Japan toll rises, reactor crises continue

SENDAI, Japan -- The estimated death toll from Japan's disasters climbed past 10,000 yesterday as authorities raced to combat the threat of multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns and hundreds of thousands of people struggled to find food and water. The prime minister said it was the nation's worst crisis since World War II.

Nuclear plant operators worked frantically to keep temperatures down in several reactors crippled by the earthquake and tsunami, wrecking at least two by dumping seawater into them in last-ditch efforts to avoid meltdowns.

Near-freezing temperatures compounded the misery of survivors along hundreds of miles of the northeastern coast battered by the tsunami that smashed inland with breathtaking fury. Rescuers pulled bodies from mud-covered jumbles of wrecked houses, shattered tree trunks, twisted cars and tangled power lines while survivors examined the ruined remains.

Monday, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, said a hydrogen explosion occurred at Unit 3 of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the town of Okuma. Tokyo Electric Power Co., which runs the power plant, said three workers were injured and seven others were missing. TV footage showed a column of smoke belching from Unit 3. Edano said people within a 12-mile radius were ordered inside, but added that the reactor's inner containment vessel holding nuclear rods is intact.

The blast was confirmed as soldiers warned residents that the northeastern coast could be hit by another tsunami today and ordered them to higher ground. But the Japan Meteorological Agency said there was no risk of another tsunami.

Meanwhile, the death estimate surged after a report from Miyagi, one of the three hardest-hit states. A top police official told disaster relief officials more than 10,000 people were missing and presumed dead, police spokesman Go Sugawara told The Associated Press. So far, though, 400 people have been confirmed dead in Miyagi, which has a population of 2.3 million.

According to officials, more than 1,800 people were confirmed dead -- including 200 whose bodies were found yesterday along the coast -- and more than 1,400 were missing. Another 1,900 were injured.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Sunday electricity would take days to restore. In the meantime, he said, electricity would be rationed with rolling blackouts to several cities, including Tokyo.

Japanese officials raised their estimate of the quake's magnitude to 9.0, a notch above the U.S. Geological Survey's reading of 8.9. Either way, it was the strongest quake ever recorded in Japan, which lies on a seismically active arc. A volcano on the southern island of Kyushu -- hundreds of miles from the quake's epicenter -- also resumed spewing ash and rock after a couple of quiet weeks, Japan's weather agency said.

Dozens of countries have offered assistance even as large areas of the countryside remained surrounded by water and unreachable. Fuel stations were closed, though at some, cars waited in lines hundreds of vehicles long.

In the town of Minamisanrikucho, 10,000 people -- nearly two-thirds of the population -- have not been heard from, a government spokesman said. Public broadcaster NHK showed only a couple of concrete structures still standing, and the bottom three floors of those buildings were gutted. One was a hospital, and a worker told NHK that staff had rescued about a third of the patients.