Smoldering ruins of destroyed homes near Hiocho in Nada Ward.
Day One (continued) - Tuesday, January 17, 1995 (Part 2):
It was now early afternoon. I felt dizzy and nauseous from all the smoke and dust I had inhaled. I was dead tired, covered with dirt and soot, and stunk of smoke. I bent down and cleaned the grit which had caked on my glasses in a puddle of water. I rejoined Takako after sharing a few words and bidding farewell to others in the group who had worked to rescue the elderly woman.
Mike joined us a few minutes later and told us two people had been rescued from the wreckage of the adjacent house he had worked on. Unfortunately, one was already dead when they found him. Mike, Takako and I felt very good to be helping people. But like everyone else who helped, we were very frustrated by the lack of water, equipment and organization. This first day, rescues were very much a civilian effort. Strangers stood alongside strangers and worked feverishly together to rescue strangers, before disappearing in different directions to do so again.
We needed to regroup, clean the grit from our eyes and throats, change our filthy smoke filled clothes, and bring more tools and supplies. As we walked back to my apartment, we felt so lucky. There was a big difference between my neighborhood and the one I had just come from. After seeing the types of structures that had collapsed, I felt much more safe and secure in my building. We checked it inside and out and found major no cracks or other structural damage. Considering how much the building shook during the quake, I was amazed and wanted to personally thank the architect and builders.
Arriving home, we used ice cold water to wash our eyes, throats, faces and hands as best we could. Although the electricity had already come back on in my neighborhood, there was no gas and, thus, no hot water. Our neighbor, Hachiya-san, came by and told us to fill our bath, sink and as many containers as possible with tap water since it would soon be shut off due to many broken pipes in the neighborhood’s water supply system. We did as Hachiya-san advised, drank some juice to help wash out some of the dust and grit still stuck in our throats, and briefly rested in front of the TV to watch the news. For the next several days the TV would have constant coverage of the disaster and be our main source of information.
After resting and watching the news for an hour, Mike and I prepared to go out again while Takako remained in the apartment. We felt restless watching everything on TV when much of it was still happening so close by. We wanted to continue helping where it was needed.
We walked past Hankyu Station and continued south towards JR Rokkomichi Station a kilometer or two away. There were many newer and larger concrete and steel apartment and office buildings in this area. But despite stronger materials, most buildings still had various degrees of damage. A twelve-story building had three large wide structural cracks running from the first floor all the way to the roof. It would surely have to be demolished later. A seven-story building that housed a bank and several offices had all its windows blown out and the third floor collapsed, causing the second and fourth floors to flatten and sandwich together. Large broken panes of glass dangled dangerously from its upper floors.
At Rokkomichi, the station and JR tracks were heavily damaged. In one place, heavy tracks and beams had fallen and crushed the front of a bank located underneath. ATM machines were hanging over the sidewalk, one of which was busted open. We did not see any money, and although we did not look, I am sure whatever money it had was still there. Many other people also walked by these ATMs and did not look inside either. Such is Japan I thought, comparing it to the looting that invariably happens in my own country after most natural disasters.
Fires were everywhere, and firemen were overwhelmed and mostly without water.
We crossed the JR tracks and continued south. Soon we came upon many older wooden houses that had all collapsed together in a huge tangled mess of rubble. A man walked over top the pile of rubble and a bystander told us he was looking for someone. Mike and I took a flashlight and some tools we had brought with us and went up with the bystander to help the man in his search.
The enormous pile of mostly wooden rubble we climbed over comprised virtually an entire city block. Most of the houses and structures had broken apart in numerous pieces when they collapsed, but there were several large portions that had only partially fallen and now leaned dangerously over us. The wreckage was very unstable and seemed much older and prone to fire than what we had seen earlier that day. Fortunately, there was no fire in the vicinity.
It was now late afternoon and starting to get dark. We caught up to the man we saw climbing over the rubble and were shocked to see he was using a kerosene lantern for light. I told him to put it out because it was much too dangerous a fire hazard. One slip and fall and the huge pile of broken wood could become a raging inferno. The flashlight I had with me was enough and much safer. Another person also joined us and brought a flashlight as well.
The person we were looking for was the son of the old man with the lantern. He had been trapped in the rubble by now for almost 12 hours. He was thought to be in the first floor of an old house that had partially collapsed and hung steeply down at a 45-degree angle. A stocky man helped me break through the side of the house into an upstairs room. We cautiously entered the room and I went ahead and slid down the steeply sloping floor into a crushed bathroom. The ceiling and floor had compressed together to the width of one meter, and the room was only as wide as the bathtub. It was like crouching in a dark coffin. There wasn’t enough space for two people, so the stocky man rolled a flashlight down to me so I could look into the many dark holes and crevices in the walls and floor. A large broken tile wall loomed over me, and a wall under the cracked floor was crushed and led into the next room where the trapped man was thought to be.
Shining my flashlight through the large cracks, I called out asking if anyone was there. Almost immediately, I heard a muffled reply. We had found the man but could not see him. With the stocky man as my translator, I asked if he was OK and whether he could see the light from my flashlight. He replied he was not seriously hurt but could not see any light. After being frightened and alone for nearly 12 hours in dark cold through numerous aftershocks, the man was ecstatic to have been found but confused that it was a foreigner who found him. I tried to pry away the debris of the crushed wall so I could look into the next room. But it was too far, too tangled and too firmly stuck in place. So the stocky man and I crawled back outside and began looking for another entry point that was closer to the trapped man.
We found another hole and widened it enough for me to crawl back inside. We were in another upstairs room that sloped down at an even sharper angle. There was a room beyond that which I thought would be over the room where the man was trapped. The stocky man and I had to remove broken furniture and other debris to get into that next room, passing it along to Mike and another man who were just outside. The next room led deeper into the huge pile of rubble and was crushed to less than half its normal height.
