TOKYO — Japan’s embattled authorities narrowly averted a blackout in capital Tokyo on Thursday, as the number of dead and missing from last week’s tsunami and earthquake topped 15,000 with reports from remote coastal towns indicating the final toll could exceed official estimates many times over.
In its latest estimate, the National Police Agency said 5,692 people were confirmed dead and the number of missing people stood at 9,522.
Authorities averted a power blackout in Tokyo, after issuing stark warnings to residents to do what they could to reduce energy consumption. “Please conserve electricity as much as possible. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated,” the prime minister’s office said in a message on Twitter.
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Railway operators reduced rush hour services and companies were encouraged to send workers home early, Kyodo News reported. Some department stores in Tokyo decided to close earlier than scheduled, and a convenience store chain said it would halve fluorescent lighting at its stores.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which operates the stricken nuclear plant at Fukushima and supplies much of the city’s power, said demand neared supply capacity due to cold weather, Kyodo News reported.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that Japan had the financial means to recover from the earthquake and tsunami.
“The most important policy priority is to address the humanitarian needs, the infrastructure needs and reconstruction and addressing the nuclear situation,” an IMF spokeswoman said. “We believe that the Japanese economy is a strong and wealthy society and the government has the full financial resources to address those needs.”
US President Barack Obama told Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan that the US was ready “to provide further assistance including dispatching more nuclear experts and for mid and long-term reconstruction efforts,” Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.
The White House said Obama “promised that the United States will always stand by Japan, our close friend and ally.”
The US State Department announced it was bringing chartered aircraft to Tokyo to help Americans exit Japan, while department officials also authorized the voluntary departure of US embassy family members from the country.
US military personnel have delivered 40 tons of supplies to the hardest-hit areas of Japan, Stars and Stripes reported Thursday.
In Miyagi, a coastal prefecture that bore some of the tsunami’s worst destruction, officials estimate the toll there alone will be in the tens of thousands, The Wall Street Journal reported.
In Otsuchi, a town of 15,000 people, there are reports that, in many cases, no one is left to report names. About 5,000 people were evacuated and Otsuchi’s number of deaths is officially 221 with seven people declared missing. That leaves more than 9,000 unaccounted for.
Japanese authorities will not declare someone missing unless they have been reported missing.
The effect is repeated in towns up and down the coast in the prefectures including Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima. Survivors in Minamisanriku, a town in Miyagi washed nearly clean of its houses, believe about half of its 17,000 residents are gone.
Press reports suggest roughly half of the 23,000 people of Rikuzentakata, in Iwate, are unaccounted for. In Onagawa, a seaside town where 106 residents are officially counted dead and 125 officially missing, residents believe about half of the pre-tsunami population of 10,000 will ultimately be counted as lost. The mayor of Ishinomaki, which has a population of 164,000, said as many as 10,000 could have been killed.
Added together, this would mean the number of people missing in these towns and cities could be as high as 44,000.
The final mortality figure from the Kobe earthquake — 6,434 people — was logged in December 2005, a decade after the quake hit. Most of those dead were found within a year, since Kobe’s population was more compact and bodies tended to be buried under their houses when they collapsed.
The tally this time could go more slowly, because the uncountable are so many and so hard to find. The tsunami swept many victims out to sea, and they will be counted as they wash ashore. Eventually towns and villages could report missing people, although many town offices have been destroyed, further delaying the process.
Australian officials were searching morgues, hospitals and emergency shelters for 55 Australians still missing in devastated Japan, while the US State Department said it did not know exactly how many Americans were missing. As many as 1,300 Americans may have been in northern Japan when Friday’s quake and tsunami hit. More than 50 Britons are also believed missing.