By Alicia Robinson
The Press-Enterprise
LOS ANGELES —That day two weeks ago when a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami struck northeastern Japan, Eastvale resident Robert Harris got a phone call.
Harris, 40, is a captain with the Los Angeles County Fire Department and a member of one of two U.S. international search-and-rescue teams. His team was being mobilized.
Harris and the rest of the 72-member team were briefed, picked up by a chartered jet in Los Angeles, and two days after getting the call, arrived in Japan, Harris said in a phone interview Wednesday. He returned to the U.S. last weekend.
Typically the team would go right to work, looking for survivors among the rubble of a disaster. But because the Japanese government had not received major international aid before, there were delays while officials figured out where rescue workers were needed and how they would get there, Harris said.
Because many airports in the disaster zone were flooded, they landed at Misawa Air Base on the country’s northern tip and traveled eight hours to where they would begin rescue efforts.
In the small fishing village of Ofunato, their first stop, surging water from the tsunami had sent boats into buildings, shearing them off, pushed houses into each other and left mud everywhere, Harris said. One challenge was the cold weather; it was snowing.
The team also searched in nearby Kamaishi, but they found no survivors. Harris said this was partly because Japan’s early warning system allowed many people to get away before the tsunami hit.
“They actually had signs, ‘This is a tsunami inundation area,’ ” he said. “There was a line on the street. …They had already predicted that if you’re on the other side of this line, you’re going to be wiped out.”
Workers recovered the bodies of some of those who didn’t get out in time. That doesn’t feel as good as saving people, Harris said, but, “We were able to bring closure to the families of the deceased ones we were able to recover.”
Once they found a body, they immediately turned it over to Japanese authorities and then kept a respectful distance while people prayed over the body and wrapped it ceremonially, Harris said.
After about a week in Japan, the team was sent out because of concerns over the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. Harris said he wishes he could have seen how the country looked before the devastation. He expects rebuilding to take some time.
“I don’t know what I envisioned, but it was nothing like what we saw,” he said. “I’m just really sad because I don’t know if that’ll come back in my lifetime.”
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