Unbelievable.

Something absolutely dreadful has occurred within the last few days.  A major earthquake struck the coast of Japan, causing a huge tsunami to sweep across a huge stretch of Japan.  On Friday 11th March, an earthquake that was said to have a magnitude scale of 9 struck, causing the tsunami to wipe out numerous towns and villages.  Japan is said to be prepared for these type of events seeing as it lies just above a seismic plate, they have measures in place to deal with earthquakes and have special buildings on high ground built to withstand tsunamis, school children are also taught how to deal with these situations in class.  Once an earthquake reaches a certain level of magnitude, all of the bullet trains automatically stop and nuclear power stations go into temporary shutdown.  However, despite all of this, thousands of people are dead or missing.

On Saturday 12th March there was an explosion at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant, this caused great panic and worry amongst many people globally, as people fear this may be the start of another Chernobyl.  More than 200,000 people who were at least 20 km from the nuclear power station have been evacuated from the area as the fear of leaked radiation is at it's highest.  Three US warships have anchored off the coast of Japan to help in any way possible.  On Sunday 13th March, there was a second explosion.

Today, a fire broke out at the Nuclear Plant, causing even more worry.  Despite authorities claiming that there won't be a nuclear melt down and that the situation won't reach the same situation of Chernobyl, these unexpected explosions and fires just keep happening, making me wonder, perhaps this could get worse?

So far 4,300 have been killed, this toll is expected to rise to 10,000 as many bodies have not yet been discovered.

Helicopters have been dumping water on the nuclear site to try and cool it down as the earthquake wrecked the diesel generators that were originally keeping the reactors cool, however this has now been stopped due to the amount of radiation that may be escaping.  Workers have also been letting sea water in to try and cool the nuclear reactors.

I personally fear for not just myself and how this may affect my country and the surrounding countries (as Chernobyl did) but I fear for Japan.  I can't even begin to imagine how they will be able to come back from this, it is just such an awful disaster that has landed on such a beautiful, kind and thriving country.  I fear that this may bring Japan down from the height of wealth it has been enjoying these past few years.  You only had to look at Tokyo.

My sympathies are with the Japanese people and I truly hope that it won't get much worse than this.