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FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 2011
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THE TIMES LEADER
www.timesleader.com
Hope for missing elderly is fading By KRISTEN GELINEAU and DAVID STRINGER Associated Press
RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan — The elderly couple fled their home on foot as the warning sirens blared. But they could not keep up with their neighbors and fell behind as the tsunami rushed in. Nearly a week later, 71-year-old Taeko Kanno and her husband are still missing. “I think there is no hope,” said Katsuo Maiya, Kanno’s brotherin-law. “I can’t find them. The only thing I can do is wait until the military collects their bodies.” As retrieving bodies increasingly becomes the focus of rescue crews in Japan’s northeast, it’s clear that last Friday’s earthquake and tsunami — believed to
have killed more than 10,000 — took their heaviest toll on the elderly in this rapidly aging nation, where nearly one in four people is over 65. Many, unable to flee, perished. Survivors lost their daily medicines. Hospitals lost power and water. Sometimes, the consequences have been fatal. Last Friday’s twin disasters also crippled a nuclear power plant in the northeast, adding to the region’s woes. Fourteen older patients died after being moved to a temporary shelter in a school gym because their hospital was in the evacuation zone near the overheating plant. Two of the patients died in transit Monday and 12 more at the gym, said Chuei Inamura, a Fukushima government official. It took until Thursday to get all
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pools used to store spent nuclear fuel: Fuel rods in one pool were believed to be at least partially exposed, if not dry, and others were in danger. Without water, the rods could heat up and spew radiation. It could take days and “possibly weeks” to get the complex under control, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jazcko said. He defended the U.S. decision to recommend a 50-mile evacuation zone for its citizens, a much stronger measure than Japan has taken. Japan says it will accept technical help from the U.S. to fight the nuclear crisis. Still, a senior official with the U.N.’s nuclear safety agency said there had been “no significant worsening” at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant but that the situation remained “very serious.” Graham Andrew told reporters in Vienna that nuclear fuel rods in two reactors were only
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to Maine, and nothing came of their plans. CityVest also paid $640,000 to purchase an adjacent parking lot from Ali Kazimi and Nasser Chafieian. The two purchases increased the size of the parcel to about 3/4 of an acre, county records show. Consulting services ate up the third largest portion of the expenses -- $540,267. Lincoln Property Co., Philadelphia, received $520,100 -- almost all of this money. CityVest hired the national real estate company in September 2003 to market the building to developers and assess options for the site. Lincoln Property had previously completed a downtown market study for the Diamond City Partnership and assisted the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Business and Industry with some projects. The company’s contract was supposed to link its compensation to the success of its marketing campaign. The company received a $10,000 retainer in September 2003 and around $11,400 in monthly payments for the remainder of 2003, records show. Payments to Lincoln hovered around $3,000 in 2004 until October, when the company received a $15,000 retainer. CityVest then started paying the company $15,000 per month plus expenses for meals, lodging and other travel costs after that. The final payment to Lincoln out of the county funding was in February 2007.
the remaining patients into other hospitals. “We feel very helpless and very sorry for them,” Inamura said. “The condition at the gymnasium was horrible. No running water, no medicine and very, very little food. We simply did not have the means to provide good care.” At least some international rescue teams ended their efforts Thursday, acknowledging there was little prospect left of finding missing people still alive. “We have no more tasks,” said Pete Stevenson, a firefighter heading Britain’s 70-strong team. “The Japanese government have told us they are now moving from search and rescue to the recovery phase.” He insisted their departure wasn’t related to any fears of radi-
about half covered with water, and they were also not completely submerged in a third. If the fuel is not fully covered, rising temperatures will increase the chances of complete meltdowns that would release much larger amounts of radioactive material than the failing plant has emitted so far. Low levels of radiation have been detected well beyond Tokyo, which is 140 miles south of the plant, but hazardous levels have been limited to the plant itself. Still, the crisis triggered by last week’s earthquake and tsunami has forced thousands to evacuate and drained Tokyo’s normally vibrant streets of life, its residents either leaving town or holing up in their homes. The official death toll from the disasters stood at 5,692 as of Friday morning, with 9,522 missing, the national police agency said. President Barack Obama appeared on television to assure Americans that officials do not expect harmful amounts of ra-
Another $288,331was spent on architects, with the lion’s share going to Cope Linder Architects, Philadelphia – $164,644, records show. CityVest Executive Director Alex Rogers said Lincoln Property should be described as a project manager, rather than a consultant, because the company oversaw bid specifications, supervised architects and contractors, and prepared various proposals. “They oversaw the entire project,” Rogers said. Viewed as money well spent He views CityVest’s work on the project and use of the $6 million as a success, saying the prominent site now has better odds of attracting significant development, even if the hotel must be demolished. Before CityVest’s involvement, the property had $2 million in accrued back taxes, no parking and a decaying attached high-rise, he said. “What CityVest set out to do was to remove the site from its paralyzed position,” Rogers said. “The funds from the county were invested to address several hurdles that had prevented any private sector individuals from taking an interest in the site. We now have a single contiguous, sizeable lot in an absolutely ideal location.” Money spent on environmental abatement at the historic hotel was not wasted because asbestos and other hazardous material would have to be removed before the building could be demolished, he said. “The cost of demolition will be substantially reduced,” said Rogers, who is not discussing details about the possibility of demoli-
Hearing a tone U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta announced that Wilkes-Barre has been selected to host a House Committee on Education & the Workforce Field Hearing on March 21 at Wilkes University.
