Red Cross response
Australian Red Cross has closed the Japan and Pacific Disaster Appeal 2011. The appeal was run to assist those affected by the disaster.
Australian Red Cross is on standby to further assist our partner organisation, Japanese Red Cross Society in the response to this disaster.
To assist the tens of thousands of people still displaced by the devastating tsunami, Japanese Red Cross is equipping 70,000 temporary homes with a package of electrical appliances, such as stoves to cook food. The assistance is worth an estimated US$160 million dollars and benefits over 280,000 people.
The Japanese Red Cross Society has provided emergency medical care, relief and early recovery support to more than 67,000 people in need. This support will continue until the recovery process is complete - as long as it takes.
Japanese Red Cross staff and volunteers have distributed more than 30,000 emergency kits, more than 130,000 blankets and more than 30,000 sleeping kits and pieces of clothing.
About 400 Japanese Red Cross psychosocial (personal and social support in the context of a disaster) workers have provided counselling support to more than 7,800 people in the tsunami-affected areas.
The disaster
The huge 9-magnitude earthquake and a number of devastating tsunami waves, which hit north east Japan, 11 March. More than 15,300 people are confirmed dead and more than 8,200 are still missing. The worst-affected areas stretch over a distance of almost 600 kilometres.
More than 135,000 houses have been destroyed or damaged by the earthquake and tsunami. More than 98,000 people remain displaced or evacuated to evacuation centres across the affected region in north east Japan.
In the weeks after the disaster, authorities evacuated more than 200,000 people from the 20-kilometre exclusion zone around the Fukushima nuclear power plant due to leaks of radiation.
Red Cross is not seeking individual in-kind donations of items.
Appeal
Australian Red Cross has closed the Japan and Pacific Disaster Appeal 2011.
The appeal has raised more than $23.5 million.
The funds raised through this appeal are being used to support communities affected by the earthquake in Japan and the resultant tsunami that reached numerous countries around the Pacific Rim and within the Pacific Ocean. The funds are being used to:
- Provide earthquake and tsunami affected communities, displaced families and their host families with emergency relief, equipment and recovery assistance
- Send specialist aid workers to assist in relief, recovery and longer term disaster management operations
- Support the work of Japanese Red Cross Society and other Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies from affected countries in assisting people devastated by this disaster.
People can still donate by visiting the Japanese Red Cross Society website's Emergency Relief section.
Finding out about family and friends
People requesting information on relatives in Japan are encouraged to pursue attempts to contact them by telephone. The lines are often busy and the phone network overloaded, however it may be helpful to make attempts at different times of the day.
Thousands of people have registered to find out about family or friends through a special Family Links website set up by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), working closely with the Japanese Red Cross. The site assists people to re-establish contact with family members and friends. It is available in English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish and Portuguese.
People in Japan and abroad can register on the website to inform their family and friends that they are safe and provide their current contact details, while those looking for people can check the list for information. They can also register the names of family members and friends, encouraging them to get in touch.
Australians seeking information about Australians in Japan are advised to try contacting their friends or relatives first or they can go to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website. People seeking information about Australians in the disaster affected areas, can also contact the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's 24-hour Consular Emergency Centre on 1300 555 135 (within Australia) or +612 6261 3305 (from outside Australia).
Some mobile phone network companies operating in Japan have launched a disaster message board. Mobile phone users in Japan can register messages concerning their safety.
If you have the mobile phone number of a relative who is in the affected areas, you can check the mobile phone company's disaster message board to see whether your relative has registered a message. The services are available in English and Japanese. If you do not know your relative's mobile phone company, you can try the following networks: DoCoMo i-mode SoftBank - English version and Japanese version WILLCOM. The Google Person Finder site is available at: http://japan.person-finder.appspot.com/?lang=en
Local prefectures have published lists of dead, missing, injured and evacuees on their websites. For instance, for Myagi prefecture:
Miyagi prefecture local government page - in Japanese
Miyagi prefectural police for missing persons - in Japanese