I slid down and pushed aside more broken furniture and debris, and then tried to pull up a tatami mat with my hands. The tatami mat was caught at one end and could not be removed, so I pulled it up over top of me and crawled under the mat to pry at the floorboards underneath.
Another neighbor had joined in the search and brought a small generator, brighter light and crowbar with him. After shining more light down my way, he handed me the crowbar and I began removing the floorboards. It was now very cramped with both of us working in that small space, but we finally broke through and made a hole into the room below. It was even more crushed than the room we were in. Now we could hear the trapped man very clearly. He was very close, but we still could not see him. But he could now see our light and, after several more questions, we knew exactly where he was.
The hole we made was still too small and while we were trying to enlarge it another strong aftershock occurred and rattled the crushed house we were in. The room shook and groaned as dust arose around us obscuring our view. For some reason the light went out, and we just froze and held on to whatever we could in the total darkness. When the aftershock ended and dust settled, we were surprised to see movement in the hole we had dug. The aftershock had shifted some of the debris in the room below us; enough to now see one shoulder and upper arm of the trapped man. We had found him!
Burning cars spread noxious smoke. Fire consumes small shop.
It was then that we heard yelling and commotion from outside where we had entered. Mike called down to me saying that firemen had arrived and wanted us out so they could take over the rescue. As we readied to leave, we told the trapped man “gambatte” and assured him that firemen were there to rescue him. We backed out of the small crushed space and into the cold night air.
Now there were many people up top outside - all firemen and professional rescuers. After explaining exactly where the man was trapped and the conditions inside, they decided to get to the man by removing the rubble from the roof on down. It would be a long dangerous process, and they did not want to risk having civilians around - especially foreigners who spoke only limited Japanese. The fire chief thanked me and the other neighbors, and then gave orders to his team.
Since the firemen were now in control and there was nothing further we could do, Mike and I began walking back home in the dark. There was a very large fire still burning in Nada Ward and I could see the night sky glowing bright red orange in the distance between us and my home. As we walked, we passed by many buildings and collapsed homes on fire. It felt so helpless knowing that some people might still be trapped in those ruins. There were too many collapsed homes and buildings, too many fires, no knowledge of where any of these people might be, and no time to find them before the fires came. There was destruction, fire, smoke, confusion and sirens all around us. It was a war zone in the middle of a still raging war that would continue for the next few days.
Many people were now on partially cleared roads in their cars trying to get out of the city or to find loved ones. None of the traffic signals worked, but there were no car accidents. People were very patient, polite and calm despite the calamity all around them. They quickly pulled over and made way for many emergency vehicles as they rushed all over the city. There was no panic - not even when we dug hurriedly to find people trapped before an approaching fire. The calmness and stoicism of the people was eerie and stood in sharp contrast to all the turmoil around them. Perhaps many were still in shock or had become numbed by all the terrible things they had seen.
As we got further away from the fires and into quieter areas, we saw many families sitting in cars parked in the road in front of their ruined homes. They had lost everything and would sleep in their cars that first cold night. As the night deepened, it got even colder and we hoped they would be OK. We again thought of the people still trapped under the rubble in the silent dark cold not knowing when or whether they would be found. Those who were still trapped faced not only the danger of fire, but also of freezing to death in that first cold winter night.
Collapsed homes near Kamimaecho. Heavy clay tile roofs helped bring down many older wooden houses.
When we got home, we changed into clean clothes and used an electric tea pot to make hot water to clean our faces and hands. It would be several weeks before gas and hot water service were restored. The rice cooker worked, however, and we used it to make rice balls for the three of us. Our dinner consisted of a single rice ball each and glass of juice. It was our first and only meal of the day. We had been so busy and preoccupied with all the tragedy around us that we did not stop to eat or drink anything. We should have been extremely hungry and thirsty after getting home. But we were too exhausted to feel anything.
After our meager dinner, we began cleaning the apartment. My stereo and dryer were broken, and many other belongings had fallen all over the place. The kitchen was a nasty mess. Glasses, dishes, cooking oil, jars of jam, bottles of wine, and my prized collection of Japanese sake had fallen, broken and spilled all over the kitchen floor. After cleaning what we could with rags soaked in cold water, the three of us fell exhausted in front of the TV and watched the non-stop news coverage of the quake without saying another word to each other.
We were fortunate to have electricity, heat and the TV. By now the telephone also worked and we made and received many calls whenever it was possible to get through to the outside world. During the day, I was lucky enough to find a working payphone but could not make international calls. So I asked my friend Toru in Hiroshima to call my parents and daughter in the USA to let them know that I was safe. My parents in New York had not known anything about the quake until Toru called them at 1:30 a.m. their time. They stayed up the rest of the night watching the news and waiting for my call. My 11-year old daughter Jennifer had also stayed up watching the news worrying and crying until she was exhausted and fell asleep. She was still asleep when I called, so I asked her mom not to wake her and to have her call me the next morning. She called me several hours later in the middle of the night sounding very tired but relieved to hear from me. After talking with my daughter and parents, I could not help but think of the many families who had lost loved ones this day.
That night, we all slept in the living room in front of the TV and heater with warm clothes and supplies nearby in case we had to run outside again. Many frequent aftershocks continued throughout the night, interrupted our sleep and rattled our already frazzled weary nerves. Each time an aftershock struck we froze and apprehensively waited for it to stop. We were ready to jump up and flee if it increased in intensity or went on too long. We did not sleep much that first night.
Burned out commercial building near JR Rokkomichi.