UCLA students to leave Japan as Bruins join relief effort (excerpt)Mar 17, 2011, Alison Hewitt, UCLA Today
As the threat of radiation exposure grows in Japan following the catastrophic March 11 earthquake and tsunami that severely damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant, UC decided to suspend its study-abroad programs in the country and is in the process of evacuating students, including nine UCLA students from Tokyo. Meanwhile, several UCLA professors and some campus groups are joining relief efforts, including a pediatrician who is part of a medical team trying to reach the devastated areas, a geographic information systems (GIS) expert who is assembling essential information to aid U.N. relief workers, and an earthquake engineering expert who will be headed for Japan to inspect damaged levees and dams in Japan, among other structures.
Late Wednesday, the State Department issued a travel warning recommending that Americans evacuate from Japan. As a result, the UC-wide Education Abroad Program (EAP) suspended its programs in Japan.
“This decision was not taken lightly and it is based on the need to ensure your safety,” said Jean-Xavier Guinard, the program’s executive director, in an e-mail to EAP students. EAP staff in Tokyo and California are helping students travel home, and UCLA staff will assist students to find housing here and help with other academic concerns. “Our thoughts are with the people of Japan in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy,” Guinard added. “Together let us find ways to support them.”
Offering their skills and resources
Several UCLA professors and groups are offering their assistance as well. Professor Hitoshi Abe, chair of the Department of Architecture and Urban Design and director of the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, grew up, studied and has an architectural practice in Sendai, the city closest to the epicenter of the earthquake. He is putting his expertise in Japanese architecture and building codes to use and identifying rescue and aid organizations that can most directly help the community.
Dr. Kozue Shimabukuro, a UCLA pediatrician and Japanese citizen, had planned to vacation near Tokyo and visit family when the earthquake upturned everything. She immediately reached out to the Japanese government and got approval to join a pediatric disaster relief team, turning her vacation into a medical mission.
“We were called to leave today, but our departure was delayed. There was another explosion at the Fukushima prefecture nuclear power plant,” Shimabukuro wrote in an e-mail to her UCLA colleagues on Tuesday. “Now we are placed ‘on call for duty.’ I have never been on such a stressful call in my life.” Radiation levels are too high for the government to send the medical team north of Tokyo, closer to the Fukushima plant, where residents are being evacuated, she wrote, but added, “Every time bad news strikes, I feel that God called me to be here right now so I can give [the] ‘right care, right now.’ … I will be hopeful, once I get there I will do everything I can to serve my people, our children, our future.”
On Wednesday, Shimabukuro sounded even less hopeful that the team would move out. “People are in panic, there is no more gasoline, food and water,” she said. Two medical teams that had succeeded in traveling north had to turn back. “They said that there was no food for the medical team for several days, and with today's snow, they couldn't stay any longer. This is just like war, my country is at war with nature.”
Other similar accounts of UCLA involvement are in the full article at http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/uc-students-to-leave-japan-ucla-199196.aspx
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