ation from the troubled Fukushima nuclear plant, which lies about 90 miles south. Japan’s relatively large elderly population presents a particular challenge for rescue and relief in what is already a disaster of epic proportions. About 23 percent of Japan’s 127 million people are age 65 or over, nearly double the proportion in the United States. Japan’s rural areas have been in decline for years, and many of the small coastal towns hit hardest by the tsunami had seen an exodus of young people moving to cities for work. Now the low-lying parts of AP PHOTO those towns have been flattened, and as much as half the popula- With empty jugs, an elderly woman waits for the arrival of a water tion in some may have been truck Thursday at Yamada town, Iwate Prefecture, northern Japan. killed.
diation to reach the U.S. or its territories. He also said the U.S. was offering Japan any help it could provide. He reaffirmed America’s commitment to nuclear power and said he was asking for a comprehensive safety review. Japanese and American assessments of the crisis have differed, with the plant’s owner denying Jazcko’s report Wednesday that Unit 4’s spent fuel pool was dry and that anyone who gets close to the plant could face potentially lethal doses of radiation. But a Tokyo Electric Power Co. executive moved closer to the U.S. position Thursday. “Considering the amount of radiation released in the area, the fuel rods are more likely to be exposed than to be covered,” Yuichi Sato said. Another utility official said Wednesday that the company has been unable to get information such as water levels and temperatures from any of the spent fuel pools in the four most troubled reactors. Workers have been dumping seawater when possible to control temperatures at
the plant since the quake and tsunami knocked out power to its cooling systems, but they tried even more desperate measures on Units 3 and 4. Two Japanese military CH-47 Chinook helicopters began dumping seawater on Unit 3 on Thursday morning, defense ministry spokeswoman Kazumi Toyama said. The choppers doused the reactor with at least four loads of water in just the first10 minutes, though TV showed much of it appearing to disperse. Chopper crews flew missions of about 40 minutes each to limit their radiation exposure, passing over the reactor with loads of about 2,000 gallons of water. Another 9,000 gallons of water were blasted from military trucks with high-pressure sprayers used to extinguish fires at plane crashes, though the vehicles had to stay safely back from areas deemed to have too much radiation. Special police units with water cannons were also tried, but they could not reach the targets from safe distances and had to pull back, said Yasuhiro Hashimo-
to, a spokesman for Japan’s nuclear safety agency. Tokyo Electric Power said it believed workers were making headway in staving off a catastrophe both with the spraying and, especially, with efforts to complete an emergency power line to restart the plant’s own electric cooling systems. “This is a first step toward recovery,” said Teruaki Kobayashi, a facilities management official at the power company. He said radiation levels “have somewhat stabilized at their lows” and that some of the spraying had reached its target, with one reactor emitting steam. “We are doing all we can as we pray for the situation to improve,” Kobayashi said. Authorities planned to spray again Friday, and Kobayashi said: “We just have to stick to what we can do most quickly and efficiently.” Work on connecting the new power line to the plant was expected to begin Friday and take 10 to 15 hours, said nuclear safety agency spokesman Minoru Ohgoda.
The expected demolition became public after a representative of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission verified Tuesday that CityVest representatives came to Harrisburg last week to inform commission staff of its plan to tear down the building. tion until CityVest releases a report on the project in the near future. Rogers said the report will outline the hotel’s “multiple difficulties and deficiencies as a candidate for reuse today.” “The funds we received from the county were spent to achieve important pre-construction milestones, and in the process of doing that, we made every effort to market the corner building to private developers,” Rogers said. The $6 million in funding came from the county Community Development Office. Office funding must be spent on economic and community development and may not be used to cover county operating expenses, officials say. County Community Development Director Andrew Reilly said the first $1 million was forgiven, and repayment of the remaining $5 million is dependent on CityVest’s ability to generate revenue by attracting a tenant. Invoices had to be submitted to Reilly’s office for CityVest to receive the money, and the $6 million was spent in July 2008. Additional public funds CityVest also received $1 million in federal funding for the project. Rogers said this money was primarily spent to compensate taxing bodies for a portion of the back taxes that had been owed on the property before CityVest acquired it.
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Another $3 million in state funding was also earmarked for the project, but Rogers said that money has not yet been provided and was not guaranteed. The state also awarded $290,000 in gaming money to the Sterling project in September. That funding has not been spent because the state is awaiting more documentation, said Theresa Elliott, of the state Department of Community and Economic Development. Expected demolition The expected demolition became public after a representative of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission verified Tuesday that CityVest representatives came to Harrisburg last week to inform commission staff of its plan to tear down the building. County Commissioner Stephen A. Urban said Rogers had informed him several months ago about the likelihood of the demolition because a developer had concluded it would not be cost-effectivetorehabilitatethebuilding due to its advanced deterioration and other problems. Rogers has declined to talk about demolition, saying CityVest will soon release a consultant’s study examining the building’s structural condition and limitations. Urban said Rogers has discussed the possibility that CityVest will be seeking $1 million in
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county community development funding to demolish the building. If that happens, all three commissioners say they would want the county to gain ownership of
the property from CityVest so the county could attempt to recoup some of the $6 million in community development funding invested in the property to date.