West Coast prepares for Japanese tsunami debris

SALEM, Ore. – A large dock that washed ashore in Oregon this week more than a year after it was ripped from Japan's shoreline by a tsunami is adding urgency to preparations for a wave of such debris expected to hit the USA's Pacific Coast in coming months.

By Rick Bowmer, AP

A woman looks at the massive dock that washed ashore on Agate Beach on Wednesday in Newport, Ore. The dock was torn loose from a fishing port in northern Japan by last year's tsunami and drifted across thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean.

By Rick Bowmer, AP

A woman looks at the massive dock that washed ashore on Agate Beach on Wednesday in Newport, Ore. The dock was torn loose from a fishing port in northern Japan by last year's tsunami and drifted across thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean.

"We've got a looming threat. There's great public concern about this," says Phillip Johnson, Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition director. "At this point, we don't know if we're going to have a major problem."

Beach cleanliness is vital to residents in Oregon, the only state whose entire coastline (362 miles) is public. Thousands of people turn out twice a year for beach cleanup events. Others adopt portions of the coastline, cleaning and monitoring it year-round. So it's no surprise that residents are worried about the tsunami debris, Johnson says.

On Wednesday, Oregon confirmed the dock that washed ashore this week was from the tsunami. The dock — 7 feet high, 19 feet wide and 66 feet long — is the first official piece of tsunami debris to reach the state.

A dozen volunteers on Thursday scraped the dock clean of marine organisms and sterilized it with torches to prevent the spread of invasive species, said Chris Havel of the state Department of Parks and Recreation.

Japanese officials estimate that 5 million tons of debris washed into the Pacific Ocean after the March 11, 2011, quake and tsunami, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). About 70% of that sank, leaving about 1.5 million tons floating.

Most of the debris still is north of Hawaii, says Nir Barnea, West Coast regional coordinator for NOAA's Marine Debris Program.

Scientists expect more debris to hit the West Coast in coming months and through 2014. "It will arrive intermittently and not all at one time and place," Barnea says. "It may be difficult to tell what is tsunami-related and what is not. Even floats with Japanese writing are not necessarily from the tsunami."

Although scientists expect much of the floating debris to follow the currents to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an accumulation of millions of tons of small bits of plastic floating in the northern Pacific, tsunami debris that can catch the wind is making its way to North America. In recent weeks, a soccer ball washed up in Alaska and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle in a shipping container reached British Columbia.

Just how the dock happened to turn up in Oregon was probably determined within sight of land in Japan, says Jan Hafner with the University of Hawaii's International Pacific Research Center, which tracks the debris.

That's where the winds, currents and tides are most variable, because of changes in the coastline and the features of the land, even for two objects a few yards apart, he says. Once the dock got into the ocean, it was pushed steadily by the prevailing westerly winds and the North Pacific Current.

In April, a group of volunteer organizations teamed with NOAA and the state to hold 11 public meetings across Oregon to address concerns about tsunami debris. About 400 people attended, says Jamie Doyle, an educator with Oregon Sea Grant.

"A lot of people were concerned about radiation," Doyle says, referring to the nuclear power plant accident in Japan that was triggered by the earthquake and tsunami. "But it's thought to be highly unlikely."

That's because most of the debris was washed out before the radiation release and because radiation would have dissipated by now, Barnea says.

Body parts also are not expected, because they would have decomposed by now.

The most important message, Barnea says: "If you don't know what it is, don't touch it. Don't move it. Report it to local authorities, 911 or the national response center."

A mobile application at marinedebris.engr.uga.edu can help people report debris. It is a partnership of the NOAA Marine Debris Division and the Southeast Atlantic Marine Debris Initiative of the engineering school at the University of Georgia.

In addition to Oregon, other Pacific Coast states are educating residents about tsunami debris cleanup, Barnea says.

•In Alaska, some lighter debris, such as plastic bottles and Styrofoam floats, is showing up. The first volunteer cleanup project in the state took place in Montague Island this month.

•In Washington, authorities have distributed fliers with instructions on how to handle items found on beaches.

•In California, officials say coastal currents may deflect most debris back toward Hawaii. Even so, the state's Coastal Commission has issued guidelines for volunteers helping with tsunami debris removal.

