Today the 17th is the first announcement from the US Embassy in Tokyo since the earthquake on the 11th that they will provide help to US nationals in the northern areas around the nuclear plant. They say they will start to organize USG transportation for US citizens. Also today, the UK government advised all UK nationals to leave northern Japan and Tokyo, and also announced for the first time that it will provide additional charter flights to Hongkong for UK nationals.
This information is useful for planning. It is very closely consistent with experience in other disasters. The planning guidelines are that after a major environmental emergency you will need to be self-sufficient for 5 days, meaning you need food, water, medical supplies, heating and shelter for outdoors in winter, while you should expect no help from anyone except your local community during those 5 days. And in particular plan to make decisions during that 5 days without relying on information from officials or emergency services on the state of the disaster or on the state of transportation. This applies equally well to chemical fires in refineries, earthquakes, hurricanes, major fires, floods, and so on.
The one difference I observe in the Japanese situation is that in Japanese towns and cities there is a local public address warning system and sirens that covers every street. In US cities on the West coast there is no similar effective means of communicating warnings. In the US the practice is for police cars to drive around using a megaphone. Japan's cell phone network is also more reliable than the US network. In US cities cell phone calls fail in some areas almost all the time during non-emergencies due to network provisioning policies. In Japan during the current emergency cell phone data networks continued to function.
This information is useful for planning. It is very closely consistent with experience in other disasters. The planning guidelines are that after a major environmental emergency you will need to be self-sufficient for 5 days, meaning you need food, water, medical supplies, heating and shelter for outdoors in winter, while you should expect no help from anyone except your local community during those 5 days. And in particular plan to make decisions during that 5 days without relying on information from officials or emergency services on the state of the disaster or on the state of transportation. This applies equally well to chemical fires in refineries, earthquakes, hurricanes, major fires, floods, and so on.
The one difference I observe in the Japanese situation is that in Japanese towns and cities there is a local public address warning system and sirens that covers every street. In US cities on the West coast there is no similar effective means of communicating warnings. In the US the practice is for police cars to drive around using a megaphone. Japan's cell phone network is also more reliable than the US network. In US cities cell phone calls fail in some areas almost all the time during non-emergencies due to network provisioning policies. In Japan during the current emergency cell phone data networks continued to function.
