8 ms·

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on Japan Aid: Help for the Well-Prepared

107 points by zach 16y ago

charlief 16y ago
At your discretion, how did you land this Patrick? Perhaps this can be better answered on your blog, but did the NYT contact you after coming across your article? Original article submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2319629 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2319629
- Natsu 16y ago
  He commented earlier on HN that lots of people from the news media had been contacting him. Here's a link to what he said: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2330783 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2330783
  - charlief 16y ago
    Thank you. I still hope Patrick responds because I wanted to hear the specific story. In what you linked, I imagine he was referring to reporters in information-hunting mode.
- patio11 16y ago
  I didn't "land" this -- I didn't seek it and don't particularly want it. Folks in the media in several English-speaking countries abroad have been contacting me repeatedly for the last couple of days, and when contacted I try to say "Yes, I would be happy to do that" with the goal of improving the reporting available in English and averting panic. As to why I'm suddenly several reporters go-to guy for this? The biggest reason is that I speak English and am accessible. They know about me because my blog post on Sunday got widely distributed abroad. (I suspect many of them follow Jimmy Wales, who retweeted it.) My blog has working contact information on it. Also, since the media are pack animals, as soon as anybody quoted me then I was a Certified Expert (TM) and so everybody else should quote me, too. They really should be talking with the guy I talked about in my blog post who actually pushed the button to turn on the warning system at our clients out east. (Someone at the company found I had mentioned them and passed the word around. He sent me a message saying that reading it gave him hope and pride in trying circumstances. I would trade a hundred thousand angry emails from people for that.) Or they could talk to any city office in Japan and ask "So, what is SOP for this sort of thing?" Either of those would be better choices than me. But, again, they don't speak English and they're not in reporters' Rolodexes. Through a quirk set of circumstances, I am. So when they call and ask "How much should we be panicking?" I say "Don't panic." (A radio station wanted my opinion on the likelihood of them getting poisoned by radioactivity from Fukushima half a globe away. I'm not a nuclear engineer. Of course I immediately said "I am not a nuclear engineer, but to put your listeners at ease, that will not happen." It's the right answer. It probably shouldn't be coming from me, but someone should say it, loudly.)
Vivtek 16y ago
Boy, the commenters there don't seem to agree with him much.
- dpapathanasiou 16y ago
  Neither does Yuhei Sato, who is the governor of Fukushima prefecture: "Mr Sato said centres already housing people who had been moved from their homes near the plant did not have enough hot meals and basic necessities such as fuel and medical supplies. "We're lacking everything," he said." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12763273 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12763273
  - nialo 16y ago
    These are not necessarily contradictory. Fukushima can quite easily be lacking all of those things because they're stuck on the wrong side of Japan, where more people who don't know how to fix roads or speak Japanese won't help. Similarly, adding more supplies to the piles on the wrong side of the country won't help either. The point here is that the bottleneck is distribution of things that already exist, not getting them to Japan in the first place.
  - jarek 16y ago
    You can truck those in from Arkansas, right?
- logicalmind 16y ago
  Are Patrick's observations a literal case of survivor bias?
  - uxp 16y ago
    Patrick also lives 400 km outside of Tokyo, which is then 300 km to the center of Fukushima Prefecture, which is then 80 km away from Miyagi, where the tsunami did the most damage. Thats almost 500 miles (750ish km). He may have felt an earthquake, and a strong one at that, but he did not survive a natural disaster and he certainly is not in the middle of a nuclear disaster. From his perspective, everything is perfectly fine. On August 30th 2005, I moved from Pennsylvania back to my hometown in the West. Hurricane Katrina hit that previous night, and despite the gas bill costing a bit more than I had originally budgeted, as long as I kept the news radio down I was none the wiser as to anything going on down there as I crawled across the country. Patrick, as much as the HN Japanese guy he is, is in the same position I was. He life is a little inconvenienced and it sounds like he is a little busy doing whatever his disaster/emergency related Salaryman job does. That said, I like his perspective, and I think it helps up understand that all of Japan is not sinking or melting. The parts that are though do need our help, and I think it would be good of him to distinguish between where he is being just fine and the North area that certainly is not doing well, even if the situation up there is under control.
bad_user 16y ago
