Assessment team continues efforts
Tzu Chi's disaster assessment team has completed its first mission in Japan's hard-hit Iwate prefecture. While surveying the extensive damage left by the earthquake and tsunami, the team continued to deliver aid supplies to local residents. Volunteers distributed 20 tons of aid, including blankets, shawls, thermal underwear, instant rice, nuts, and mixed grain powder to thousands of survivors. Da Ai reporters followed the distribution, and, with the permission of the residents, filmed rare footage of life inside the emergency shelters.
As relief supplies arrive in Japan's Iwate Prefecture, some volunteers immediately help with unloading.
At an emergency shelter in Rikuzentakata City, each person has been clearly assigned a task, and is expected to carry out daily. As well, meetings are held twice a day. They are all steps to help return some normalcy to the residents' lives.
Each resident wears a nametag symbolizing that whether or not residents knew each other before the disaster, everyone living here now is part of the same family.
A war veteran and now a survivor of this natural disaster, Mr. Kumagaya took it upon himself to organise the governing committee.
Tzu Chi's disaster assessment team is visiting six different emergency shelters in the city. In addition to inquiring into the conditions at each shelter, they also ask how many people are living in the surrounding areas. As second wave of relief supplies arrives, volunteers immediately dispatch them to those in need.
With little time to feel sorry for themselves, residents line up to pick up supplies. They know that by only working together can they get through this difficult time.
In each emergency shelter, living conditions are different. Here, each tatami mat serves a person's home.
Packed together, the residents aren't complaining, as they find strength in numbers.
Handing out aid in Ofunato
Another four containers of aid from Taiwan were due to arrive in Japan on the Wednesday. Tzu Chi's disaster survey team is now back in Tokyo, having completed its initial mission in Iwate Prefecture. The volunteers visited six emergency shelters in Ofunato City, to deliver aid to thousands of survivors from a dozen beach communities, that were wiped out by the March 11 tsunami.
Not only could the levee not withstand March 11th's tsunami, everything less than three floors high was swallowed whole. Frames of concrete homes remain, but nothing is left of the homes built from wood.
More than half a month has passed since the tsunami, but survivors are reminded of that terrible day everywhere they look.
Hoping to alleviate the suffering in the city, Tzu Chi's disaster survey team visits six emergency shelters while handing out supplies on the second day of their arrival.
Out of respect for the survivors' privacy, the hand out was to be outside of the shelters, but the team was invited in by grateful residents.
These supplies contain love from around the world.
Wrapping a shawl around a senior to keep warm, both the giver and receiver can't help but cry.
At moments likes this, a sincere hug is worth more than a million words.
Every one here has their own story. Some lost the homes they built singlehandedly. Some lost their loved ones.
Never did these survivors think that there were people in other countries who cared for them with the same love as a family member.
The love from around the world has touched the survivors deeply and reenergized their hearts with a new found strength.
Cold weather still engulfs northeast Japan and the survivors face many challenges ahead, but with love from around the world, hopefully the road to recovery will be easier.
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