"We'll continue to work on the planning, continue to work with volunteers," Barnea says. "It's a real teamwork of state, federal and local agencies, non-governmental organizations, and the public."

Loew also reports for the Statesman Journal in Salem, Ore. Contributing: John McAuliff, USA TODAY; the Associated Press.

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Flotsam from Japanese tsunami reaches West Coast (AP)

PORT ANGELES, Wash. – Some debris from the March tsunami in Japan has reached the West Coast.

A black float about the size of a 55-gallon drum was found two weeks ago by a crew cleaning a beach a few miles east of Neah Bay at the northwest tip of Washington, the Peninsula Daily News reported (http://is.gd/9jSz9q) Wednesday.

The float was displayed at a Tuesday night presentation at Peninsula College by Seattle oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Jim Ingraham, consultants who produce the "Beachcombers Alert" newsletter.

Tons of debris from Japan will likely begin washing ashore in about a year, from California to southern Alaska, they said. Items that wash up may include portions of houses, boats, ships, furniture, portions of cars and just about anything else that floats, he said.

That could include parts of human bodies, Ebbesmeyer said. Athletic shoes act as floats.

Flotsam in a current travels an average of 7 mph, but it can move as much as 20 mph if it has a large area exposed to the wind, Ebbesmeyer said. The latest float sits well atop the water, has a shallow draft and is lightweight. Similar floats have been found on Vancouver Island in British Columbia.

Models show currents could pull some Japanese tsunami debris into the Strait of Juan de Fuca as far as Port Townsend.

"All debris should be treated with a great reverence and respect," Ebbesmeyer said.

If the debris has any kind of identifiable marking, such as numbers or Japanese writing, it may be traceable, Ebbesmeyer said. Families in Japan are waiting to hear of any items that may have been associated with their loved ones.

Ebbesmeyer is retired from a career that included tracking icebergs, the 1989 Exxon Valdes oil spill and Puget Sound currents that affect sewage outflows. He wrote the 2009 book, "Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How a Man's Obsession with runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science."

Ingram has retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where he created computer models of ocean currents.

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Information from: Peninsula Daily News, http://www.peninsuladailynews.com

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Air drops bring aid to typhoon-isolated Japanese (AP)

TOKYO – Helicopters began ferrying supplies Tuesday to communities cut off from the outside world by Japan's worst typhoon in seven years. The storm has left at least 37 dead and 54 missing in a nation still struggling to recover from its devastating tsunami just six months ago.

Aid-laden helicopters descended on towns in the hardest-hit areas as police, firefighters and soldiers mobilized to clear roads so that they could distribute food, medicine and other assistance to communities fending for themselves since Typhoon Talas made initial landfall on Saturday.

Japan's Kyodo news agency reported that dozens of hamlets in central Japan were still cut off, primarily because of flooding, landslides or other damage to access roads. Officials said they did not have an overall number for the stranded.

More than 3,000 remained in evacuation centers, however.

As Talas approached Japan, nearly a half million people were advised to evacuate. It then dumped record amounts of rain on central and western Japan and lashed wide swaths of the country with destructive winds before being downgraded to a tropical storm.

Japan's Fire and Disaster Management Agency said 37 deaths had been confirmed and 54 people were still missing Tuesday. Japanese media reported at least 39 people had died.

The path of the typhoon did not take it over the tsunami-devastated northeast coast, where nearly 21,000 people were killed or are missing after the March 11 disaster.

But as the eye of the slow-moving storm hovered offshore in the Sea of Japan on Tuesday, heavy rains began to fall anew on the northern island of Hokkaido, prompting evacuation advisories for hundreds of households as rivers began to swell.

Talas, a word from the Philippines that means "sharpness," is Japan's worst storm since 2004, when Typhoon Tokage left 98 dead or unaccounted for.

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AP coverage of Japanese disaster wins APME awards (AP)

NEW YORK – Coverage of the massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis along Japan's northeastern coast won awards for deadline and enterprise reporting from the Associated Press Managing Editors association Wednesday for journalism excellence by AP staffers.

