Humanitarian Aid for Hachinohe

Hachinohe is the nearest "big city" to us here in Misawa.  It's where the good recycle shops, Toy's R Us and the fabric store are.  Where to go if you want a 4-D ultrasound or Cello lessons or great rock climbing right next to the ocean.

And it was hit pretty hard by a huge Tsunami.  Unfortunately for the locals, a lot of the resources were diverted or sent to Sendai leaving Hach short.   Most Japanese people live in pretty tight quarters and don't have excess food storage, so not being able to shop frequently is a problem.  And apparently the grocery stores are now empty.

On Sunday, Pres. B. announced in church that we would be collecting supplies to take to Hach.

Misawa Mormons were asked to donate food and warm blankets.   (And many of our friends and neighbors donated too.)

Tonight Doug went with some other branch members (including some of the youth) and took the donations to the L.D.S. church building in Hachinohe.

This is the e-mail I got tonight:

Misawa Branch Members-

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!!! I am so humbled to have seen the amazing outpouring of charity demonstrated by you all. This evening we loaded up in THREE VEHICLES all the food, blankets and sleeping bags collected over the past 30 hours and delivered them to the Hachinohe Branch President. He was amazed! He was so humble and grateful for all that you shared. It is an experience that I will never forget! He said that it is enough food to last a very long time! He said he would share it with families and friends who will need it over the next days to weeks. We still have TWO VEHICLES full of clothing. We plan on donating these to the local Jr/Sr High School/Red Cross humanitarian drive.

I can't thank you enough!  --President B.

The local missionaries and Hach Branch President with our BP and members

My husband is a goof-ball!

Getting everything sorted

Hopefully enough to last a little while at least!

:)

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Earthquake Aftermath

*The power is on, but we're told the grid is very fragile right now and we should conserve power to prevent black outs.

*Turns out there is more than one reason to have a clean, uncluttered house.  When the power goes out and an extra five people move in, you wish you had cleaned up a little better.  Since my house was only half clean and half organized it was only half as chaotic as it could have been.  (Or only half as efficient and orderly.)

*The Japanese people are amazing!  They have been dignified, sensible, and cool-headed throughout this.  Take note, Americans!  (Myself included.)

*Also, when you're focused on surviving, you don't care about all your "STUFF".  When things are back to normal, I'll be doing a VERY deep clean to get rid of lots of superfluous CRAP.
More blankets?  Yes.  Extra scrap-booking supplies?  NO!!!

*Took my first shower today since Friday morning.  The hot water felt heavenly.  Yesterday I washed my hair in the sink before church.  Doug had to help so I could keep the towel wrapped tightly around my shoulders (it was still freezing cold in the house at that point.).  First I got my hair wet with the frigid tap water and quickly shampooed.  There may have been very loud shrieking.  Then Doug rinsed it for me with warm water we heated on the camp stove.  Ahhhhh....sweet warmth!  Although the clean hair was nice, cleanliness really isn't THAT important when it's that cold.  Turns out I might rather be stinky and warm.  I'm kind of a wuss that way.

*Doug went to work this morning and came home around lunch time.  (Although he is, of course, not seeing patients.)  It sounds like the Med Group will just basically be on call to help the Relief Teams coming through Misawa.

*We're allowed to get 10 gallons of gas, per day, per family.  Another thing that would be good to have stored.  (Although in our case, we have nowhere to go.)

*The boys wont be back in school until Wednesday.  Not sure if the school is shut down because of damage or if it's just that people want to keep their kids close...?

*On Saturday, in the midst of all this happening, when we started to hear the news of how bad the devastation was, I started feeling really depressed.  It felt like things would never be okay and never get back to normal.  It's really weird that things are slowly getting back to normal and that there are people out there totally unaffected by this.  (Just a random thought.)

*Doug is currently with some of the local branch leaders delivering supplies to Hachinohe.  Evidently a lot of their resources are being diverted to Sendai so they're running short.

