Japan's tsunami debris Big Island-bound
BY COLIN M. STEWART | Stephens Media
HILO -- Computer modeling by researchers at the University of Hawaii projects that debris from Japan's tsunami will reach the Big Island in three to five years.
The 9.0-magnitude earthquake March 11 triggered a massive wall of water that surged over coastal towns near Sendai, Japan. Homes, vehicles and even people were washed out to sea.
Rescuers worked around the clock pulling out survivors, some miles from where they'd been taken. But left behind were enormous masses of floating debris. That debris is now being carried eastward by the surface current phenomenon known as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, according to scientists at the University of Hawaii at Manoa International Pacific Research Center.
A project headed by the research center's Nikolai Maximenko has spent many years tracking the current, using drifting buoys outfitted with GPS. Using the data from those buoys, Maximenko and his partner, Jan Hafner, have come up with a computer model that predicts the movement of floating objects caught in the gyre.
Their work has helped to explain the existence of large floating patches of garbage in the world's oceans, including the so-called North Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling island of plastic, chemical sludge and other debris that covers an area roughly twice the size of Texas.
According to their projections, debris from the Japan tsunami will drift eastward, and within a year bypass Hawaii to the north. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument should see pieces washing up on its shores. Within two years, pieces of flotsam will be reach the other Hawaiian Islands. But the concentrated mass of the debris will continue moving eastward, reaching the U.S. West Coast within three years, dumping debris on beaches from Alaska to British Columbia, down through California to Baja California.
From three to five years after the tsunami, the mass of debris will have continued on southward and entered into the clockwise vortex of wind and current that forms the North Pacific Garbage Patch. It will continue to swirl there for years, with occasional patches breaking off and making their way to the Big Island, with some landing on beaches like South Point's Kamilo Beach, which a BBC documentary named "the dirtiest beach in the world" because of its propensity for attracting debris from the garbage patch.
"In five years, Hawaii shores can expect to see another barrage of debris that is stronger and longer-lasting than the first one. Much of the debris leaving the North Pacific Garbage Patch ends up on Hawaii's reefs and beaches," reads a statement from the Pacific Research Center.
"We don't know exactly how it will get there," Hafner added Friday by phone from Honolulu. "It's like making a weather prediction. You know it will rain, but not exactly when.
"But what we know from our experience is that it's highly probable, almost certain, that part of the Japanese tsunami debris will end up in the North Pacific Garbage Patch, where most Pacific garbage ends up."
He added that the location of the garbage patch shifts from year to year, based on weather patterns, seasons and the effects of El Niño. But, he said, very often sections of debris "become detached and go west and hit Hawaii Island."
What isn't deposited on the Big Isle or the other Hawaiian islands makes its way westward, he said, almost all the way back to Japan before moving northeastward and back into the cycle toward the U.S. West Coast.
Hafner said that he couldn't be sure whether the amount of debris washing up on the Big Isle's shores would be much more than what usually breaks off from the garbage patch, but he did say that the contents of the debris would be noticably different.
"We don't know the exact composition of debris from Japan," he said. "On a few images we could see courtesy of the U.S. Navy (taken) during rescue missions, it appears to be mostly driftwood.
"Normally the garbage patch is made up of trash washed down from rivers. It's more or less what you would find in a garbage can. But this tsunami was a disaster event. The water would take everything not bolted down. Airplanes, cars, everything. So it's not just household rubbish. You might see different types of unusual items being washed up on beaches on the Big Island. ... Car parts, parts of buildings. Anything."
As for the possibility of radiation leaked from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant riding the gyre to Hawaii, Hafner said he could only make an educated guess.
"If it's liquid, it behaves differently. With the vastness of the ocean, chances are that it would be diluted," he said. "But, if radioactivity is attached to floating debris, it's a different story. ... There is the potential."
However, he said, he was not qualified to predict the behavior of radioactivity. "I wouldn't want to alarm people about imminent danger," he said. "It's 1,000 miles from Hawaii now, and it won't reach here for another year."
As director of research and a cofounder of the Hawaii Wildlife Fund, Bill Gilmartin has worked since 2003 to organize cleanups of the Big Island's shores.
At times, he said, it feels like an uphill battle, with some beaches blanketed by garbage just a week after being cleaned. But, he said, he views his mission not as keeping the beaches clean but as removing garbage from the water.
"What we're doing is keeping it out of the ocean," he said. "A lot of the material (on the beaches) refloats. The more we're able to pull off the beach, the more we're keeping from going back into the ocean. The goal is to reduce what is going into the ocean."
Gilmartin said that while news of the Japan debris making its way to Hawaii was upsetting, chances are that his job can't get much more difficult.
"From the 10 miles of coast from South Point back towards Hilo, we've collected 130 tons (of garbage) in seven or eight years," he said. "We're dealing with a remote coastline with dirt or lava roads. But we've developed a pretty good mechanism for removing the items. ... It (the Japanese debris) may increase some of the volume we'll be taking in, but I don't think it'll make it that much harder."