First comment in the article is disturbing: One of my wife's relatives is working with those made homeless in her hometown of Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, which was destroyed by the tsunami. She and many other workers along the coast would not agree with your assessment. The Western media have made the Fukushima nuclear plant the most salient aspect of this tragedy, not least because of the politics and economics of the King Kong vs Godzilla battle being waged by the US coal and nuclear power industries, and other sorts of political battles in Europe. The need for humanitarian aid remains huge. Moreover, this is something most Americans actually can provide -- unlike advice on stopping nuclear meltdowns.
- donw 16y ago
  This. This this this. You know who's fleeing the 'impending nuclear holocaust'? The foreigners who get all of their news from English-language media. One of my coworkers flew back to NYC because he was so worried about radiation exposure. You get exposed to more radiation by taking a twelve-hour flight than you would by camping in a pup tent in the mountains overlooking the reactor complex. The Japanese news is full of experts, explanations, and zero panic. The foreign news is full of propaganda. Makes me sick.
  - nandemo 16y ago
    I think the main point of the comment bad_user quoted is not the same you're making here. That said, I do feel that the Japanese Tokyoites are calmer about the nuclear thing. Anecdotally, more than half of my foreign friends and acquaintances have fled or are planning to flee Tokyo (mostly to elsewhere in Japan, some abroad), but nearly all my Japanese friends have stay put. It's not all about the news, though. While I share your perception that English-language media is being way more sensationalist about it, it's not the case that all my foreign friends get all their news from English-language media. Some of them speak Japanese, and some have Japanese spouses, but are still fleeing. Other possible factors: foreigners have less roots here, have more options to flee, and more incentive to leave (family is abroad, etc). So the total perceived "cost" to flee is lower.
    - 16y ago
edw519 16y ago
Weird reading comments with 10 year old technology. All you can do is "Recommend", "Report as inappropriate", or add you own comment without knowing where it will fall in the thread. Replying to someone else is basically useless. Maybe I'm spoiled by Hacker News, but without the give and take of healthy debate, it's hard to learn much. But then again, maybe that's the point.
bad_user 16y ago
So, I know that the Japanese are well prepared for earthquakes - I watched documentaries on Discovery about it :) But my God, this earthquake went off the charts. Then 500 other earthquakes of magnitude 5 to 7 happened. Every one of those earthquakes would have been a problem in my city, as we've got plenty of old buildings. So it's really hard for me to believe that the Japanese are so well prepared. I also saw pictures of survivers and of various affected areas and the situation is rather not good. The thing I admire Japanese for right now - they don't complain much and they don't go creating more mayhem on the streets. But that doesn't mean they don't need help, and if I were in Patrick's shoes, I would be careful about stating such things - maybe because of this article, some poor neighborhood / city that has been badly affected won't receive help in due time, as public opinion does tend to have crazy effects like that.
sovande 16y ago
I'm starting to get feed up about patio11 and the all's well attitude and "we'll manage, thank you very much". The last head-count is seventeen thousand dead and rising. It is obvious that all is _not_ well and that people in the affected areas need help and fast.
- bioh42_2 16y ago
  Japan has a population of ~ 300 million and is one of the most advanced and wealthiest nations on Earth. I am sure those affected need help but what makes you think others can provide help better/faster then Japan itself can? Perhaps the US navy has lifting capacity that Japan could use, but what else?
  - hollerith 16y ago
    >Japan has a population of ~ 300 million 127 million according to Wikipedia.
  - kqr2 16y ago
    Actually, the population of Japan is about 127 million. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+japan http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+japan
    - bioh42_2 16y ago
      Huh, where did I even get the 300 number? I was sure of it! Kids, don't trust your brain, check the facts you think you know!
  - alphaoverlord 16y ago
    ~300 million is the population of the US We have 2.5x the population but 25x the landmass. That's an order of magnitude difference in population density. Now imagine a natural disaster.
- blacksmythe 16y ago
  >> I'm starting to get feed up about patio11 and the all's well attitude and "we'll manage, thank you very much". I don't know that he ever said that they don't need help. One thing he did say is that you are not going to BE much help if you come and don't speak Japanese. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318005 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318005) I appreciate the thought, but it takes $2k to bring you here, which is enough to put an out of work Japanese twenty-something on the project for a month. He's literate and can understand directions. (note: I can attest from personal experience that people that don't speak Japanese can have difficulty getting around without assistance once they leave Tokyo)