*F.Y.PrepardnessI.: When I went to the commissary on Saturday, this is what was gone or going fast:  Peanut Butter was going fast.  (And I cleaned out the last of the Nutella.)  Paper Products--the shelves were empty.  Batteries--all gone.  Bottled Water and Charcoal--they brought some more out from the back while I was there and it immediately disappeared.  Candles --I don't know what kind of candle selection they usually have, but I couldn't find any.  (Doug said the "Book Mart"--which just re-opened today--was selling them, but only allowed two per family.)  The diaper selection was getting pretty picked over and I imagine the formula was all gone.  Not many people were buying cold stuff (since it was sitting there warming up) but the bread shelves were bare.

*Oh yeah:  Don't forget to put some card games and kid entertainment in those 72 hour kits.  The kids around here were going through electronics withdrawal and many were starting to twitch.

More tomorrow if we still have power.

These are the picture Doug took of our "sea side" and dock area yesterday after church.  (Even though I threatened dire consequences if he went anywhere near the beach--you can tell he's really scared of me.)  The sad thing is, this is NOTHING compared to what they suffered in Sendai and Hachinohe.

Surviving the Earthquake in Japan

Hi Everyone,
We're doing "fine" here.  Considering what is going on around us.  When the first big quake hit, around 2:45 in the afternoon on Friday, I ran to Gray's room and grabbed him out of his crib.  We've had plenty of earthquakes in the 2.5 years we've been here, but this one was huge.  Gabe started crying and calling for me --I got him too and we huddled on the stairs away from windows and light fixtures.  The two big boys were walking home from school and came in while the house was still shaking.  They thought it was exciting.  I yelled at them to "GET BACK OUTSIDE!" because I'd just been told if you're outside, you're supposed to stay outside!  I sat on the stairs praying: "Please protect my kids, please protect my kids, please protect my kids..."  It seemed to last forever (around 5 minutes I've heard) and then the aftershocks just kept coming and coming.  They're still coming.

They evacuated the hospital and Doug was able to come home around 4.  [I can't tell you what a relief it was to have my whole entire family safe and together.  And how upsetting it was/is to think of people all over Japan who have family unaccounted for.  It's really hard for me whenever one of the husbands has to leave.]

Since then, the power has been out and we haven't had any heat or access to phones (to the states) or Internet (except Doug getting one e-mail out from the hospital.)   Friday evening we moved our friends in with us (Tami and Wes and three kids) since they just shipped all of their stuff to the states in preparation for their move in two weeks.  It's been nice to have them around because everyone is on edge and extremely stressed.  (And Tami is very cool under pressure!  She's amazing.  Me, not so much turns out.)

Yesterday (Saturday) they opened the commissary (No lights, cash only) and we grabbed some extra food, water and diapers.  Since we have the standard Mormon "food storage" I wasn't too worried about running out of food or water, but I didn't have any spare diapers so was happy to buy three big boxes yesterday for Gray-Gray.  (And yes, I bought two big cans of hot chocolate.  Priorities, people!)

We went to church for a shortened meeting to take the sacrament and get the news today.  All members of the branch have been accounted for and we've heard that all the missionaries in Japan are accounted for also.  (Big relief.)

The power is now back on off-base which is how I have Internet access right now.  We're at Tami's house.  Hopefully it stays on.

Anyway, evidently Misawa is going to become the base for rescue operations in nearby prefectures.    We were asked at church to see what extra coats, blankets, food and water we can round up to donate to the Japanese people nearby.  I feel heart sick thinking of those who've lost homes and loved ones.  Although you probably know much more than me, I hear the devastation is extremely great.   We were lucky to be so safe on base and grateful our off-base friends and neighbors were okay.

The earthquakes (aftershocks) haven't stopped and I spent all night last night having nightmares about running from collapsing and buckling buildings.  The kids are on edge and tantrums are at an all time high.  They keep busy playing during the day, but when it gets dark and we have to ration flashlights and candles it gets extra hard to keep the peace.

A few things I've been wanting to tell people and note for the future:

*Get an old school, corded phone.  If the power goes out, your cordless wont work.  We were lucky to have a corded phone upstairs which helped Doug coordinate with the Branch President to get accountability of church members.  (The phones have worked on-base off and on, but we were never able to get a call through to the states.)

