Japan Estimated To Take Five Years To Rebuild
Tokyo, Japan
The rebuilding of a city has a price and the World Banks has come up with an estimate. New Zealand Herald reports:
Japan may need five years to rebuild from the earthquake and tsunami that has caused up to US$235 billion ($320 billion) of damage, says the World Bank.
The March 11 disaster will likely shave up to 0.5 of a percentage point from the country’s economic growth this year, the bank said in a report. The impact will be concentrated in the first half of the year.
“Damage to housing and infrastructure has been unprecedented,” the World Bank said. “Growth should pick up, though, in subsequent quarters as reconstruction efforts, which could last five years, accelerate.”
The bank cited damage estimates between US$123 billion and US$235 billion, and cost to private insurers of between US$14 billion and US$33 billion. It said the government will spend US$12 billion on reconstruction in the current national budget…
Monster Tsunami Scares Residents Across Pacific
The massive 8.9 earthquake off the coast of Japan has created a monster tsunami that has people all across the Pacific Ocean running to high ground. The U.S. Government’s NOAA has lots of interactive and historical information on tsunami travel times and is well worth looking at if you’re anywhere in the vicinity. A static map is reproduced below.
Did Aliens From Friendship Island Warn Of The Chile Earthquake?
In January I visited Chile, luckily for me before the earthquakes. While there I was told a story about Friendship Island, a mythical island inhabited by strange beings off the southern coast of Chile (learn more here). Although famous amongst Chilean conspiracy buffs and ufologists, it is seldom discussed outside the region. I would have left it as an amusing piece of local lore, but recently the leading Chilean TV conspiracy theorist, Salfate, went on air in December 2009 claiming that beings from Friendship Island had told him there would be many earthquakes and tsunamis in 2010…
OK, it’s totally nutty stuff, but the natural disasters are hitting as predicted. What does anyone know about Salfate – is he credible or a crank?
For Tsunami’s Baby 81, Fame Brought Misfortune
By Shihar Aneez for Reuters:
BATTICALOA, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami brought international fame to Baby 81, but the parents of the two-month-old who miraculously survived the deadly wave say it has only brought misfortune.
Found in the debris left by the wave that wrecked swathes of Sri Lanka’s coast and killed 226,000 along the Indian Ocean rim, Abhilash Jeyaraj became a phenomenon after international media reported nine sets of parents had come forward to claim him.
He was brought to the hospital by a villager who found him and, since he had no identification, was named after his hospital admission number: Baby 81.
After his injured parents got out of another hospital two days later and went to claim him, a media storm erupted, which eventually forced Abhilash’s parents to go to the police and courts to get their son back.
They were even arrested when they tried to force…
Five Years After Tsunami, Many Still Without Shelter
Amantha Perera at oneworld.net:
KALMUNAI, Sri Lanka, (IPS) – “We have been here for almost five years. So many promises have been made, but very few have been kept,” complains Mohideen Nafia, 22, one of the survivors of the 2004 Asian tsunami still living in a temporary facility in the coastal town of Kalmunai, located 300 kilometres east of the capital, Colombo.
Newly married Nafia would have preferred a house of her own with her husband. But at the moment she has to make do with what amounts to a shelter, a one-room unit in a government-provided disaster camp, which the couple shares with Nafia’s family of five and is located about one kilometre from the beach.
Nafia hails from the Sainathimaruthu village in Kalmunai, a major domestic fishing hub that bore the brunt of what has been touted as one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. Three of its villages…