adrianwaj 16y ago
I'd like to see K-MAX unmanned helicopters dropping boric acid and seawater on the reactors - or whatever is best. "Japan nuclear crisis: radiation levels stop helicopter from dumping water." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8385559/Japan-nuclear-crisis-radiation-levels-stop-helicopter-from-dumping-water.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8385559... Unmanned K-MAX helicopter achieves airdrop milestones http://www.gizmag.com/k-max-unmanned-helicopter-milestones/17969/ http://www.gizmag.com/k-max-unmanned-helicopter-milestones/1...
portman 16y ago
I have great respect for Patrick, and usually agree with him, but in this case I think his conclusion is far off-mark. Japanese citizens need our help, on a massive scale. The government may not need any assistance, but the families and communities ravaged by the disaster have an unbounded need for aid. I've lived in Uganda and Cambodia, two countries which get a disproportionate share of Western aid. Yet still, even with all those development dollars, a $50 gift can completely transform an individual's life. I've seen it happen. If your house, your church, your community, and much of your extended family has been annihilated, and you're rebuilding your life from scratch, then you need our help, no matter how well-equipped your government is. Please give, and give generously.
- Lost_BiomedE 16y ago
  The government is in a bad situation. Their finances weren't great going into the disaster. They have an aging population and have to import everything. This is going to spark an economic disaster as well. http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110314-japan-persian-gulf-energy http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110314-japan-persian-gulf-e...
  - iujyhgtfhj 16y ago
    But enough about your own problems - how is Japan?
- grasshoper 16y ago
  I was going to donate to aid organizations to help supply food and water, but I guess I should send some nuclear engineering textbooks and maybe my old exams from Nuclear Engineering 101. That's obviously the best and only way for the average American to help, what with our expertise on these matters. I've also included this link[1] to the wikipedia article discussing the current situation involving the threatened nuclear reactors; hopefully, this will elucidate matters for Japanese officials. Maybe someone can help with the translations. We should also send them the most insightful reader comments from CNN.com, reddit, and YouTube. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Japanese_nuclear_incidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Japanese_nuclear_incidents
robg 16y ago
Crazy to put a face to the handle. It's what I love about old school forums like this. The identity is a token.
charlief 16y ago
Many Americans are wondering what we can do to help. It's natural to want to send money, food, blankets and the like to the survivors. But for now, what may be most urgently needed is all possible assistance and expertise in bringing the situation at the nuclear facilities under control. I don't know what benefit there is in prioritizing what is more-urgent and less-urgent. These efforts are not mutually-exclusive, let us provide both. What good is it to generalize the utility of an option to the entire scope of the disaster. Let's try to deal with each sub-problem individually.
jfager 16y ago
How many people in the world are actually qualified to offer any useful help on the Japan nuclear situation? Does anyone really think that they're just sitting around doing nothing right now? I don't care how organized and prepared the Japanese are - they need help right now. Even before the disaster, they relied on imports for food and fuel. Large portions of their economy are now offline, and hundreds of thousands of people are displaced. Even if Japan has the will and resources to deal with all of this on their own, if the rest of us are willing and eager to chip in to help, why should they? It's not like your donation is going to a Real American Hero who will personally swoop down into Tokyo and start wrapping every Japanese person they come across in a blanket and dousing them with a bottle of water. That money is going to be spent how it was spent here in the US after Katrina: yes, it will help feed people who need feeding in the short term, but it will also keep people in temporary homes until they can rebuild or relocate, pay for school clothes and supplies for kids whose families lost everything, provide grant money to help kickstart businesses in the affected areas once cleanup is done, etc, etc, etc. So, no, sorry. I'm still sending money.
- HSO 16y ago
  oops, sorry, meant to upvote, not downvote you! +1
  - charlief 16y ago
    up-voted on your behalf!
- donw 16y ago
  Please don't send any Real American Heroes to Tokyo. We're fine. Send them up north where they're needed.
  - jfager 16y ago
    I think you missed my point.
rewind 16y ago
Ignore anyone who says they don't need cash. It's nonsense. Just turn your TV on for two minutes. We should be opening our wallets as much for Japan right now as we've done for any country facing this sort of crisis in the past.
- orangecat 16y ago