"The AP managed to provide all-encompassing coverage of a disaster that became more staggering with each passing hour," the APME judges said in awarding the Deadline Reporting prize to the AP team that covered the event.

The team of reporters, photographers, interactive producers, video journalists and editors covered an epic series of disasters: the largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan, a giant tsunami that reduced coastal cities to ruins and a nuclear crisis unlike anything since Chernobyl.

"The danger with coverage of such a massive event is that you lose focus on the various threads that make up the whole," the judges said. "The AP never lost sight of the bigger picture, and showed the growing horror that a nation — and a world — faced. ... There wasn't a hole the AP didn't fill."

In honoring the AP team for Enterprise Reporting, a separate judging panel said, "Even while new developments were breaking daily, these AP reporters delved into the important questions of why the Japanese nuclear power industry was not as prepared as it should have been for this disaster."

AP mobilized more than 50 journalists — experts in nuclear power, science writers, veterans of disaster coverage and top editors from New York to London. The result was a breadth of coverage that produced investigations into the nuclear crisis and sparked changes, while also conveying the scale of the tragedy in the tsunami-devastated communities.

APME is an association of editors at AP's 1,400 member newspapers in the U.S. and newspapers served by The Canadian Press in Canada. It annually recognizes outstanding work by the cooperative's journalists. The awards will be presented at APME's annual conference with The Associated Press Photo Managers Sept. 14-16 in Denver.

Photographer Muhammed Muheisen, based in Islamabad, Pakistan, received the News Photos award for his series on unrest in Yemen. The judges cited his remarkable photographic eye and dramatic framing even under difficult and dangerous circumstances over a period of weeks.

Muheisen also won the John L. Dougherty Award for exemplary work by an AP staff member who is 30 years old or younger. In honoring him, the judges noted that he covered events throughout the Middle East during the past year "and he took full advantage."

"In his portfolio of 100 or so photos, he displayed incredible range — from tense action shots to powerful portraits — and each shot was more engaging than the last. His portfolio left us wanting to see 100 more," the judges said.

Christopher Sullivan of the Newsfeatures staff won the Feature Writing award for a two-part serial, "The Do-Over," the story of a middle-aged nuclear power plant worker who decides to leave his job to make a trip across America on a makeshift wagon, pulled by a team of horses. The judges said the "magnificently told story ... harkens back to the days of serial dramas full of suspense, harrowing escapades, love and even a cliffhanger."

Photographer Kevin Frayer, based in New Delhi, won the Feature Photos award for a series of black-and-white aerial views of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. The judges cited the unique aerial perspective as giving an unusual view of the Afghan countryside, showing both civilian and military aspects of life there.

Interactive producer Dave Clark was cited for Best Use of Multimedia for leading the AP Interactive Department's royal wedding coverage. "Very entertaining and clear. ... Worthy of the Royals!" the judges wrote.

Photographer Greg Bull, based in San Diego, was honored by the judges for Best Use of Video for his "really terrific video work" in covering the surge in high-speed downhill skateboarding, which has sparked a fierce debate in Southern California over what place the sport has on city streets.

Pennsylvania staffers Mark Scolforo and Michael Sirolly won the Charles Rowe Award for Distinguished State Reporting for leading the "Broken Budgets" reporting work in Pennsylvania, part of the joint AP-APME initiative on the fiscal crisis facing U.S. states and cities. "This was a terrific team effort that shed light on fat in state bureaucracy at a time of diminishing resources," the judges said.

The judges also awarded the following honorable mentions:

• Deadline Reporting: AP staff for coverage of the tornadoes that swept through the South in April.

• Enterprise Reporting: Rukmini Callimachi, Marco Chown Oved and Michelle Faul for coverage of violence in Ivory Coast, and St. Louis correspondent Jim Salter for an investigation into methamphetamine use.

• Feature Writing: National Writer Allen Breed for "Sabrina's Twilight," the story of a teen-age love that isn't given a chance to mature, and National Writer Pauline Arrillaga for "A Brother's Gift," the story of one brother donating his liver to another, and the devastating consequences.

• Best Use of Multimedia: Pailin Wedel, Feilding Cage, Darrell Allen, Sean McDade, Dan Kempton and Jennifer Farrar for their Japan earthquake interactive, and the Interactive Department staff for the government shutdown interactive.

