DEFENSE NEWS: Earthquake

Showing posts with label Earthquake. Show all posts

Friday, August 19, 2011

DTN News - JAPAN NEWS: Honest Japanese Return $78 Million In Cash Found In Quake Rubble

Defense News: DTN News - JAPAN NEWS: Honest Japanese Return $78 Million In Cash Found In Quake Rubble

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources ABC News

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - August 19, 2011: The earthquake and tsunami that walloped Japan left much of its coastline ravaged, but left one thing intact: the Japanese reputation for honesty.

In the five months since the disaster struck, people have turned in thousands of wallets found in the debris, containing $48 million in cash.

More than 5,700 safes that washed ashore along Japan's tsunami-ravaged coast have also been hauled to police centers by volunteers and search and rescue crews. Inside those safes officials found $30 million in cash. One safe alone, contained the equivalent of $1 million.

The National Police Agency says nearly all the valuables found in the three hardest hit prefectures, have been returned to their owners.

"In most cases, the keyholes on these safes were filled with mud," said Koetsu Saiki with the Miyagi Prefectural Police. "We had to start by cutting apart the metal doors with grinders and other tools."

Determining who the safes belonged to, proved to be the easy part. Saiki says most kept bankbooks or land rights documents inside the boxes, containing their names and address. Tracking the owners down, was much more challenging.

Total of $78 Million Was Returned to Owners in Wake of Japan Catastrophe

"The fact that these safes were washed away, meant the homes were washed away too," he said. "We had to first determine if the owners were alive, then find where they had evacuated to."

Saiki says Miyagi police fanned out across the region, searching for names of residents posted at evacuation centers, digging through missing person reports at town halls, sorting through change of address forms at the post office, to see if the owner had moved away. When they couldn't find the documents, police called listed cell phone numbers, met with mayors or village leaders to see if they recognized the names.

The number of safes continued to increase as the clearing of tsunami debris led to more discoveries. Police stations struggling to find space for them housed the valuables in parking garages and meeting rooms.

Saiki says 20 percent of the 2,450 safes found in Miyagi turned out to be empty. But, the remaining 250 boxes contained much more than cash. Some included bars of gold, antiques, even crafted boxes containing a child's umbilical cord, a common memento of child birth. Police had to delicately comb through the keepsakes, since many of the items were damaged, after being soaked in seawater and mud for days or weeks.

The stashing of cash in safes isn't a unique problem in Japan, where many people prefer to keep their money at home, but Saiki says the number of boxes is especially high in the coastal region where fishermen make up a large part of the population. Fisheries companies prefer cash transactions, and keep employee salaries in safes, he said.

The number of lost items recovered has declined with every month, but Saiki says his department continues to receive a handful of safes a week.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources ABC News

*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News

*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News
Contact: dtnnews@ymail.com

©COPYRIGHT (C) DTN NEWS DEFENSE-TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

DTN News - ASIAN DEFENSE NEWS: Japan Quake Becomes World's Costliest Natural Disaster

Defense News: DTN News - ASIAN DEFENSE NEWS: Japan Quake Becomes World's Costliest Natural Disaster