  It's just not clear to me how more cash will help. It seems that the major problems involve the logistics of getting rescuers and supplies to people who need them, and money isn't the limiting factor there. GiveWell seems to agree: http://blog.givewell.org/2011/03/15/update-on-how-to-help-japan-funding-is-not-needed-we-recommend-giving-to-doctors-without-borders-to-promote-better-disaster-relief-in-general/ http://blog.givewell.org/2011/03/15/update-on-how-to-help-ja...
mattm 16y ago
If you're not aware, Japan's broadcaster NHK has an English-translated broadcast - http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/ http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/ or http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv I would suggest watching it to get a Japanese view on things. Watching it yesterday, people in the disaster area and around the power plant were pleading for help as they are running dangerously low on supplies. Many of the interviewees were criticizing the government on their inability to get supplies to them. People in the 30km radius were complaining that they couldn't get any truck drivers that were willing to enter the area. Also keep in mind that this is the north of Japan. It is below freezing and has been snowing.
mathrawka 16y ago
I always look forward to his blog posts, but I think he needs to stop talking about something he is not very aware about. Yes, Japan is well prepared for disasters, but that does not mean it doesn't need help. The preparation for a disaster mainly involves saving lives, not helping people get back to their way of living. What is the best way to help out? I wish I knew, but sending money for relief efforts seems to be a good way. Honestly, I'm fuming about his remarks and believe he is causing more trouble the more he speaks.
uptown 16y ago
The thing I don't get about Patrick's opinion is that in his initial write-up he compares his personal danger and proximity to the disaster zone with "someone ringing up Mayor Daley [the mayor of Chicago] during Katrina and saying “My God man, that’s terrible — how are you coping?”" Well, if his argument was that distance separates him from being able to relate to the problems on the ground, why should anybody look to him for guidance on how to provide aid?
patio11 16y ago
My consolidated response: 1) Shortages in Fukushima, etc, are not caused by lack of food or money. Japan has plenty of food and money. Japan has a temporary logistics problem with getting food to particular refugee sites, because of a number of issues, most critically that the infrastructure for delivering gas in the east got a severe monkey-wrench thrown into it and it is difficult to truck in enough to do distribution. With specific reference to Fukushima, the widening of the exclusion zone caused refugees to have to be moved twice is as many days, which also caused some issues. The three closest ports for receiving refined gas got shut down by the tsunami　(along with most local refinery capacity), so it has been getting transported by road from the other side of the country, and that has been hampered by damage to certain roads. One of those ports will be brought online today. As that situation gets better, the shortage of supplies for refugees will ease very rapidly. They're working very hard on that right now. Aid will not speed that process: any charity chosen at random is not better at doing gas delivery than Japanese gas companies, and no part of the relief efforts is blocking on lack of money. 2) Panic is not helping anyone, and foreign panic is feedback looping right now, particularly in the foreign communities. The only reason I have talked to the media at all is to stress the importance of them not panicking and not provoking panic. 3) I respect enormously people's desire to help, but satisfying desire to help is a very different thing from actually helping. The second is very important, the first not so much. I was on a program on the BBC the other day. Another guest was a foreign aid worker from an organization I will not name. Host: "Where are you?" Him: "Not quite sure, north of Tokyo. The map is in Japanese." When asked about their plans for doing counseling, he said that they would find somebody locally who speaks English, because in his experience at X disasters across the world there is always somebody, and do counseling through the interpreter. One could be forgiven for difficulty in finding the value of his organization's assistance at the moment. The US military's response has been invaluable -- choppers are very helpful right now, and have been saving lives. If you don't come packing your own distribution network designed to function parallel to the civilian ones, your ability to convert any amount of desire into hot meals at a school in eastern Japan is very limited right now. After the immediate situation is addressed, Miyagi, Iwate, and the like will have large reconstruction efforts. Japan has the political will and resources to handle this. A note: It is a very fluid situation. My blog post was written on Sunday, 3.5 days ago. The NYT asked me for a condensed version 2.5 days ago. Please keep in mind, when you're hearing from anybody (including me), you're hearing something which was true X amount of time ago in a situation evolving very rapidly.
RP_Joe 16y ago
What bothers me is that so many people say everything is fine. How do we know? The people in charge have left the building ! "Its under control" means someone is actually controlling it. However if everyone has left the plant it can't be under human control!

