Fukushima (Japan), 26 feb (EFE).-put Fukushima standing without the stigma of radioactivity is the aim of the authorities of this Japanese province, almost a year after the nuclear accident works to avoid isolation and reinforce communication between agencies.
“We are in the phase of recovery, but still awaits us reconstruction,” explains Masami Watanabe, Superintendent of the provincial police and one of the “heroes of Fukushima” which last October traveled to Spain to collect the Prince of Asturias Award of Concord.
Watanabe receives EfE in a room where hanging a photograph which appears with the Princes of Asturias – “I was impressed and grateful for this sign of recognition of Japan”, says about the award-while there is a sway of agents working between stacks of papers in the adjacent offices.
In the corridors of the building, in the center of Fukushima city, yet are cracks medium repair open by the earthquake of 9 degrees that last year he shook the area and became the epicenter of the worst crisis nuclear from Chernobyl.
The disaster forced the police to assume roles previously unimaginable in this quiet mountainous province, such as radioactivity measurements, monitor the central of Daiichi to prevent “acts of nuclear terrorism” or to prevent theft in the thousands of homes abandoned by evacuees.
Watanabe, under whose command has created a special Department of disaster to deal with the problems stemming from the crisis we now have 2,800 police officers, with the support of some 520 officers arrived from other provinces of Japan”, details.
More than eleven months after the devastating tsunami that only in Fukushima left 1,605 dead, police kept still open the search for missing 216 to be able to return the remains to relatives.
Also patrol by the 181 districts of temporary houses in the area to ensure the safety of about 97,000 evacuees, said the Chief of police, while teaches a magazine with pictures of the gigantic waves of March 11 that recall, once again, the magnitude of the disaster.
The emergency forced many, such as the own Watanabe – who was then responsible for the police of Futaba, the village at the foot of the nuclear power plant – to make crucial decisions alone in the absence of communications.
Therefore explains, demonstrated the importance of establishing “greater coordination” between different bodies of rescue and ensure a solid communications network, something that already works, with the acquisition of satellite phones and the establishment of new communication protocols.
The weight of taking decisions in solitude felt also municipal heads as Katsunobu Sakurai, Mayor of the city of Minamisoma, 25 kilometres from the nuclear power and remained incommunicado for several days after the accident.
“The important thing was to make decisions quickly with a basic criterion: survive”, says EfE the Mayor, who rose to international media thanks to a message of relief that hung at the end of March, in full nuclear panic, in the YouTube video portal.
In that appeal, which earned him a place in the list of the 100 most influential people in the world of Time, Sakurai magazine complained angrily the abandonment of the people and the paucity of information received from the Government: “we even knew how to organize the evacuation of the people,” recalls now.
Therefore insists turn one of the lessons of the earthquake is that something is needed a good communications network emergencies, what is underway.
“The important thing is to know what is happening at each moment in places with problems, and from there take quick decisions”, underlines this man of 56 years, which defines 2011 as “a year of constant cold sweat”.
Is now in close communication with the regional government and the police, which monitors access to the neighbouring exclusion around the central zone, and is aware of that much help will be needed to avoid Minamisoma becomes a ghost town marked by radioactivity.
Projects for the municipality passed to regain the industry “as soon as possible” and insofar as agriculture is currently paralyzed by the proximity to the nuclear power plant, discusses sectors as the renewable energy, said.
In addition, among his plans is posting a new video on YouTube to try to “that people from around the world come to the city” without fear of radioactivity. Despite the nuclear burden, “Minamisoma will leave no doubt forward,” concludes.
By Maribel Izcue and Yoko Kaneko
Police monitored at a checkpoint installed on one of the roads in the town of Minamisoma, access to the exclusion zone of a radius of 20 km around the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, in Japan. About 80,000 people were evacuated from the area after the nuclear accident recorded on March 11, 2011. EFE
Katsunobu Sakurai, Minamisoma Mayor, one of the neighbouring cities to the exclusion zone of 20 kilometers around the nuclear power station of Fukushima, in Japan, he told EFE that after the nuclear disaster “the important thing was to make faster decisions with a basic criterion: survive”. EFE
