Floating houses pose bigger test for US navy, ships than Japan radiation

Houses, cars and tractor-trailers washed out to sea by a 28-foot tsunami are clogging shipping lanes off Japan, posing a bigger challenge to US Navy vessels and commercial lines than radiation from a leaking nuclear plant.

The magnitude-9 earthquake that struck off the northeast coast on March 11 launched a wall of seawater that obliterated cities and towns, and left more than 27,600 people dead or missing. More than 206,000 buildings were destroyed or swept away, the National Police Agency said today. The debris has prompted Japan’s coast guard to warn ships to stay about 60 nautical miles (110 kilometers) away from Tokyo Electric Power Co’s crippled nuclear-power plant in Fukushima prefecture, north of the capital. That’s almost four times as far as the 30-kilometer exclusion zone introduced by the government because of concerns about radiation.

“Our forces have seen everything from cars to tractor- trailers to entire, intact homes floating in the ocean,” said Anthony J Falvo, a spokesman for the US Seventh Fleet, which is helping with recovery efforts. The Navy said radiation from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant could be scrubbed off vessels with soap and water. Japan’s coast guard posts daily reports about the debris on the internet, using information gathered from passing vessels. As of April 4, it was recommending that vessels stay up to 90 nautical miles out while passing the zone that suffered the brunt of the destruction from the natural disasters — a 240 nautical-mile stretch from Ibaraki prefecture near Tokyo.