107 points by zach 16y ago

At your discretion, how did you land this Patrick? Perhaps this can be better answered on your blog, but did the NYT contact you after coming across your article? Original article submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2319629 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2319629

Natsu 16y ago
He commented earlier on HN that lots of people from the news media had been contacting him. Here's a link to what he said: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2330783 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2330783
- charlief 16y ago
  Thank you. I still hope Patrick responds because I wanted to hear the specific story. In what you linked, I imagine he was referring to reporters in information-hunting mode.
patio11 16y ago
I didn't "land" this -- I didn't seek it and don't particularly want it. Folks in the media in several English-speaking countries abroad have been contacting me repeatedly for the last couple of days, and when contacted I try to say "Yes, I would be happy to do that" with the goal of improving the reporting available in English and averting panic. As to why I'm suddenly several reporters go-to guy for this? The biggest reason is that I speak English and am accessible. They know about me because my blog post on Sunday got widely distributed abroad. (I suspect many of them follow Jimmy Wales, who retweeted it.) My blog has working contact information on it. Also, since the media are pack animals, as soon as anybody quoted me then I was a Certified Expert (TM) and so everybody else should quote me, too. They really should be talking with the guy I talked about in my blog post who actually pushed the button to turn on the warning system at our clients out east. (Someone at the company found I had mentioned them and passed the word around. He sent me a message saying that reading it gave him hope and pride in trying circumstances. I would trade a hundred thousand angry emails from people for that.) Or they could talk to any city office in Japan and ask "So, what is SOP for this sort of thing?" Either of those would be better choices than me. But, again, they don't speak English and they're not in reporters' Rolodexes. Through a quirk set of circumstances, I am. So when they call and ask "How much should we be panicking?" I say "Don't panic." (A radio station wanted my opinion on the likelihood of them getting poisoned by radioactivity from Fukushima half a globe away. I'm not a nuclear engineer. Of course I immediately said "I am not a nuclear engineer, but to put your listeners at ease, that will not happen." It's the right answer. It probably shouldn't be coming from me, but someone should say it, loudly.)

Vivtek 16y ago

Boy, the commenters there don't seem to agree with him much.

dpapathanasiou 16y ago
Neither does Yuhei Sato, who is the governor of Fukushima prefecture: "Mr Sato said centres already housing people who had been moved from their homes near the plant did not have enough hot meals and basic necessities such as fuel and medical supplies. "We're lacking everything," he said." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12763273 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12763273
- nialo 16y ago
  These are not necessarily contradictory. Fukushima can quite easily be lacking all of those things because they're stuck on the wrong side of Japan, where more people who don't know how to fix roads or speak Japanese won't help. Similarly, adding more supplies to the piles on the wrong side of the country won't help either. The point here is that the bottleneck is distribution of things that already exist, not getting them to Japan in the first place.
- jarek 16y ago
  You can truck those in from Arkansas, right?
logicalmind 16y ago
Are Patrick's observations a literal case of survivor bias?
- uxp 16y ago
  Patrick also lives 400 km outside of Tokyo, which is then 300 km to the center of Fukushima Prefecture, which is then 80 km away from Miyagi, where the tsunami did the most damage. Thats almost 500 miles (750ish km). He may have felt an earthquake, and a strong one at that, but he did not survive a natural disaster and he certainly is not in the middle of a nuclear disaster. From his perspective, everything is perfectly fine. On August 30th 2005, I moved from Pennsylvania back to my hometown in the West. Hurricane Katrina hit that previous night, and despite the gas bill costing a bit more than I had originally budgeted, as long as I kept the news radio down I was none the wiser as to anything going on down there as I crawled across the country. Patrick, as much as the HN Japanese guy he is, is in the same position I was. He life is a little inconvenienced and it sounds like he is a little busy doing whatever his disaster/emergency related Salaryman job does. That said, I like his perspective, and I think it helps up understand that all of Japan is not sinking or melting. The parts that are though do need our help, and I think it would be good of him to distinguish between where he is being just fine and the North area that certainly is not doing well, even if the situation up there is under control.

