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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.
It was five months after they had been struck by the March 11 magnitude 9.0 quake and huge tsunami. I could see that the Indonesian man’s insight was correct.
The piles of mud and rubble that had heavily covering roads only five months ago had been cleared and many of the destroyed buildings had been totally dismantled, even though construction equipment pushed the rubble into new huge mountains of debris in several places in each town, and destroyed towns have become home to crows.
from Photographers Blog:
Fishing with film
By Carlos Barria
In the "old" days, back before digital photography, photographers used to lug around tons of extra luggage, portable dark rooms, and set up shop in their hotel bathrooms. Or they would send their film -- by motorcycle, car or even plane -- to somebody else in a hotel or office close by to develop it, scan it and file. Or they might have to scramble and look for a lab in the middle of a crisis, in a foreign country. I don't think my colleague Joe Skipper speaks Spanish, but I know that when he covered a showdown at Colombia's Justice Ministry in the 80s, he learned how to say, "Mas amarillo!," "More yellow!
North America chief photographer Gary Hershorn arrives to the Vancouver international airport with all his photo lab luggage. REUTERS/Stringer
from Photographers Blog:
Robot Paro comforts the elderly in Fukushima
By Kim Kyung-hoon
When I covered Fukushima’s nuclear crisis in March, the first radiation evacuees who I encountered were elderly people who had fled a nursing home which was located near the tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant which was leaking nuclear radiation.
On that night, most of the elderly who could not move well due to old age spent a cold night on a temporary shelter’s hard floor.
from Photographers Blog:
Beefing up radiation checks
Since covering the Fukushima nuclear crisis in March, I have photographed various radiation scenes in the months that followed.
Starting with shocking scenes of people who were actually contaminated with radiation being cleansed and scenes of people being isolated into a building.
from FaithWorld:
Japanese Buddhist priest discusses spiritual toll of nuclear crisis
(Sokyu Genyu during an interview with Reuters in Tokyo June 4, 2011/Chisa Fujioka)
In Japan, where nature is believed to cleanse spirits, how do people cope when treasured mountains and oceans are tainted by leaks of radiation from a nuclear power plant?
from Photographers Blog:
A daughter’s last goodbye
Six-year-old Wakana Kumagai began to run from the car when she arrived at a temporary mass grave site in Higashi-Matsushima, Miyagi prefecture.
She had come to meet her father.
On that day Wakana attended an entrance ceremony for her elementary school. Afterward she went with her mother and older brother to the grave site. She showed off her dress and bright red school satchel as she described the entrance ceremony to her father. But her father, Kazuyuki, slept in the soil.
from Photographers Blog:
Cherry blossoms spring smiles in devastation
Even this year, cherry blossom season bloomed in Japan.
The lives of us Japanese have changed completely in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and the constant fear of radiation following the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. So much so that we forgot the coming of spring.
I returned to cover the stricken area again at the beginning of April. The huge piles of debris that were visible immediately after the quake and tsunami were slowly being managed. Roads had appeared again and gradually I saw that there was a town.
from Photographers Blog:
Two faces of the same drama
A year ago, I was part of the Reuters team that covered Haiti's massive earthquake, which claimed some 250,000 lives, and left a million people living in makeshift camps. This year, I was part of the team that covered another natural disaster-- the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan's northern coast and brought on a nuclear crisis.
The two events were very different. They occurred on opposite sides of the globe, in completely different countries, in different cultural contexts. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, with a turbulent political history. On the other hand, Japan is one of the richest and most modern countries in the world-- the third largest economy and, actually, one of the first to send help to Haiti.
from Ben Gruber:
My experience covering Japan’s earthquake and tsunami.
People have been asking me about my recent coverage of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, wondering what sticks out in my memory. After some reflection, one part of my experience keeps rising to the top - the mountain tunnels.
The Reuters multimedia team was based in the north-east town of Tono, a small mountain town situated above the coastline. Tono had an eerie feeling to it, almost all of the shops and restaurants were closed. But you wouldn't know the town had been rocked by a massive earthquake. There were no physical signs.
from The Great Debate UK:
The safest form of power: Everything in moderation
By Morven McCulloch
The ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in north-eastern Japan, seriously damaged by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami, has led to anti-nuclear protests in several countries and forced governments to rethink their energy policies.
The UK currently has 10 nuclear power stations, representing 18 percent of the country’s energy supply according to Energy UK. Should British Prime Minister David Cameron, like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, reverse his position on the safety of nuclear power?
