Gradual Restoration Of Infrastructure Continues At Disaster Areas

TOKYO (Kyodo)--Vital infrastructure was gradually being restored Friday in areas hit a week earlier by the mega earthquake and the ensuing tsunami, while the fate of tens of thousands of people remained unknown.

The death toll has reached 6,539, exceeding the 6,434 marked in the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, the National Police Agency said. The total number of dead and unaccounted for in the largest natural catastrophe in postwar Japan topped 16,000.

Around 90,000 rescue workers, including police officers and Self-Defense Forces personnel, meanwhile, have reached some 26,000 survivors so far.

Damaged roads, airports and ports have been gradually repaired, with the Tohoku Expressway now open to emergency vehicles and the submerged Sendai Airport made available for airplanes and helicopters on relief missions.

But delivery of relief goods sent in from around the nation to evacuees and survivors still remains difficult due to shortages of fuel and transport vehicles. Some 380,000 people are still staying at 2,200 shelters at a time when temperatures in the quake-hit areas remain at midwinter levels.

Fuel scarcity forced the Miyagi prefectural government to allow burial of victims without cremation.

The government decided to disburse 5.4 billion yen from its reserve fund to cover fuel costs for the deployment of the SDF, which has been working to transfer relief supplies and gasoline to the devastated areas.

Miyagi Gov. Yoshihiro Murai called on quake survivors Friday to move to other prefectures, due to the difficulty of providing housing to them in the short-term.

''Living conditions will be improved if they move to other prefectures,'' he told reporters. ''It is a nonbinding request. I hope people affected by the quake will cooperate.''

The planned relocation will last about six months to a year until the construction of temporary housing is completed.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano also said at a press conference the government is considering transferring survivors at evacuation centers in the Tohoku region to other areas.

The idea reflects an apparent view that it will be difficult to reestablish livelihoods in the devastated areas.

The parliament, for its part, enacted a bill Friday to postpone local elections in the quake-hit areas, scheduled for April 10 and 24, for two to six months.

In Sendai, the capital of Miyagi Prefecture, meanwhile, almost all stores at a shopping street near JR Sendai Station have reopened to provide food to residents, while convenience stores in Tome, Miyagi, have also resumed business as the electricity supply was restored.

Also on Friday, the Akita Shinkansen resumed services between Morioka and Akita stations, providing four round-trips a day. The bullet train service had been halted since the quake.

Meanwhile, 21 people died after being transferred to evacuation centers in Fukushima Prefecture from a hospital in accordance with the evacuation directive issued due to trouble at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. They included elderly patients.

In the severely damaged coastal city of Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, a woman in her 80s also died after evacuating.

It was also reported by the government that the quake and ensuing tsunamis caused about 269 fires, destroyed 11,991 houses and damaged 1,232 points of roads.