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from Photographers Blog:
Half a year after disaster
By Kim Kyung-hoon
“Time flies so fast.”
I can’t count how many times I've mumbled this phrase while traveling in Sendai and Fukushima last week for the six month anniversary of the March 11th earthquake and disaster that left tens of thousands dead across Japan and caused the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.
With the scenes of fear and hopelessness from the areas devastated in March and the hardship of the assignments still vivid in my memory, I feel like the disaster happened just a few weeks ago.
Six months had passed when I hit the road again with my TV colleague Chris Meyers, who traveled to the area with me in March, in order to document how much the tsunami-hit areas have recovered. As I once again traveled around the northern part of Japan, some areas have recovered at a pace I didn’t think possible in March.
Half a year after the disaster from Kim Kyung-Hoon on Vimeo.
For this trip, we drove north from Tokyo to Sendai using the highway system, taking a total of five hours. In March, the same trip took over 25 hours, and involved using a helicopter to fly north to Fukushima. From there we drove using small local roads as many of the major highways had entire chunks of the road missing due to the earthquake.
from Oddly Enough Blog:
It’s just like in the disaster movies!
Boss, can you hear me? It's me, Johnson! Oh, it's still night-time in LA? Sorry to wake you up, but I've got great news!
You remember you sent me to scout around for the next big "King Kong" sort of movie?
from Reuters Money:
Scam artists abound after Irene: How to keep your money dry
There is something about disasters that brings out the best in people — and the worst. Along with the Red Cross and National Guard, scam artists mobilize, too. They see opportunity in people's misfortune.
"You’ve already been victimized by Mother Nature; don’t be victimized by an unscrupulous contractor," cautioned Barbara Anthony, who heads Massachusetts' Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation. "People are vulnerable when they’ve been dealt a blow by a hurricane or a tornado."
from Reuters Money:
Hurricane investing: You don’t need a weathervane …
Maybe you've already got your lawn furniture stashed in the garage, your water jugs filled and your important papers protected. But have you gotten your investment portfolio ready for Hurricane Irene, currently threatening all the East Coast hot spots?
Three main themes emerge: Selling into the storm; ditching shares facing the most risks and buying into the rebuilding effort. Here are some considerations.
from Reuters Money:
Earthquakes, hurricanes and smart insurance moves
What a week: An earthquake gave the East Coast a jolt and now a hurricane is bearing down.
No one's immune. Virgin Atlantic mogul Richard Branson's compound on Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands was destroyed by fire this week after being struck by a Hurricane Irene-connected lightning bolt.
from Photographers Blog:
Scars and stories on Joplin’s landscape
By Eric Thayer
More than three months ago, a massive tornado ripped through Joplin, Missouri, killing almost 160 people and destroying nearly 8,000 homes and businesses. For a week the story garnered national and international attention. A community of 50,000 people was thrust into the spotlight.
Images of destruction dominated newspapers and newscasts. Stories were told, lives shown fragmented, a bruised and battered community rallied, despite being in a collective state of shock. Then, slowly, as the pools of rainwater dried up, the residents dug through the deep wound cut a mile wide into the landscape, picking out pieces of their shattered lives. Slowly the attention faded, though work quietly continued.
from Photographers Blog:
Flashback to Baidoa, Somalia: 1992
By Yannis Behrakis
It was the beginning of December 1992 and the winter had settled into Athens - the big story was the civil war and the famine in Somalia.
I volunteered to cover the story, as I’m sure many others did, but I was one of the "lucky" ones selected to go. Tom’s distinctive voice on the phone sounded both reassuring and worried. It was my first trip to the region and I remember running frantically to get malaria pills and a Yellow fever vaccine. I had the other vaccines a year earlier before covering a massive earthquake in Iran.
from Photographers Blog:
Clearing the rubble but not the sorrow
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By Kim Kyung-hoon
In 2004 I was in Indonesia’s Banda Aceh covering the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster which killed over 230,000 people in several south Asian countries. I met a tired-looking man tackling huge piles of rubble created by the tsunami in a brave effort to clean it up. He had only a shovel to use on the debris stretching on all sides as far as the eye could see. He stopped a moment and bemoaned to me that it would take more than several years to clear the rubble in his country. He also added that a rich country like Japan could clear it quickly with giant heavy construction equipment if a similar disaster happened in Japan. When I left Banda Aceh after my one-month stay there, the scenery going from the Reuters temporary base to the airport was almost the same as what I had seen on my first day there, and dead bodies still lay on the streets.
Last weekend, I traveled to Japan’s tsunami–destroyed towns again with my colleague to cover Japan’s traditional festival obon, when families welcome back the spirits of the dead.
from Photographers Blog:
Retracing my steps in Pakistan
On August 7, 2010, with a camera in hand, I dropped into a flooded village on an army helicopter that was delivering food aid to marooned villagers. As a crewman slid the door open to find solid ground, I leaped out, took some photographs, and managed to get back on before the chopper departed.
Time stamps on the images show the hover-stop lasted less than the length of an average song. For those three minutes, my thoughts were focused on finding an image that would bring the Pakistan floods story to life.
from Full Focus:
Pakistan revisited
Last year's floods in Pakistan killed 2,000, left 11 million homeless and affected the lives of another 7 million. The country is still struggling to recover from $10 billion in damage to infrastructure, irrigation systems, bridges, houses and roads. Reuters award-winning photographer Adrees Latif traveled back to the affected region to document the changes over the year in this dramatic series of combination images. Read about how Adrees took these images here.
