Oh my god. That was Canberra firefighter Bernie Evans's first reaction to the devastation of the Japanese earthquake when he got off the bus in the middle of the disaster zone. ''I'd never seen anything like it before,'' he said. ''I'll probably never see anything like it again.''
Evans, who joined what is now the ACT's Fire and Rescue Service in 1989, was no stranger to scenes of disaster and devastation.
A veteran of the Thredbo landslide in 1997, he said the big difference between that and Japan two years ago was the sheer immensity of the destruction. While Thredbo had been an extremely hazardous environment, and one in which rescuers needed to exercise great care, it was a very localised disaster.
In Japan, Evans and his fellow ACT Fire and Rescue urban search and rescue specialists were probing the ruins of an annihilated city of 17,000 people. A quirk of geography had funnelled the tsunami up a V-shaped valley, piling the water higher and higher until it was able to swamp three-storey buildings.
The other ACT members of the 76-strong team were Jeff Atkinson, Neil Maher and Ron Miller
Most of the private homes, usually lightly built of timber, were flattened by the force of the water. More substantial structures, including those designated as tsunami shelters, were inundated. The force of the water packed them full of debris.
The 2011 earthquake was the most powerful known earthquake ever to have hit Japan, and one of the five most powerful earthquakes in the world since modern record-keeping began in 1900.
''It is odd the things that stick in your mind,'' Evans said. ''I recall seeing a Mercedes sedan sitting on the roof of a three-storey building. It had been carried up there by the water but looked as if it had been deliberately placed on display.
''We found cars inside buildings, and on one occasion I opened a cupboard in a house I was searching to be confronted by a massive fish that was up on a shelf. How had it got inside? How did the door close? You have to wonder.''
Photographs he took at the time show houses piled on top of each other and even a large ferry sitting on top of what appears to be an apartment building.
One of the unintended consequences of Evans's deployment to Japan with the NSW Urban Search and Rescue Team was missing Nathan's 18th birthday. While he had heard about the catastrophe, like everybody else, on the news on the Friday he was not asked to deploy until the Saturday.
''There are protocols involved,'' Evans said. ''I had wondered if I was going to get the opportunity but knew that we had to wait until Australia was invited [to assist]. You can't just rock up.''
The deployment, the third urban search and rescue task force the NSW fire service had pulled together since the Christchurch earthquake the month before, took place just six days out from Nathan's 18th birthday. This had always been planned to be a big event and having dad there was to have been a major part of it.
''Missing that was the most difficult part,'' Evans said. ''I explained that this was something I had trained long and hard to do and that it was a chance to utilise my skills to help other people.'' He said the support of his family while he was away had been very important and that major efforts were made by the team's leaders to ensure those at home were kept up to date on what their loved ones were doing.
This was in keeping with the highly professional management of the Australian taskforce that resulted in very few injuries despite the dangers of the environment.
''At no time, even when there was all the talk about the radiation, did I feel at risk,'' Evans said. ''I understood the Australian government would have very good intelligence [on the situation] and that they would pull us out if they felt it had become unsafe to be there.''
The rescue team flew out of Richmond air force base on a C-17 to Tokyo after a stopover at Amberley to pick up a relief crew. They crossed into the northern hemisphere and, within hours, were in a Japanese winter.
For the 10 days of the deployment the team members slept in two-man tents. Temperatures got down to as low as -17 degrees. The ground alternated between frozen and muddy - or both.
The need for self-sufficiency, and the sheer devastation that had occurred, meant most meals were from ration packs. ''It was challenging,'' Evans said.
Within hours of the Australians' arrival it became apparent they were looking for bodies, not survivors. At their first briefing they were told their destination would be Minamisanriku, a fishing community of about 17,000 people.
''We were told that least 10,000 people were missing or dead,'' Evans said. ''It was a scene of absolute devastation; two years have passed and the missing are still missing.''
Many of the bodies had been swept out to sea as the tsunami receded after its march into the hinterland.
The Australians were instrumental in finding eight bodies, but, due to cultural sensitivities, the retrieval task was carried out by Japanese personnel.
''The Japanese people had done all they could,'' Evans said, ''to prepare for earthquakes and tsunamis but nobody could have ever imagined anything like this.''
Friday 8 March 2013
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/no-way-memories-will-fade-20130308-2frge.html
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