SENDAI--Survivors of the massive tsunami Friday which leveled a coastal district in Sendai provided harrowing accounts of how they barely escaped with their lives.
SENDAI--Survivors of the massive tsunami Friday which leveled a coastal district in Sendai provided harrowing accounts of how they barely escaped with their lives.
After the huge wave, about 5 or 6 meters, receded in the Arahama district in Sendai's Wakabayashi Ward, survivors were confronted with a wasteland of mud and debris--lumber, overturned cars, bent signposts and utility poles.
Amid this unforgiving landscape, a 29-year-old man called out from the second floor of an auto repair factory.
"Is rescue on the way, yet? We've called 119 (emergency number) but nobody's coming," the man said.
He said he and his family of five--his wife, his 6-month-old son, his parents and grandmother--had narrowly escaped as they tried to flee the approaching wall of water, mud and debris in their car.
According to the man, soon after the initial shockwave from the M8.8 quake stopped, a police officer ordered residents to evacuate, saying a tsunami was coming.
When the man looked toward the ocean, he said he saw something that looked like "smoke."
Suddenly, the stand of pine trees that lined the beachfront and utility poles were flattened and he heard a terrible roaring sound.
He saw a man running toward him, but the man was quickly swallowed up by the charging tsunami.
He jumped into his car with his family hoping to beat the wave, but it soon caught them.
Horrified, the family felt the car lifted up by the water and carried about 300 meters before being dumped in a rice paddy.
They stayed in the car until Saturday morning, but were forced to abandon the vehicle when water started to seep into the car.
Around 6 a.m. Saturday, the man and his family crawled out through a window and found shelter at the auto repair shop.
Another man, 36, said he spotted the tsunami after hearing a loud crackling as the pine trees were knocked over.
"I could see a black wave measuring 5 or 6 meters coming at me," the man said. He threw his 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son into his car and drove for about three kilometers up a hill to safety.
"I'm sure we would have died if we hadn't gotten out of there," he said.
A helicopter arrived around 9 a.m. to rescue victims stranded in the district.
(This article was written by Takahiro Sasaki and Toru Okuda.)