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Asian Defense News

(NSI News Source Info) TOKYO, Japan - March 23, 2011: (By Leika Kihara and Kaori Kaneko | Reuters – 33 minutes ago) - The Japanese government on Wednesday estimated the direct damage from a deadly earthquake and tsunami that struck the country's northeast this month at as much as $310 billion, making it the world's costliest natural disaster.
The first official damage estimates will serve to map out disaster relief plans and emergency budgets to fund recovery costs.
Tokyo said the estimate covered damage to roads, homes, factories and other infrastructure, and eclipses the losses incurred by other natural disasters such as the 1995 Kobe quake and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The figure could go even higher, as the estimate does not include losses in economic activity from planned power outages or the broader impact of a crisis at a stricken nuclear power plant in Fukushima, which economists say pose the biggest risks to the economy.
"The impact from the planned power outages is likely to be significant," Fumihira Nishizaki, director of macroeconomic analysis at the Cabinet Office told reporters.
The upper end of the 16-25 trillion yen ($197-308 billion) estimate range would amount to about 6 percent of Japan's gross domestic product.
"This quake will cause the condition of Japan's economy and output to be severe," Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa told a parliamentary committee.
Speaking separately, central bank board member Ryuzo Miyao repeated the bank's pledge to take appropriate policy action if needed to support the world's third-largest economy.
"We need to be mindful that the quake's negative impact on the economy, at least on the supply side, may be bigger than the Kobe quake 16 years ago, and be prolonged," he added.
In its initial response to the disaster, the central bank doubled the funds earmarked for purchases of a range of assets and started pumping record amounts of cash into the money market to prevent it from seizing up.
It later followed up by joining forces with other G7 central banks in a rare coordinated move to keep a rallying yen from inflicting further damage to the economy.
SPENDING PLAN NEXT
With interest rates near zero and banks' cash balances at records above levels seen in 2001-2006 when the BOJ sought to flood the banking system with cash to spur lending, there is not much more the central bank can do to help the economy.
"The ball is in the government's court," said Yasunari Ueno, chief market economist at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo. "Currency intervention was one thing. The next thing it needs to do is to come up with a credible fiscal spending plan."
Officials from the ruling coalition have said that at least two and perhaps more emergency budgets would be needed to pay for the reconstruction, with the first focused on immediate disaster relief, possible in April or May.
The government has yet to decide how it will finance those budgets, which some analysts say may exceed $100 billion and most certainly will require new borrowing.
Yet with its debt already twice the size of its $5 trillion economy -- the highest among industrialised nations -- Japan should not rush to borrow to pay for the reconstruction, Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said.
"With our public finances in a severe situation, we'll closely watch how it (the quake) could affect tax revenues," Noda was quoted by a government official as telling a cabinet meeting. "As for financial resources for reconstruction, we need to ensure market confidence and should not rely too readily on debt issuance," he said.
Economists and rating agencies say Tokyo should have little trouble raising extra funds, but some analysts say there is a risk that additional supply of government bonds could push up Tokyo's borrowing costs.
BLACKOUTS RISK
While economists expect Japan's biggest reconstruction push since the post-World War Two period to give the hard-hit economy a badly needed lift in the second half of the year, they warn that power shortages are the greatest risk to such a scenario.
The 9.0 magnitude quake that struck on March 11 unleashed a deadly tsunami that wiped out whole communities, leaving nearly 23,000 people dead or missing and 350,000 homeless, and crippling the biggest power utility in Japan and Asia.
Tokyo Electric Power Co, which serves Tokyo and the surrounding area that accounts for 40 percent of Japan's economic output, lost about 20 percent of its operating thermal and nuclear power generation and is unlikely to get enough back online to meet peak summer demand.
The utility is unable to get much surplus power from operators in the undamaged western part of the country because they operate with a different power frequency.
Toyota Motor Co, the world's top automaker, could be losing about $74 million of profit for every day its 12 assembly plants remain shut, Goldman Sachs estimated, and it is just one of dozens, if not hundreds, of Japanese manufacturers facing disruptions.
Many analysts see a ripple effect from the disaster with disruption to production, both inside Japan and abroad, and the impact of fears of radiation and food contamination hurting business and consumer sentiment worldwide. ($1 = 81.065 Japanese Yen)
(Additional reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Writing by Tomasz Janowski; Editing by Kim Coghill and Jeremy Laurence)

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Asian Defense News

*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News
Contact: dtnnews@ymail.com
©COPYRIGHT (C) DTN NEWS DEFENSE-TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

DTN News - BREAKING NEWS: Major 7.4-Magnitude Quake Hits Near Japanese Islands: USGS

Defense News: DTN News - BREAKING NEWS: Major 7.4-Magnitude Quake Hits Near Japanese Islands: USGS

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Asian Defense News

(NSI News Source Info) TOKYO, Japan - December 21, 2010: A major 7.4-magnitude quake struck southern Japan Wednesday, the US Geological Survey said, with people in nearby coastal regions told to evacuate ahead of a possible two-metre-high tsunami.

The quake was followed just over 20 minutes later by two aftershocks, a minute apart, of 5.6-magnitude

The quake hit at 3:19 am local time (1719 GMT Tuesday), 153 kilometres (95 miles) east of Chichi-shima in Japan's remote Bonin island region and at a shallow depth of just 14 kilometres.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injury.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no threat of a destructive widespread tsunami.

But it warned in a bulletin: "Earthquakes of this size sometimes generate local tsunamis that can be destructive along coasts located within 100 kilometres of the earthquake epicentre.

"Authorities in the region of the epicentre should be aware of this possibility and take appropriate action."

Japanese television broadcasts carried a bulletin from the meteorological agency warning that a tsunami was expected to hit the coasts of Bonin island, referred in Japan as the Ogasawara islands, with two-metre (6.6-feet) waves predicted.

"Everyone near the coast must evacuate to a higher ground," the broadcasts warned.

The quake was followed just over 20 minutes later by two aftershocks, a minute apart, of 5.6-magnitude. Both were just 10 kilometres deep, USGS said.

Around 20 percent of the world's most powerful earthquakes strike Japan, which sits on the "Ring of Fire" surrounding the Pacific Ocean.

But high building standards, regular drills and a sophisticated tsunami warning system mean that casualties are often minimal.

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