SOLYMONE BLOG: HELL ON EARTH

"I've seen 20 wars... but nothing prepared me for the sight of a town reduced to a morass of splintered wood, jagged concrete and twisted metal in the town where 10,000 have died", said Thomson.

MINAMI SANRIKU, Japan - channel 4 News Chief Correspondent ALEX THOMSON (right Photo) is one of the few Western journalists to have made it into Minami Sanriku, a town of 17,000 where more than half that number are still missing. According to him not even 30 years as a war correspondent had prepared him for the sight of such destruction.

Now, let share with him, his traumatizing experience in his own words as follows;

The scene is reminiscent of Hiroshima or Nagasaki after World War Two, with hardly any buildings surviving and a mass of mangled metal as far as the eye can see. The first thing you notice is the silence which seems to hang over the place. There is no sound as we approach this once-thriving coastal town.
Driving round the final bend in the mountain road before making the descent into Minami Sanriku, nothing can quite prepare you for the sight of such destruction.
In my 30 years as a war correspondent I have covered more than 20 conflicts and several major earthquakes, but I have never seen anything on this scale.
One minute you are passing through towns and villages completely untouched by natural disaster – not even a pane missing from the windows – and then as you turn the corner it hits you.
The most astonishing view stretches out below towards the sea for at least four miles. An entire town of around 17,000 people has simply ceased to exist here.
At least 95 per cent of the buildings are not merely ruined; they have been reduced to a morass of splintered wood, jagged concrete and twisted metal. All of this is hideously decorated with the details of destroyed family lives: a woman smiles up from her wedding photographs, a smashed guitar lies in the debris. I see a broken doll, and pages from a child’s school exercise book.