Japan to ration electricity with rolling blackouts

The death toll in Japan's earthquake and tsunami will likely exceed 10,000 in one state

alone, an official said Sunday, as millions of survivors were left without drinking water,

electricity and proper food along the pulverized northeastern coast.

"This is Japan's most severe crisis since the war ended 65 years ago," Prime Minister Naoto

Kan told reporters, adding that Japan's future would be decided by the response to this

crisis.

Although the government doubled the number of soldiers deployed in the aid effort to 100,000,

it seemed overwhelmed by what's turning out to be a triple disaster: Friday's quake and

tsunami damaged two nuclear reactors at a power plant on the coast, and at least one of them

appeared to be going through a partial meltdown, raising fears of a radiation leak.

The police chief of Miyagi prefecture, or state, told a gathering of disaster relief

officials that his estimate for deaths was more than 10,000, police spokesman Go Sugawara

told The Associated Press. Miyagi has a population of 2.3 million and is one of the three

prefectures hardest hit in Friday's disaster. Only 379 people have officially been confirmed

dead in Miyagi.

The nuclear crisis posed fresh concerns for those who survived the earthquake and tsunami,

which hit with breathtaking force and speed, breaking or sweeping away everything in its

path.

"First I was worried about the quake, now I'm worried about radiation. I live near the

plants, so I came here to find out if I'm OK. I tested negative, but I don't know what to do

next," Kenji Koshiba, a construction worker, said at an emergency center in Koriyama town

near the power plant in Fukushima.

According to officials, more than 1,400 people were killed -- including 200 people whose

bodies were found Sunday along the coast -- and more than 1,000 were missing in the

disasters. Another 1,700 were injured.

In a rare piece of good news, the Defense Ministry said a military vessel on Sunday rescued a

60-year-old man floating off the coast of Fukushima on the roof of his house after being

swept away in the tsunami. He was in good condition.

The U.S. Geological Survey calculated the initial quake to have a magnitude of 8.9, while

Japanese officials raised their estimate on Sunday to 9.0. Either way it was the strongest

quake ever recorded in Japan. It has been followed by more than 150 powerful aftershocks.

Teams searched for the missing along hundreds of miles (kilometers) of Japanese coastline,

and hundreds of thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers that were

cut off from rescuers and aid. At least 1.4 million households had gone without water since

the quake struck and some 2.5 million households were without electricity.

Temperatures were to dip near freezing overnight, but the prime minister warned that

electricity would not be restored for days.

Trade Minister Banri Kaeda said the region was likely to face further blackouts and that

power would be rationed to ensure supplies go to essential needs.

The government says it has sent 120,000 blankets, 120,000 bottles of water and 110,000 liters

of gasoline in addition to bread, rice balls, instant cup noodles and diapers to the affected

areas.

Large areas of the countryside remained surrounded by water and unreachable. Fuel stations

were closed and people were running out of gasoline for their vehicles.

The government said 275,000 people have been evacuated to emergency shelters, many of them

without power.

In Iwaki town, residents were leaving due to concerns over dwindling food and fuel supplies.

The town had no electricity and all stores were closed. Local police took in about 90 people

and gave them blankets and rice balls but there was no sign of government or military aid

trucks.

At a large refinery on the outskirts of the hard-hit port city of Sendai, 100-foot (30-meter)

-high bright orange flames rose in the air, spitting out dark plumes of smoke. The facility

has been burning since Friday. A reporter who approached the area could hear the roaring fire

from afar, and after a few minutes the gaseous stench began burning the eyes and throat.

"My water is cut off," said Kenji Fukuda, who lives in the rural town of Sukugawa. It "is a

little bit rural and there is natural well water. We take it and put it through the water

purifier and warm it up and use it in various ways," he said.

In the small town of Tagajo, near Sendai, dazed residents roamed streets cluttered with

smashed cars, broken homes and twisted metal.

Residents said the water surged in and quickly rose higher than the first floor of buildings.

At Sengen General Hospital the staff worked feverishly to haul bedridden patients up the

stairs one at a time. With the halls now dark, those that can leave have gone to the local

community center.

"There is still no water or power, and we've got some very sick people in here," said

hospital official Ikuro Matsumoto.

One older neighborhood sits on low ground near a canal. The tsunami came in from the canal

side and blasted through the frail wooden houses, coating the interiors with a thick layer of

mud and spilling their contents out into the street on the other side.

"It's been two days, and all I've been given so far is a piece of bread and a rice ball,"

said Masashi Imai, 56.

Police cars drove slowly through the town and warned residents through loudspeakers to seek

higher ground, but most simply stood by and watched them pass.

Dozens of countries have offered assistance. Two U.S. aircraft carrier groups were off

Japan's coast and ready to provide assistance. Helicopters were flying from one of the

carriers, the USS Ronald Reagan, delivering food and water in Miyagi.

Two other U.S. rescue teams of 72 personnel each and rescue dogs were scheduled to arrive

later Sunday, as was a five-dog team from Singapore and a 102-member South Korean team.

In Fukushima prefecture, people said the city of Soma was hardest hit. Rubble was all that

remained of one coastal housing district where some 2,000 people lived. Their houses were

simply washed away.

No signs of life remained Sunday night, except for the occasional dog searching for its

owner. The only lights in town came from the fire engines patrolling the area.

In Sendai, firefighters with wooden picks dug through a devastated neighborhood. One of them

yelled: "A corpse." Inside a house, he had found the body of a gray-haired woman under a

blanket.

A few minutes later, the firefighters spotted another -- that of a man in black fleece jacket

and pants, crumpled in a partial fetal position at the bottom of a wooden stairwell. From

outside, the house seemed almost untouched, two cracks in the white walls the only signs of

damage.

The man's neighbor, 24-year-old Ayumi Osuga, dug through the completely destroyed remains of

her own house, her white mittens covered by dark mud.

Osuga said she had been playing origami, the Japanese art of folding paper into figures, with

her three children when the quake stuck. She recalled her husband's shouted warning from

outside: "'GET OUT OF THERE NOW!'"

She gathered her children -- aged 2 to 6 -- and fled in her car to higher ground with her

husband. They spent the night huddled in a hilltop home belonging to her husband's family

about 12 miles (20 kilometers) away.

"My family, my children. We are lucky to be alive," she told The Associated Press.