He said his confidence springs from the fact that the Big Island community has rallied around the effort to keep its beaches clean.
"We have now well over 400 people who have helped over the years on our email list," Gilmartin said. "We usually get anywhere from 30 to 100 people to show up for cleanups."
He added that people interested in joining the list may email kahakai.cleanups@gmail.com.
Replies
When we left Sendai, we took the newly restored bullet train back to Tokyo. The authorities are rightly proud of getting the service up and running again after making about 1,500 repairs from quake damage. They see it as another sign of the return to normality.
But for a reminder of the real challenges the region still faces, one only needs to peer across the green fields as the train picks up speed outside Sendai.
There they are: more mounds of debris fast becoming mountains.
Beach Debris, Ka Lae (South Point), Big Island
All the flotsam and jetsam here has been washed up from the ocean currents that come ashore at the southernmost point of the Hawai'ian Islands (also the southernmost point of the USA!). This junk is a graphic indication of just how much pollution we are spilling into the World's oceans if this much can turn up at such a remote place and destroy its beauty!
We need to teach ourselves how to safe guard our 'living' in Hawaii from Nuclear Isotopes! A year from now will be too late. Its taken me two years to read and comprehend what is nuclear isotopes. I read and research this topic and because I live within three mile radius of Schofield Barracks I see the brith defects, skin rashes, and deaths.
"However, he said, he was not qualified to predict the behavior of radioactivity. "I wouldn't want to alarm people about imminent danger," he said. "It's 1,000 miles from Hawaii now, and it won't reach here for another year."
Nearly eight weeks after Japan's earthquake and tsunami, 11,000 people are still missing, and those who survived are becoming increasing frustrated at the slow pace of recovery. NBC's Ian Williams reports.
Ian Williams / NBC News
Debris piled high against a marooned tuna fishing ship in Kesennuma Port, Japan.
OTSUCHI, Japan – A seemingly endless line of trucks rumble through the remains of Kamaishi Port, laden with twisted debris from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. They empty their load at the foot of a fast-growing mountain of debris, shaped and groomed by a fleet of diggers.
A man in a hard hat and face mask was supervising the trucks, and I asked him how long it would take to clear the rubble.
He shrugged. “It’s going to take some time,” he said. “Maybe two years; this is only the beginning.”
Nearby a salvage company was picking metal from a pile that had been separated from the main mountain. Others were draining oil from a tuna fishing ship that had been marooned inland.
Japan's Environment Ministry estimates there are 25 million tons of debris scattered along the coast, mainly from collapsed buildings. The figure doesn't include cars or boats, or radioactive debris in the evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant.
They say it could take up to five years to remove and dispose of it all, though even that seems optimistic as officials can't say exactly where it will go, and the rubble is a potential environmental and health nightmare.
One of the biggest fears is of asbestos, once used widely in the construction industry here. Tiny asbestos particles when inhaled can increase the risk of lung cancer, and other lung disorders.
Ian Williams / NBC News
A machine works in the debris mountain at Kesennuma Port, Japan.
Experts fear that with warmer, drier weather, and as the debris is moved and cleared, dust will rise and the risk will grow.
One activist recently told The Associated Press: "There are people not even wearing masks. This is like a suicidal act."
The authorities say they will set up a series of new incinerators to burn debris, but there are fears about harmful emissions from burning wood saturated with sea water.
Just outside the city of Sendai, several other debris mountains were taking shape, with diggers excavating vast round holes in which to put it. But local authorities all along the coast say they are short of space in which to build either debris mountains or holes to bury it. They say they are sorting the debris as best they can, but there is simply too much of it.
In many devastated coastal communities, the authorities are facing conflicting pressures: on the one hand to quickly clean up and re-house the survivors (preferably on higher ground) and on the other to be as sensitive as positive to the possibility of finding bodies and valuable possessions.
Almost 11,000 people are still missing.
Ian Williams / NBC News
Vehicles have not been counted in the estimate of 25 million tons of debris littered along Japan's coast.
We witnessed the more sensitive approach in Otsuchi, a coastal town almost wiped out by the tsunami. The town is the sister city of Fort Bragg, Calif., a fishing town (not the bigger Fort Bragg in North Carolina). Soldiers from Japan's self defense were not only carefully checking for bodies, but also collecting photographs from the wrecks of houses – almost a quarter of a million of them so far, a quarter of a million memories as they put it.
"For them, this is everything. It is all they have got now," said one young woman supervising the photos, which are displayed for people to collect.
"We need to take care," said Ken Sasaki, a town official. "It takes time to do that."
Only after carefully checking through the debris is it piled into heaps with a red flag indicating it is good for clearing, to be taken to one of the growing mountains.