Sunday May 1 Slept 10 hours and spent much of morning downloading as many reports I could find on the Tohoku-oki earthquake (or Great East Japan earthquake in its English translation). One report summarizes the demographics of the victims. 92% are attributed to the tsunami, 4.5% to falling objects and structural failures, and the remainder due to fire. This is based only on bodies recovered – assuming all the missing are attributed to the tsunami, the tsunami victims increase to 97%. If there had been no tsunami, the casualties would have been less than 700. Of the victims, nearly two-thirds were over age 60, and more than half over 70. This really brings up issues about mobility and the ability to self-evacuate in a near-source event when time is very short. Took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Sendai. The train was unusually crowded. This is “Golden Week” in Japan – a week the encompasses a number of National holidays including the Emperor’s Birthday (until 1988), Constitution Memorial Day, Greenery Day, and Children’s Day. Many people get the whole week off and many have chosen to spend their vacations volunteering in the tsunami hit areas. Yomiuri Shimbun estimates as many as 8000 volunteers a day to invade the area, more than three times the typical average before this week. Volunteerism has plusses and minuses. There is much to be done – assisting in shelters, distributing aid, working on cleanup – but coordinating large numbers of untrained people puts additional stress on the situation. My real work begins tomorrow.