誰かが言わなきゃならない

1. Transportation

About 1,000 private cars stand in the parking lot of the Big Palette. They belong to the refugees who could evacuate by their cars. A problem is those who left their cars behind. Some refugees took an evacuation bus from home, and some left their cars at the first rendezvous point in Kawauchi-mura Village due
to insufficient fuels at the time. Those who brought their cars also had a problem for the first week: No gasoline,no shopping. In about a week, gasoline was purchasable with no limit but after a long line. In ten days, the line
disappeared at the gas station, sufficient fuels are purchasable.
Koriyama-city has now a traffic jam problem: full of refugees and cars for emergency restoration. Cars to northern disaster areas (Iwate, etc.) also drive through Koriyama-city.Highway 6 near the coastline is blocked due to the Tsunami and the nuclear accident. All traffic has to use Highway 4 through Koriyama-city, the only surface trunk road to the north,or the Tohoku Express Highway. Koriyama-city is about 100km off Fukushima Daiichi, about two hours by car, so is from Iwaki-city (Highway 49). The town buses of Tomioka-cho and
Kawauchi-mura are used to transport the refugees to and from the Koriyama-city center.

2. Telephones, TV

NTT free public phones (about 10 sets) are in service for refugees. Most refugees have mobile phones, but the battery charge is the problem. Most people have no their own chargers.Free charging machines are installed for them.
The Big Palette has a lot of power plugs on the wall. Some people connect their portable TV sets or electric kettles. Only one big TV monitor was in the hall at the beginning, but in recent days several sets are installed. Many vending machines also exist for drinks.

3. How to kill time

A big library of comics is for many children, some adults, too, for a whole day. Volunteers visit us for songs with guitars, light gymnastics to combat economic class syndromes, etc.Yesterday, the Self Defense Force members presented musical performances. Many children play ball games on the ground. But a lot of us simply lie on the blankets or chat with others the whole day. Certainly everybody lacks in physical exercise. Most elderly people do field
work at home, but nothing in particular to do here. Once an announcement is made on the events or their plans, everybody starts to move and listen to the speakers

4. First-aid station

A room on the ground level accommodates the people with chronic diseases, mostly elderly people. A first-aid station is in service there. Town nurses of Tomioka-cho and Kawauchi-mura are always on duty for consultations. Doctors are also in service, but not always. No cost for diagnoses and medications. Few
people could have brought their own medications at hand, high blood pressure patients, for instance.
As the evacuation continues, more and more people suffer from discomforts. The first-aid station helps a lot. The staff members are also
concerned about mal-nutrition of the people. They take similar meals like us. In Kawauchi-mura, the first few day evacuation, the town health clinic was working. Medications were also provided.But its inventory was limited in types and numbers. Fortunately, no such concerns since we settled in the Big Palette.

5. People’s mentality towards NPP

People who lost their houses due to the quake or the tsunami are minority here. The majority is those who had to leave their existing houses due to the nuclear accidents. They are not allowed to return and they do not know how soon they will be allowed to do so. The people in other disaster areas could have started working to restore their homelands and the people here have no ways to follow. This mentality should be extraordinary. For most of them,real nuclear accidents are totally new and could have never imagined. We accepted NPPs for
Tokyo and other big cities and we are forced to have this hardship. There were certainly some benefits: increased job opportunities, for instance. But nobody has ever thought of such eventual return for accepting NPPs. We were told that NPPs were safe. But the reality is not.
They must be robust for any big quakes or tsunamis.Tomioka-cho accommodates Fukushima Daini, too, with four units, which could survive the quakes and tsunami.How will the local residents make a decision for restarting the operation? The mayor has a leading opinion in Futaba-gun for agreeing with the plutonium utilization in NPPs.
He should have a complex mentality and his
messages sound slightly different in nuance from other mayors (perhaps bitter disappointment rather than anger).Currently people at large are against restoring NPPs at Fukushima Daiichi (including Units 5 and 6), and for dismantling. The air photo below is a bird-eye view of the plant before the
accident (taken from TEPCO homepage).
It is interesting to notice, however, that about a half of interviewees in the NHK survey at the beginning had an affirmative response. This result is
more or less same with nationwide survey by another media. It is possible that some people could get earnings from the NPP or its related industry. But this affirmative response seems being gradually weakened as the nuclear alert is prolonged with no clear indication of termination. New opinions seem developing among them on the needs of non-nuclear businesses in local communities for town restoration.