Ed Hawkesworth was among the international rescue teams who helped after the Japanese earthquake. He tells KATE LIPTROT of his experiences.
A NORTH Yorkshire man who was among the first international rescue teams at the scene of the Japanese earthquake has described witnessing the devastation first hand.
Ed Hawkesworth, 32, of Kirkby Overblow near Harrogate, went to Japan within hours of the earthquake and tsunami to act as a liaison point for a 60-strong British search and rescue team.
He was with the teams as they searched rubble in a bid to find survivors in the Iwate prefecture, 80 miles from the beleaguered Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Ed, who works as a communications officer for the Department for International Development, said: “We saw absolutely unbelievable sights. Whole towns and villages were washed away, reduced to matchwood almost. In one town we saw fishing trawlers washed inland – one was balancing on top of a petrol station.
“We started to see the wreckage of people’s lives. Every now and again I would see a photo album poking out of the rubble.
“We weren’t aware of how big [the nuclear power plant story] was back home. The fire-fighters are all equipped with docimeters – portable radiation monitors. I’m glad to say none of them registered unusual levels.”
In some areas the tsunami had devastated land around 10km inland, Ed said.
Although the team heard of others who had found survivors, they were only able to find bodies – finding around 20 in one town.
He said he met one elderly woman whose daughter had run up to a nearby hill with sentimental family possessions. But when she returned to her home a second time, her mother saw her swept away by the wave.
In another town, Kamaishi, the team found a woman who had been waiting for a search team to look through the wreckage of her home for two days.
When they searched the home they found the body of a woman they believed to be her daughter.
Ed said: “The woman identified the body and was doubled over in grief. It is quite difficult to process what had happened. It brings home the human level of grief.”
He added that he had been extremely moved by the resilience of the people in the affected areas and the support they offered one another.
Ed said: “Most of the people we met were very kind and dignified and very grateful the UK was there to give them support.
“There was a triumph of human spirit.”
Japanese hardship
THE photographs in our centre spread today demonstrate that, however difficult the problems we face here at home, they are as nothing compared with the trauma being experienced by the people of Japan.
Ed Hawkesworth recently returned from a visit to the stricken country.
What he saw there was unbelievable; whole towns and villages washed away; mothers grieving for children drowned by the tsunami’s giant waves; fishing trawlers balanced on top of a petrol station.
We should perhaps read his account, and then thank our lucky stars for the relative stability and security we enjoy here in Britain.
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