Community Corner

Residents With Ties to Japan Reach Out, Evaluate Travel Plans

Riveting pictures and news from Japan hit home with some residents, from checking on friends and family to thinking of ways to help.

Nobuko Cleary was up early in her Los Altos Hills home Friday morning, worried, until she could ascertain her 37-year-old son, who works in Tokyo, was OK. 

The 8.9-magnitude earthquake that struck the northeastern part of Japan on Friday hit at 2:46 p.m., about 235 miles north of Tokyo. While most buildings held up well, thanks to the some of the strictest building codes in the world, everything came to a halt.

 "It was a very scary experience for him," said Cleary. "Can you believe it, he said it was 10 minutes of shaking."

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With the extensive transit system paralyzed, he walked home, along with hundreds of Tokyo commuters. It took three hours, she said. 

Kaoru Grieselhuber and her husband had been looking forward to seeing family in Nagoya on Monday. After settling in a bungalow near the Hillview Community Center recently, they had made plans to take their small sons home for cherry blossom season before rigid school schedules made that impossible in the future.

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Then, her husband, Ray, told her late Thursday night that an earthquake had hit, and there were reports of cars going off bridges. Friends told of heartbreaking scenes of cars racing from the coast and being overtaken by the huge wave surge.

Now, she said, they were watching to see when flights to Japan resume, and trying to find out whether friends in Tokyo were safe. Her parents, who live far from the epicenter, appeared not to be in danger. She used Facebook to confirm a friend on the coast was OK.

"For us, it was lucky that happened before we went, but I'm so sorry for the people there," she said sadly.

Cleary's sister told her of reports of 400 dead bodies along the seashore. The closest experience she could summon was her experience at age 15 in Japan, when a fierce typhoon near her home killed 15,000 people, she said. Cleary, too, had plans to go to Japan this month.

About a dozen Japanese firefighters who spent the week training with the Menlo Park Fire Protection District have become stranded in the Bay Area after Thursday's tsunami forced flights to Japan to be canceled, the district's chief said today.

The firefighters were scheduled to finish their training program today and fly out Saturday, but they had hoped to leave early when word of the tsunami came in, fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman said.

They were unable to leave early, with all the flight cancellations, though, and now it's unclear when they will make it home.

Schapelhouman said two of the trainees are from companies located in areas heavily impacted by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami, which killed hundreds of people.

One of the firefighters has made contact with his family, but the other has not been able to reach anyone.

"He's devastated," Schapelhouman said. "It's a stressful time for these guys. They want to be home with their families, working in their communities, serving their countrymen."

—Bay City News contributed to this report 


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