My cousin Kurt Scheibner has lived in Sendai for many years. He was in his older downtown high-rise office building the afternoon of the terrible earthquake and tsunami in his adopted Japanese city on March 11, 2011.
by Scott Hettrick
Kurt was in the middle of teaching English to a handful of older Japanese women when the monstrous 9.0 quake hit. Two additional quakes of at least magnitude 7.0 hit within eight minutes of the first one. No one knew how many more quakes would occur. With walls visibly cracking and the door frame tilting, Kurt managed to lead his students to the outdoor corridor that led to the elevator. There, simultaneously hit by snow and freezing wind, they soon realized that the elevator would not take them to ground level. With smaller aftershocks still rattling the building, Kurt did his best to clear a path of debris from the stairwell as they maneuvered down nine flights in the dark stairwell. Finally they reached the ground, only to be met with a blizzard and chunks of concrete popping loose and raining down. Before leaving, the students, who had all avoided any injury, dutifully formed a semi-circle around Kurt, bowing and apologizing for leaving class early. He hurried them off.
Area around Sendai a week after the earthquake and tsunami. All photos. by Nicholas Packard
Everything Kurt needed, his coat, shoes, cell phone, flashlight, were in the office of his school nine floors up. Wind, snow and panic forced him to climb back up the stairs only to arrive in time for yet another aftershock. He had to pull hard on the steel door to jar it loose. Inside, nothing remained standing: bookcases, cabinets, the refrigerator and TV stand. Shards of glassware covered the floor along with books, over-turned chairs, and downed plants. Kurt wanted to grab his essentials from the office and get out of there but the door to the office was completely blocked by a heavy metal desk and hundreds of books. He knew that somewhere under the rubble were his shoes, coat, gloves and cell phone but another aftershock sent him running out of the building and down the stairs. No choice – he’d have to walk home in his stocking feet, over pieces of brick and concrete now hidden under the snow.
All the way home during that long, cold, painful walk, Kurt thought of his wife, Kazuko, with whom he could not communicate. All power and cell/land-line phone service knocked out and his car was stuck in a nearby tower garage that requires electricity to stack cars via elevators. He had no idea how she had fared, nor did she about him. It took him an hour and a half to navigate his way home through the bitter cold and blinding snow while dodging chunks of fallen buildings, toppled walls, and cracked roads. With every step, his anxiety level climbed as he imagined what he might find when he arrived.
Fortunately, his home, which my family had visited a year earlier, is on much higher and firmer ground. Kazuko was safe and their home was spared any serious damage.
But this would be only the beginning of the next chapter for Kurt and Kazuko; dealing with the aftermath of the trifecta of simultaneous disasters – earthquake, tsunami, and radioactive fallout from a nearby nuclear power plant. For many days to come, Kurt and Kazuko could do little but endure more than six hundred aftershocks, some powerful. They, like everyone else, wondered how many people the thirty-foot tsunami had washed away; how long their food and water would hold out; and whether they could stay warm enough without any heat. All the while they were nervously monitoring reports of the wind carrying radiation dangerously close to their home. With no cars, buses, or trains, escape was not an option.
I spoke to Kurt by cell phone soon after the disaster and again a couple weeks later, during which he conveyed what is written here. But it was nearly two months before Kurt could bring himself to detail some of his experiences during the aftermath to his father via e-mail earlier this month, which my Uncle Walt shared with me. With Kurt’s permission, I am sharing that e-mail along with photos taken by a new friend Kurt met in Sendai a week after the event, Nicholas Packard.
Nicholas, the founder and president The TAO of Holistic Living, studies alternative medicine in China and India. His current home is in Thailand. As soon as he heard the news of the disaster, he got on a plane to Japan while everyone else was leaving. His purpose was to provide assistance and healing to the evacuees – but with no car, no friends, and an inability to speak Japanese, Nicholas spent his first few days, jaw open, looking and photographing the areas he visited, almost all of which were vacated by everyone except the military. All the ground photos on this page taken by Nicholas (most during this time were aerial shots) show the ravaged coastal areas north of Sendai a week after the tsunami/earthquake.
