The reason you're not hearing much out of Fukushima is because Fukushima is fucked.
Not to mention there isn't anyone besides the insane/heroes working around the clock to make sure it isn't a catastrophe on the scene. All the videos you see circling above and around the plant are stock footage. The closest live footage you'd see would be from the same distance as the explosion pictures.
On top of that the Fukushima coastline has been obliterated with phones completely out of commission and roads in and out teacherous. Information is extremely slow to get out of the area. Only a few hours ago Steven and I helped establish the first English-speaking link in Fukushima proper to news sources.
The only link we have to what's actually going on is through the spokesman who appears on the news every few hours to give updates.
The other reason news is getting half-ass coverage is because of a lack of communication between the news agencies and the actual people. We were alerted that the plant state of emergency was a 'Level 4'. The only other thing they mentioned was that Chern. was a 7.
Well what the hell good is that data alone? It took Haruka 10 minutes to discover on her own online that a 4 means no immediate danger for those mildly distanced from the plant.
That's all it's been. The facts and very little else. This frustrates the foreign news sources because they're looking for headlines like:
"EXPLOSION AT PLANT WHILE ROCKED BY 6.5 AFTERSHOCK! CLOSE TO MELTDOWN!?"
It's not as bad as it sounds.
Meanwhile the Japanese news is doing a shit-job of explaining the otherwise useful information while remaining chill. NHK is making an effort to explain/extrapolate information but Fuji and Nitere are pounding through data without saying a bit about what it means.
If you're anywhere else in the world, give money and blood.
If you're in Japan give diapers and baby food. Don't listen to their shit about 'needing money more than supplies'. Evacuation centers have been swept away leaving survivors without well-prepped shelters and that means low supplies on essentials. Men and women can hold their stomach and put up with shitty underwear but that doesn't work for babies.
The victim count will be devastating. There is one city alone that has 10,000 unaccounted for.
That 80,000 estimate, at this point, sounds like a ballpark figure based on pop statistics and similar disasters in other countries. Japan, however, was incredibly well prepped for this. If it had been anywhere else those figures might have been accurate.
The low numbers you're seeing are only confirmed numbers. The Japanese are keepig low-ball figures to remain hopeful but there's no use in them listing 'dead/missing over 1,500'.
There's an incredible pic of Tokyo almost blacked out with a Tokyo Tower glowing in the middle in an effort to conserve energy and redirect it up north.
Very cool.
Keep the people working on the plant in your thoughts because they have shining brass ones and they're real heroes as are all first-responders and the Self-Defense Force which is doing a boner-inducingly respectable job of systematically going through impossible wreckage to look for survivors.