*Speaking of accountability, in an emergency, if you're going to leave your house--leave a note on the door saying where you are going so when guys from church or work coming looking, they'll know where you are.

*When the power went out, people off base couldn't get their cars out of their garage.  Turns out there is a special crank to use but most of our friends didn't have it or know what it was.  Luckily Tami had parked outside and was able to get her kids to our house Friday.

*We've been cooking with our camping equipment.  Note to self:  Buy a 20 pack of small propane tanks.  We've also used our outdoor BBQ (in the cold) and I'm wishing I had a spare tank of Propane for that.  (We still don't have power and don't know when it will come back on On Base.  Estimates have said 24 hours (we're way past that) to 1 week, to indefinite.)

*Do you have an extra refill of your prescriptions in your 72 hour kit?  It's terrifying to imagine running out of the things you take every day.  Also, the thought of my kids getting sick and not having enough Children's Advil and/or Tylenol made me pretty nervous until I verified we had some of each.

*For ONCE I was glad to be doing Dave Ramsey yesterday when we had plenty of cash on hand to shop at the commissary.  But we also have a cash and yen emergency fund hidden in the house for back-up which was very comforting.

*While I'm making notes to myself:  Buy a hand crank wheat grinder and blender!  (We have whole wheat, and we have a freezer full of frozen fruit to make smoothies but no way to blend anything.)

*Flashlights are a pain in my butt.  All of our stupid Rayovac crappy-crap batteries that I had stored for an emergency, LEAKED!  So the flashlights are all slowly dying, being over used by the children, and being misplaced.  The best source of light the last two nights has been the pillar candles I've had in the cupboard for fancy table settings.  They seem to burn pretty slow and shed a lot of light.  I've gone through 3 and have 1 left.  Wish I had a 20 pack of those in my 72 hour pack.  It would be nice not to worry about running out.  Small, light weight, energy efficient lanterns would be nice too.  (Turns out, I did have 100 hour candles in my pack...just didn't know/remember.)

*Also, my next house will have a wood burning fire place.  This all would have been much easier if we could have been warm.  (Other option, buy a propane heater.)

*Also, I'm buying all my kids a down comforter.  We have one on our bed and we've been fine at night, but the kids need 20 blankets piled up to stay warm.  (Actually, the two big boys each have a two layer fleece blanket which is pretty warm, but unfortunately, they're not very big.)  There is still snow on the ground here.

(Poor little Gray had to spend yesterday in his snow suit to stay warm.  The poor little guy must be sensing the stress because he's been quite out of sorts.  He's always shivering (even when bundled) and very clingy.  The kids are all confused and upset but mostly hanging in there.  Like I said, it's been nice to have friends to keep us company.)

Sorry, I'm rambling on and on but I've had all this stress for the last two days and my main way to process is by writing my thoughts down.  So I've been going a little nuts feeling so disconnected.

A few more random thoughts:
*The last two days this thought kept running through my head "All are safely gathered in.".  I can't express enough how glad I was/am to have my family around me.  Please say a prayer for our many many friends with deployed spouses.  This is a very stressful time here and it's really sucky for them to be apart.  Also, please pray for all the Japanese people who are missing or displaced.  So sad.

*We were very blessed on base to have running (freezing cold) water.  Off base, sewer lines broke and contaminated the water supply they weren't even supposed to touch it.

*Today we sang "I Need Thee Every Hour" at church.  Has a lot of meaning right now.

Okay, there are other people who need to use this computer.  Everyone on base is coming off base to try to contact family.

Tami's husband (Pilot) is at work trying to coordinate rescue efforts so I should go down and help her take care of the multitude of children and get everyone some lunch.

Please pray for us (us being everyone in Japan) and if you feel so inclined, find a way to send some warm blankets to people who've lost their homes.  Don't know when I'll be back on-line again, but hopefully soon.

Thanks to everyone for your concern.  I knew (figured) there were people praying for us back in the states and it helped to think about that.
:)

-Emily