Kurt’s e-mail to his father:
Hi Dad, The advent of spring here is probably doing more for the morale of the people than anything else. What a long, cold winter. The opposite of the horrible summer last year. Cherry blossoms are out; food, utilities and usual amenities are in full operation. The only worries are, of course, radiation from destroyed power plants, and recurring aftershocks.
I’m not sure, but I think we may have gone 10 hours without a tremor. Hard to keep track. As that interval increases (hopefully!), people are feeling less and less jittery. It was pretty awesome — in the awe sense of the word — for the past seven weeks. Right now we’re in the middle of Golden Week. Since everyone is off work during this time, the streets are beginning to fill with shoppers and nights are full of revelers trying to forget.
I’m not sure if I sent or told you some of what happened just days after the quake. I holed up in a little park not far from my office because I couldn’t fathom the idea of being indoors. Miserably cold, at least there was drinkable water and pubic toilets. All electricity was out, my car was stuck in the parking elevator, no heating anywhere. I stayed outside for nearly a week while the sun was up, unable to gather the courage to enter my school. So, like someone homeless, I bundled up with cardboard and newspapers and read John Grisham’s The Confession. Needless to say, that took less than two days, but I have lots of other books at home to re-read.
The thi
ng I’m getting to are the sounds. There were only two: sirens and helicopters. For 24-hours during the first ten days or so, nothing else could be heard. Almost no cars on the road; Sendai was a ghost town. A few zombies strolled aimlessly around looking for food and water. Most people stayed away from downtown.
Sitting on my perch in the park, I often counted ten or more helicopters flying from the tsunami hit areas to pick up more injured and dead.
Ambulances, police, fire trucks, each with their own unique sirens, went about their business. All the while, I shivered in the cold wind and weathered the constant aftershocks.
On maybe the third or fourth day, an old woman spotted me and approached. She said she stood in line for four hours to buy six rice balls for her family. Then she offered me two. I tried my best to politely refuse (we had lots of food at home in the pantry) and I really didn’t want to accept.
Occasionally, when the cold really got to me, I strolled around the city looking at all the cracked buildings, crumbled concrete and closed shops. Yellow tape printed with “Danger!” was everywhere, which kept pedestrians away. Nothing was open. Long lines of people waited in vain outside convenient stores. Perhaps five days later, a few stores opened, attracting even longer lines. But with no heat or lights, all purchases (limited to 3 items per customer), had to be calculated by hand. It was like stepping back 200 years. And no looting. The stores all closed soon after, not to reopen until about a month later. There simply wasn’t anything to sell.
Each night as the sun went down, I filled up dozens of pet bottles with water (from the park) and lugged them all home, a forty-minute walk. On the way, I saw lots of people, sometimes families, sleeping in their cars, motors running. Fewer and fewer as days went on because they ran out of gasoline.
The first signs of urban life began with the buses. At first, a few, packed to the gills, ran here and there. Then taxis started appearing (they use LPG). About six days after, electricity could be seen here and there. Days later, we were hooked up but still no heat since we rely on kerosene. But thanks to an electric carpet, we were warm enough under quilts. Finally, I got my car and the water came back on. Another week or so and we were able to acquire about 10 gallons of kerosene which we used sparingly up until just a week ago or so when we filled up the 80-gallon tank.
Oh — about that woman in the early days after the disaster: eventually I did accept her offer of two rice balls. She returned the next day with some tangerines and something else I couldn’t identify. I explained that I wasn’t homeless and that she needed to keep the food for her family. Her face fell and she sat silently for a while. Feeling rebuffed, she started gathering up her things, then stopped. Forcing a smile through sad eyes, she said the tsunami took her family.
I’ve never seen her again but I think about the poor old thing frequently.
Keep in touch, Dad. Love and miss you bunches. Kurt