death toll from the natural disasters ranged from 1,300 to 1,700, but the total could rise. Many communities were scrambling to find the missing; in the port town of Minamisanriku, nearly 10,000 people were unaccounted for, according to the public broadcaster NHK. Much of the northeast was impassable, and by late Saturday rescuers had not arrived in the worst-hit areas.

Most of the deaths were from drowning, but Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and firefighters were working to prevent a higher toll, rushing up the coast in helicopters and struggling to put out fires burning in industrial complexes or sweeping through Japan’s many vulnerable wooden homes.