It's hard to know how to respond to a disaster in such a well resourced
country. The idea of supporting Japanese companies seems to be a good one, and
it will be interesting to see what happens to prices and availability. This is
a link to a copy of a letter from online optics dealer Adorama, summarises the
status of their Japanese suppliers:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1018&message=37990490
In particular, "Epson, Canon, Panasonic, Sony, Ricoh and Nikon have all
reported that they have donated hundreds of millions of Yen to the relief
effort and are contributing in other tactical ways to help survivors." I also
note that Olympus, not mentioned in the email, has donated 100 million yen and
resue equipment.
Peter Shute
________________________________________
From:
On Behalf Of Carl Clifford
Sent: Friday, 18 March 2011 10:13 PM
To: Tom Tarrant
Cc: Birding-aus
Subject: Rare bird alert
Tom,
I also feel very frustrated as well, but think the best thing we can
do at the moment is donate to an organisation such as Red Cross, they
are the experts in disaster relief. I know it is difficult to have to
sit back and watch the terrible images but this is an unprecedented
disaster and we have to rely on the authorities on the ground.
Before I retired, I was my department's Regional Emergency Management
Officer and was also in the SES. When those reports and images started
to come in via the media, my immediate thoughts were "where do you
start with this mess?' The first stage, survivor rescue is virtually
over. The next stage will be clean-up and body recovery, which will
have to be done alongside repair of infrastructure such as utilities
and transport systems. The Japanese Self Defence and Civil Defence
Forces seem to be getting on top of the immediate problems of housing
and feeding the survivors, though they are not being helped by the
weather at the moment, with this cold snap. Heating the shelters must
be a great problem.
We should really feel for those working on site. Burnout will be a
real problem for those working at the pointy end. There is only so
much emergency service personnel can take in a terrible situation like
this.
What we can best do for the longer term is buy Japanese products and
so support the Japanese economy and help the country get through.
As far as what we can do about the nuclear power stations, all I can
suggest is pray that those 50 poor buggers who are trying to control
the situation succeed. They are real heroes, as they are probably
giving up their lives to do it
Carl Clifford
On 18/03/2011, at 9:35 PM, Tom Tarrant wrote:
OK, sorry I lied but I know you will forgive me, SE Australia has had
record unbelievable floods, Christchurch was torn-down by an
earthquake but
what has happened in Japan defies description....
Most Australian birders have contacts with their counterparts in
Japan.....what can we do to help? We've all seen images of homeless
people
with nowhere to sleep, no food and no fuel to escape the freezing
conditions
but to cap it all their nuclear power-stations are threatening to make
their
regions uninhabitable.....I'm sure that we can do something to help,
C'mon Birding-Aus, ideas? let's get our heads together...I know we
can do
do something!
Tom
--
********************************
Tom Tarrant
Kobble Creek, Qld
http://kobble.aviceda.org
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/aviceda/
********************************
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