TOKYO – Belly-up ships, twisted cars and debris from shattered buildings on Friday crashed through the streets of Japanese port towns that were turned into black rivers by a monster tsunami. A muddy river filled with rubble – some of it on fire and belching smoke – raced across rice fields and through towns, aerial television footage showed in one of the worst-hit areas, Miyagi prefecture.
A schoolboy was swept away there by the deadly waters and there were grave fears the toll would keep climbing sharply from the more than two dozen reported dead as a cold night settled over Japan. The huge wall of sea water unleashed by Japan’s worst quake on record hit the Pacific coast of Honshu island, sweeping away whole houses and turning harbour areas into scenes of utter devastation.
The masses of water overwhelmed coastal defences and swallowed up many square kilometres (square miles) of land in the region in scenes reminiscent of the devastation triggered by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Ken Hoshi, a local government official in Ishinomaki, a port city in Miyagi prefecture.