bad_user 16y ago

First comment in the article is disturbing: One of my wife's relatives is working with those made homeless in her hometown of Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, which was destroyed by the tsunami. She and many other workers along the coast would not agree with your assessment. The Western media have made the Fukushima nuclear plant the most salient aspect of this tragedy, not least because of the politics and economics of the King Kong vs Godzilla battle being waged by the US coal and nuclear power industries, and other sorts of political battles in Europe. The need for humanitarian aid remains huge. Moreover, this is something most Americans actually can provide -- unlike advice on stopping nuclear meltdowns.

donw 16y ago
This. This this this. You know who's fleeing the 'impending nuclear holocaust'? The foreigners who get all of their news from English-language media. One of my coworkers flew back to NYC because he was so worried about radiation exposure. You get exposed to more radiation by taking a twelve-hour flight than you would by camping in a pup tent in the mountains overlooking the reactor complex. The Japanese news is full of experts, explanations, and zero panic. The foreign news is full of propaganda. Makes me sick.
- nandemo 16y ago
  I think the main point of the comment bad_user quoted is not the same you're making here. That said, I do feel that the Japanese Tokyoites are calmer about the nuclear thing. Anecdotally, more than half of my foreign friends and acquaintances have fled or are planning to flee Tokyo (mostly to elsewhere in Japan, some abroad), but nearly all my Japanese friends have stay put. It's not all about the news, though. While I share your perception that English-language media is being way more sensationalist about it, it's not the case that all my foreign friends get all their news from English-language media. Some of them speak Japanese, and some have Japanese spouses, but are still fleeing. Other possible factors: foreigners have less roots here, have more options to flee, and more incentive to leave (family is abroad, etc). So the total perceived "cost" to flee is lower.
  - 16y ago

edw519 16y ago

Weird reading comments with 10 year old technology. All you can do is "Recommend", "Report as inappropriate", or add you own comment without knowing where it will fall in the thread. Replying to someone else is basically useless. Maybe I'm spoiled by Hacker News, but without the give and take of healthy debate, it's hard to learn much. But then again, maybe that's the point.

bad_user 16y ago

So, I know that the Japanese are well prepared for earthquakes - I watched documentaries on Discovery about it :) But my God, this earthquake went off the charts. Then 500 other earthquakes of magnitude 5 to 7 happened. Every one of those earthquakes would have been a problem in my city, as we've got plenty of old buildings. So it's really hard for me to believe that the Japanese are so well prepared. I also saw pictures of survivers and of various affected areas and the situation is rather not good. The thing I admire Japanese for right now - they don't complain much and they don't go creating more mayhem on the streets. But that doesn't mean they don't need help, and if I were in Patrick's shoes, I would be careful about stating such things - maybe because of this article, some poor neighborhood / city that has been badly affected won't receive help in due time, as public opinion does tend to have crazy effects like that.

sovande 16y ago

I'm starting to get feed up about patio11 and the all's well attitude and "we'll manage, thank you very much". The last head-count is seventeen thousand dead and rising. It is obvious that all is _not_ well and that people in the affected areas need help and fast.

bioh42_2 16y ago
Japan has a population of ~ 300 million and is one of the most advanced and wealthiest nations on Earth. I am sure those affected need help but what makes you think others can provide help better/faster then Japan itself can? Perhaps the US navy has lifting capacity that Japan could use, but what else?
- hollerith 16y ago
  >Japan has a population of ~ 300 million 127 million according to Wikipedia.
- kqr2 16y ago
  Actually, the population of Japan is about 127 million. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+japan http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+japan
  - bioh42_2 16y ago
    Huh, where did I even get the 300 number? I was sure of it! Kids, don't trust your brain, check the facts you think you know!
- alphaoverlord 16y ago
  ~300 million is the population of the US We have 2.5x the population but 25x the landmass. That's an order of magnitude difference in population density. Now imagine a natural disaster.
blacksmythe 16y ago
>> I'm starting to get feed up about patio11 and the all's well attitude and "we'll manage, thank you very much". I don't know that he ever said that they don't need help. One thing he did say is that you are not going to BE much help if you come and don't speak Japanese. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318005 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318005) I appreciate the thought, but it takes $2k to bring you here, which is enough to put an out of work Japanese twenty-something on the project for a month. He's literate and can understand directions. (note: I can attest from personal experience that people that don't speak Japanese can have difficulty getting around without assistance once they leave Tokyo)

adrianwaj 16y ago

I'd like to see K-MAX unmanned helicopters dropping boric acid and seawater on the reactors - or whatever is best. "Japan nuclear crisis: radiation levels stop helicopter from dumping water." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8385559/Japan-nuclear-crisis-radiation-levels-stop-helicopter-from-dumping-water.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8385559... Unmanned K-MAX helicopter achieves airdrop milestones http://www.gizmag.com/k-max-unmanned-helicopter-milestones/17969/ http://www.gizmag.com/k-max-unmanned-helicopter-milestones/1...

