Vets fear worst for livestock abandoned around Fukushima

Published on Sunday 24 April 2011 16:42

Japan will send nearly 25,000 soldiers supported by boats and aircraft into its disaster zone today on an intensive land-and-sea mission to recover the bodies of those killed by last month's earthquake and tsunami.

Agriculture officials also plan to send a team of vets into the evacuation zone around a stricken nuclear plant to check on hundreds of thousands of abandoned cows, pigs and chickens, many of which are believed to have died of starvation and neglect. The government is considering putting-down some of the dying animals, officials said.

About 14,300 people have been confirmed dead so far in the catastrophic 11 March tsunami and earthquake. Another 12,000 remain missing and are presumed dead. Some bodies were most likely swept out to sea, while others were buried under the mass of rubble. Clean-up crews have discovered some remains as they gingerly removed rotting debris to clear the area for rebuilding.

But the two-day military search operation will be far more extensive, Defence Ministry spokesman Ippo Maeyama said yesterday.

"We will do our utmost to recover bodies for bereaved families," he said.

A total of 24,800 soldiers will scour the rubble, backed by 90 helicopters and planes, he said. Another 50 boats, along with 100 navy divers, will search the waters up to 12 miles off the coast, he said.

"It's been very difficult and challenging to find bodies because the areas hit by tsunami are so widespread," he said. "Many bodies also have been swept away by the tsunami."

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard became the first foreign leader to view the disaster zone this weekend when she was taken to the country's tsunami-ravaged north-east coast.

Walking through a fishing village where hundreds of people are dead and missing, she said Minamisanriku looked as if it had been "bombed into oblivion."

"It's a scene of incredible tragedy and incredible sorrow," Gillard said on the last day of her four-day trip to Japan.

She also visited a shelter for people who have lost their homes, where she gave toy koala bears and kangaroos to excited children.

The operation that starts today will be the third intensive military search for bodies since the disaster last month. With the waters receding, the teams hope to have more success.

The search was complicated by the decomposition of some of the corpses, Mr Maeyama said. Some had already turned into skeletons.

"You have to be very careful in touching the bodies because they quickly disintegrate. We cannot tell the bodies' gender any more, let alone their age," he said.

The searches will continue, however, "as long as families want us to look for their loved ones," Mr Maeyama added.Meanwhile, the government in the Fukushima prefecture will send a team of six vets into the 12-mile evacuation zone around the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant to survey the livestock there.

Farmers in the area were estimated to have left 3,000 cows, 130,000 pigs and 680,000 chickens behind when they hurriedly fled the area last month when the nuclear crisis started.

With no time for burials, vets who find dead livestock will spray lime over them to prevent them from spreading disease.