Our Thoughts Are With You, Japan

from bbc.co.uk/news

I think I speak for every person in the world when I say it's a horrendous catastrophe when a natural disaster of this magnitude happens.

I am of course speaking about the earthquake that hit just off the coast of northern Japan, reading at a staggering 8.9 on the richter scale. This caused a series of smaller tremors to occur shortly after, as the aftermath of the initial disaster unfolded. A tsunami reaching heights of 10m waves crashed into the eastern coastline, causing unknown levels of damage. To call it a disaster doesn't come close to it - and my thoughts go out to every family affected, wether it be in Japan or families throughout the world who have relatives in the quake zone. Communication must be chaos at the minute, causing even more upset for those caught up in the mad panic of trying to locate loved ones.

I have been following the developments closely via the BBC News website - with live coverage of the affected areas.

Further to the awful events, there is growing concerns for a nuclear crisis, as three of the diesel powered cooling systems failed on shut down of the reactors following the earthquake, the BBC reports. Two of the three systems were stabilised with the use of mobile facilities, however one remained unstable, and although serious efforts were made to reduce worryingly high pressures building in the units - an explosion occurred yesterday at around 8pm (GMT). Today concerns are growing around a similar situation building in another unit. The radial evacuation precautions have been doubled.

The current future in Japan is highly uncertain as the country is in a state of emergency, chaos and sheer panic.

The media is portraying the general state of the situation as a whole, which is important when confusion breaks out during the early stages of disaster - although my thoughts go to those individual people who are disconnected from such reporting. Power cuts continue and panic must of well and truly set in, as those of us reading about the latest online probably know more about it than for example those that have had everything washed away, and have barely survived themselves. As the days go on, food, clean water and sanitary become an growing issue, amongst a multitude of other things, such as contact with relatives and shelter.

from bbc.co.uk/news

Every country unaffected by this will be pulling out the stops to send aid, although little can be done to aid the grief felt by those who have lost family, a lifetime of irreplaceable possessions, and even their own lives.

Perhaps this is an awaking to us all that nuclear energy is although a renewable source, far from being safe, clean or indeed the way forward. I vote Green at every possible opportunity as I constantly live in fear of issues such as this arising from nuclear power. I really do not understand the benefits at all.

That aside - our thoughts are with you, Japan.