portman 16y ago

I have great respect for Patrick, and usually agree with him, but in this case I think his conclusion is far off-mark. Japanese citizens need our help, on a massive scale. The government may not need any assistance, but the families and communities ravaged by the disaster have an unbounded need for aid. I've lived in Uganda and Cambodia, two countries which get a disproportionate share of Western aid. Yet still, even with all those development dollars, a $50 gift can completely transform an individual's life. I've seen it happen. If your house, your church, your community, and much of your extended family has been annihilated, and you're rebuilding your life from scratch, then you need our help, no matter how well-equipped your government is. Please give, and give generously.

Lost_BiomedE 16y ago
The government is in a bad situation. Their finances weren't great going into the disaster. They have an aging population and have to import everything. This is going to spark an economic disaster as well. http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110314-japan-persian-gulf-energy http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110314-japan-persian-gulf-e...
- iujyhgtfhj 16y ago
  But enough about your own problems - how is Japan?
grasshoper 16y ago
I was going to donate to aid organizations to help supply food and water, but I guess I should send some nuclear engineering textbooks and maybe my old exams from Nuclear Engineering 101. That's obviously the best and only way for the average American to help, what with our expertise on these matters. I've also included this link[1] to the wikipedia article discussing the current situation involving the threatened nuclear reactors; hopefully, this will elucidate matters for Japanese officials. Maybe someone can help with the translations. We should also send them the most insightful reader comments from CNN.com, reddit, and YouTube. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Japanese_nuclear_incidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Japanese_nuclear_incidents

robg 16y ago

Crazy to put a face to the handle. It's what I love about old school forums like this. The identity is a token.

charlief 16y ago

Many Americans are wondering what we can do to help. It's natural to want to send money, food, blankets and the like to the survivors. But for now, what may be most urgently needed is all possible assistance and expertise in bringing the situation at the nuclear facilities under control. I don't know what benefit there is in prioritizing what is more-urgent and less-urgent. These efforts are not mutually-exclusive, let us provide both. What good is it to generalize the utility of an option to the entire scope of the disaster. Let's try to deal with each sub-problem individually.

jfager 16y ago

How many people in the world are actually qualified to offer any useful help on the Japan nuclear situation? Does anyone really think that they're just sitting around doing nothing right now? I don't care how organized and prepared the Japanese are - they need help right now. Even before the disaster, they relied on imports for food and fuel. Large portions of their economy are now offline, and hundreds of thousands of people are displaced. Even if Japan has the will and resources to deal with all of this on their own, if the rest of us are willing and eager to chip in to help, why should they? It's not like your donation is going to a Real American Hero who will personally swoop down into Tokyo and start wrapping every Japanese person they come across in a blanket and dousing them with a bottle of water. That money is going to be spent how it was spent here in the US after Katrina: yes, it will help feed people who need feeding in the short term, but it will also keep people in temporary homes until they can rebuild or relocate, pay for school clothes and supplies for kids whose families lost everything, provide grant money to help kickstart businesses in the affected areas once cleanup is done, etc, etc, etc. So, no, sorry. I'm still sending money.