• Best Use of Video: Video journalist Rich Matthews for coverage of the U.S. border with Mexico and the war on drugs, and National Writer Martha Irvine for her story on the Chicago Urban Prep Charter Academy.

• John L. Dougherty Award: Cleveland correspondent Meghan Barr, and Feilding Cage of the Interactive Department.

• Charles Rowe Award: Sacramento, Calif., bureau for watchdog reporting, and Michael Rubinkam, based in Allentown, Pa., for continuing coverage of gas-drilling in Pennsylvania.

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Japanese parents fume over Fukushima radiation impact (Reuters)

FUKUSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) – Angry parents of children in Japan's Fukushima city marched along with hundreds of people on Sunday to demand protection for their children from radiation more than three months after a massive quake and tsunami triggered the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.

"We want our lives back, we want to live like before the quake in happy families," said Hiroko Sato who marched in heavy rain with her nephews, age 3 and 7, next to banners saying "No Nukes" and "One Fukushima is Enough." "My baby was born two weeks before the nuclear accident and I don't feed her with my milk as I'm afraid I was exposed to too much radiation," said Sato.

Three reactors went into meltdown after the earthquake hit the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in northeastern Japan on March 11, forcing 80,000 residents to evacuate from its vicinity as engineers battled radiation leaks, hydrogen explosions and overheating fuel rods.

The parents have felt emboldened since May, when mass protests led to the government lowering the limit for radiation exposure for children at schools and to offer money for schools to remove topsoil in playgrounds with too much radiation.

But the protesters, who included activists and members of groups from Tokyo, said the government had not done enough.

"They still haven't removed the topsoil at the majority of grounds, and didn't help cleaning up the school buildings," said Akiko Murakami, a mother of four and volunteer at the "Fukushima Network for Saving Children from Radiation."

It is one of many self-help citizen groups near the plant in Fukushima, where many areas are exposed to around 13 or more millisieverts of radiation a year, about 6.5 times natural background radiation levels, a city survey showed.

According to the survey, as many as 182 places showed readings close to or above the official annual exposure limit of 20 millisieverts per year.

The International Commission on Radiological Protection recommends that governments set radiation exposure targets at the lower end of the 1-20 millisievert per year range.

GROWING WORRIES

Local governments now need to provide reports of radiation, while most schools in Fukushima are equipped with dosimeters and teachers have to record hourly radiation readings to help create a contamination map. Anxiety over health risks associated with prolonged stay in a contaminated area is shared by mothers who did not take part in Sunday's rally.

"I just found out that a place near my house was designated a 'radiation hotspot' and now I'm seriously thinking about leaving the city," said Noriko Ouchi, mother of a 4-year-old daughter.

"We are exhausted. We have to look at every food item we eat, we only use bottled water for cooking, and on top of that every day we confront this nagging dilemma whether it's really safe for our children to stay in Fukushima or not," she said.

The Fukushima disaster has triggered worries over the safety of other nuclear power plants in Japan.

On Sunday, government officials held a live TV talk show with residents in Saga, southern Japan, home to the 36-year-old Genkai plant, to convince them that safety measures were in place for a restart of reactors now shut for maintenance.

Reactors at the Genkai plant had been considered among the likeliest candidates for the first idled reactors in Japan to restart after the Fukushima disaster as electricity shortages loom for the summer, but residents remained worried.

"I couldn't keep up with the complex terminology. I couldn't understand what they were saying, so I'm not convinced (over safety)," said a housewife, one of just seven residents selected for the program. Dozens protested against nuclear power outside the venue.

(Additional reporting by Chisa Fujioka in Tokyo; Editing by Sugita Katyal)

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Japanese from nuke town make brief visit to homes (AP)

TAMURA, Japan – Donning white protective suits and masks, neighbors of Japan's radiation-leaking nuclear plant were finally able to return home Thursday more than two months after the crisis began, but were only given two hours to stuff their belongings into garbage bags before leaving again.

Some residents stole a few minutes to light incense at a makeshift shrine in Namie, one of the deserted, evacuated towns frozen in time since March 11. Debris is still piled several stories high there, with a ship resting precariously atop one heap.

Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from towns near the plant — including Futaba, home to the complex — soon after Japan's massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami flooded the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, which then began spewing radiation. Local officials and nuclear experts escorted several dozen of them back for a two-hour visit Thursday.

"It was just like it was when the quake hit," said Anna Takano, a 17-year-old high school student. "It felt very strange."

Takano said she packed up as much clothing from her home as she could and then made a 10-minute visit to her family grave site.

For most, it was the first time they had been able to check on homes and possessions. Similar visits began earlier for towns farther away from the plant, but Thursday's excursion went deeper into the 12-mile (20-kilometer) no-go zone around the plant than any before it.

Many evacuees from the nuclear zone did not realize how long the crisis would drag on and left with only the clothes they were wearing and their purses or wallets.

Due to radiation concerns, officials allowed only two people per household to return and let them stay at their homes only for two hours. They gave residents no more than one large black plastic bag for collecting things, because of space restrictions and fears of contamination.

"I planned very carefully what I would get," said Mikio Tadano, an architect. "I wanted to get my writing tools, my bankbook, and my daughter's school uniform."

Tadano said his daughter had transferred to a new school outside the zone where she was one of only four students without a uniform — all of them evacuees.

In Tamura, a town on the edge of the zone, residents donned white protective suits from head to foot at a sanitized gymnasium near the 12-mile (20-kilometer) perimeter, and then went into the zone by bus.

After the disaster knocked out cooling systems at the plant, it suffered explosions, fires and spewed radioactive particles into the air, prompting the government to order 80,000 residents around the plant to evacuate.

Workers are pumping water into the reactors to cool their cores, but that water — now highly radioactive — is then spilling out and pooling around the complex.

Workers found a leak Thursday in a temporary storage tank that they're using to hold some of that contaminated water, said Junichi Matsumoto, spokesman for operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. There was no immediate sign it was making its way into the sea or that radiation levels in the air nearby had risen, he said.

Radiation levels in most areas have since declined, but are believed to still pose potential health hazards if sustained for long periods of time.

The radiation in the air near the front gate of the plant surged to 12 millisieverts per hour on March 15, just hours after a third reactor exploded. On Thursday, the radiation level had fallen to 1 percent of that — 114 microsieverts, or 0.114 millisieverts — according to TEPCO.

A typical chest X-ray emits about 50 to 100 microsieverts.

In the town of Namie, near Futaba, the radiation in the air was as high as 0.73 microsieverts per hour Thursday, regional nuclear safety official Masato Kino said. That's about half the level measured on March 30, the earliest date for which readings for the town were collected.

With better data now coming in, the government also recently added more areas to the evacuated zone, meaning another 7,000 outside the no-go zone in places previously believed to be safe are just now preparing to leave their towns.

Including those left homeless by the quake and tsunami, more than 100,000 people remain in shelters across northern Japan. More than 25,000 were killed or are missing.

As the hardships of living in shelters became more acute, the government came under intense pressure to let evacuees back in for short trips. It initially said the situation was too dangerous and the plant too unstable. But after announcing last month that the evacuation order would likely drag on for another six to nine months, the day trips were approved.

Thursday's trip by about 60 townspeople started with a briefing by Futaba officials and safety instructions by experts from TEPCO.

The residents were screened for radiation after the visit, but none showed health-threatening levels of exposure.

So far, 588 people have made visits to their homes. Another 16,000 more from nine towns are still lined up for trips that will be conducted over the next several weeks, according to another NISA official, Tatsuyuki Yamauchi.

A government team also went with the residents to rescue stranded dogs. They brought out four, all of which were in good spirits. Earlier in the crisis, when prohibitions on entering the zone were not strictly enforced, several private groups left food and water for lost dogs, keeping many alive long enough to be rescued and returned to their owners.

Cats have been more difficult to bring back. None were rescued Thursday.

Mihoko Watanabe, 73, said she left food and water for her cat, who remains at her home in Futaba but could not be captured and rescued.

"I'm glad she's alive," Watanabe said. "But it's very sad. She's 23 years old."

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Associated Press Writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

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