Earthquake Diary 46

 Tomone enjoying herself.

 I showed this sushi shop in an earlier photo. At that time many of the tiles were off the roof. Now they have covered the roof with plastic tarpaulins and are open for business again.

 The construction along the river has started again. I do not understand what they are doing, but whatever it is they are working hard at it. They are filling large cloth bags with dirt, so I thought that they were starting to make a coffer dam so they could build an underwater base for the siding they will probably put on the bank. However, they did not leave the bags here, but instead they carried them about 500 meters to the right and piled them in a place where I thought the construction was finished a year ago. The construction, according to the required sign, will continue until the end of June so it is going to be a large scale project, whatever it is.

 This is a place where a wall collapsed and part of a vegetable garden fell into the space this created. In the middle of the picture is a negi (a green onion) happily grown about a meter away from where it had been before the quake.

 This is some more of the same wall. The plum tree fell over with the wall but is still in the process of blossoming. It is a very pretty tree and in another week or so it should be in full bloom, reminding us that life goes on for those who remain.

 This is one of the buildings that are adjacent to the river. A crew is hard at work getting fixed up enough so that the company can do business again.

 I showed pictures of the road at this corner. It was broken up and parts were at different heights. They have now put in temporary patches so that cars can drive over it without problems. You can still see the height differences in the foreground.

The news has been giving us statistics about the damage. As I said there is only 70% of the usual gasoline. Electric power has been down about the same amount but it is gradually being increased and there are fewer power outages in Tokyo. The main sewerage processing plant for this area was severely damaged, so they are asking people to use less toilet paper and to flush less frequently, until they can get it repaired.  The train lines are gradually being put back into service but there are large gaps where the damage will take weeks to repair. Some of these gaps are being filled by buses. Fresh food is also in short supply, mainly because of the nuclear problem and the government decision to ban food sales from a large area around the nuclear generators. The areas hit by the tsunami remain devastated and will stay that way for years in many cases. However, there is a feverish effort going to get the debris removed and things into some sort of livable state. The debris in Miyagi Prefecture is equivalent to 23 years worth of normal trash. There is a problem with where to put it all. What do you do with hundreds of thousands of ruined refrigerators, TVs, washing machines, cars, computers and all the other stuff that was destroyed?