HSO 16y ago
oops, sorry, meant to upvote, not downvote you! +1
- charlief 16y ago
  up-voted on your behalf!
donw 16y ago
Please don't send any Real American Heroes to Tokyo. We're fine. Send them up north where they're needed.
- jfager 16y ago
  I think you missed my point.

rewind 16y ago

Ignore anyone who says they don't need cash. It's nonsense. Just turn your TV on for two minutes. We should be opening our wallets as much for Japan right now as we've done for any country facing this sort of crisis in the past.

orangecat 16y ago
It's just not clear to me how more cash will help. It seems that the major problems involve the logistics of getting rescuers and supplies to people who need them, and money isn't the limiting factor there. GiveWell seems to agree: http://blog.givewell.org/2011/03/15/update-on-how-to-help-japan-funding-is-not-needed-we-recommend-giving-to-doctors-without-borders-to-promote-better-disaster-relief-in-general/ http://blog.givewell.org/2011/03/15/update-on-how-to-help-ja...

mattm 16y ago

If you're not aware, Japan's broadcaster NHK has an English-translated broadcast - http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/ http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/ or http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv I would suggest watching it to get a Japanese view on things. Watching it yesterday, people in the disaster area and around the power plant were pleading for help as they are running dangerously low on supplies. Many of the interviewees were criticizing the government on their inability to get supplies to them. People in the 30km radius were complaining that they couldn't get any truck drivers that were willing to enter the area. Also keep in mind that this is the north of Japan. It is below freezing and has been snowing.

mathrawka 16y ago

I always look forward to his blog posts, but I think he needs to stop talking about something he is not very aware about. Yes, Japan is well prepared for disasters, but that does not mean it doesn't need help. The preparation for a disaster mainly involves saving lives, not helping people get back to their way of living. What is the best way to help out? I wish I knew, but sending money for relief efforts seems to be a good way. Honestly, I'm fuming about his remarks and believe he is causing more trouble the more he speaks.

uptown 16y ago

The thing I don't get about Patrick's opinion is that in his initial write-up he compares his personal danger and proximity to the disaster zone with "someone ringing up Mayor Daley [the mayor of Chicago] during Katrina and saying “My God man, that’s terrible — how are you coping?”" Well, if his argument was that distance separates him from being able to relate to the problems on the ground, why should anybody look to him for guidance on how to provide aid?

patio11 16y ago

My consolidated response: 1) Shortages in Fukushima, etc, are not caused by lack of food or money. Japan has plenty of food and money. Japan has a temporary logistics problem with getting food to particular refugee sites, because of a number of issues, most critically that the infrastructure for delivering gas in the east got a severe monkey-wrench thrown into it and it is difficult to truck in enough to do distribution. With specific reference to Fukushima, the widening of the exclusion zone caused refugees to have to be moved twice is as many days, which also caused some issues. The three closest ports for receiving refined gas got shut down by the tsunami　(along with most local refinery capacity), so it has been getting transported by road from the other side of the country, and that has been hampered by damage to certain roads. One of those ports will be brought online today. As that situation gets better, the shortage of supplies for refugees will ease very rapidly. They're working very hard on that right now. Aid will not speed that process: any charity chosen at random is not better at doing gas delivery than Japanese gas companies, and no part of the relief efforts is blocking on lack of money. 2) Panic is not helping anyone, and foreign panic is feedback looping right now, particularly in the foreign communities. The only reason I have talked to the media at all is to stress the importance of them not panicking and not provoking panic. 3) I respect enormously people's desire to help, but satisfying desire to help is a very different thing from actually helping. The second is very important, the first not so much. I was on a program on the BBC the other day. Another guest was a foreign aid worker from an organization I will not name. Host: "Where are you?" Him: "Not quite sure, north of Tokyo. The map is in Japanese." When asked about their plans for doing counseling, he said that they would find somebody locally who speaks English, because in his experience at X disasters across the world there is always somebody, and do counseling through the interpreter. One could be forgiven for difficulty in finding the value of his organization's assistance at the moment. The US military's response has been invaluable -- choppers are very helpful right now, and have been saving lives. If you don't come packing your own distribution network designed to function parallel to the civilian ones, your ability to convert any amount of desire into hot meals at a school in eastern Japan is very limited right now. After the immediate situation is addressed, Miyagi, Iwate, and the like will have large reconstruction efforts. Japan has the political will and resources to handle this. A note: It is a very fluid situation. My blog post was written on Sunday, 3.5 days ago. The NYT asked me for a condensed version 2.5 days ago. Please keep in mind, when you're hearing from anybody (including me), you're hearing something which was true X amount of time ago in a situation evolving very rapidly.

RP_Joe 16y ago

What bothers me is that so many people say everything is fine. How do we know? The people in charge have left the building ! "Its under control" means someone is actually controlling it. However if everyone has left the plant it can't be under human control!