2012-05-29

Golden Week Volunteering 2012: Part 2 –Revisiting Rikuzentakata


continued from here
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After the first day’s work we took the first timers over to Rikuzentakata to get an idea of the level of devastation that the tsunami caused because in Ofunato, the amazing pace of the cleaning and reconstruction effort had hidden the scale of the damage. Things had not changed terribly much since I went in September, but for those who had not been back since last year golden week, they could see how much clearing had been done since…


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There is still so much to be done. And even when it is all done, there are so few people left, I wonder if the town will ever recover even a semblance of it’s former self. Unlike Ofunato, there is still many months, maybe even years, of work before people can even begin to think of reconstruction.
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Most of the structures that are still standing in the CBD have not been touched since the rescue teams were looking for bodies and survivors right after the waters receded. Bits and pieces of life remain frozen in time.
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There was one interesting sign of what is to come. A scale version of how they plan to use the rubble from the destroyed city to build the new sea wall. It is an ambitious plan and a pretty awesome design. I wonder if we will see it completed before the global economy collapses.
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to be continued…

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