This video is just beginning to be circulated widely, so I hope that the DK community views it and passes it on. It reflects the complexity of the problems created for emergency response workers and officials in areas affected by the Fukushima nuclear reactor.
In an SOS message to the world that appears to have been taped around March 25, the mayor of Minami Soma City, which is 20 to 30 kilometers from Fukushima, explains that because the citizens have been instructed to stay indoors because of radiation, the stores and supermarkets have been closed. People are running out of food and other basic supplies. He compares the situation to starvation and the people "drying up."
At the same time, volunteers were not coming into the area because of the radiation risk. The city is also suffering from the devastating effects of the Tsunami.
In his heartbreaking appeal, the mayor, Katsunobu Sakarai, asks volunteers to come to the city to help deliver food and other supplies to the citizens, but acknowledges that he is asking them to come at their own risk because of the radiation.
Radiation levels are around 1-3 micro sivierts per hour. To put that in perspective, a volunteer would receive an amount of radiation equal to a dental X-ray in between two and five hours outdoors.
On-line information about what has happened to the city since the video was created is sketchy and contradictory. In some reports, the city received volunteers, and in others, the city is still stranded.
You can watch the video with English subtitles on Youtube, but it seems to me that much of what the obviously exhausted mayor is saying isn't fully translated:
http://www.youtube.com/...