Round 4 :-)

Yup, I'm heading North again. This time to HEART Tokushima where many many of the animals that were rescued have found warm hearts and plenty of belly rubs. The official "disaster period" as declared by the Govt. will end on September 11th, 6 months after the tragedy. It makes sense to move on and look to the future but with some of the tiny isolated communities only seeing the START of clean up work it is hard to fathom such a final statement.There are regular Face Book calls from many of the established groups for hands to help in the clean up operations.

I`m getting asked one question with more and more frequency lately. It is, "Is there still stuff to be done?" You wouldn`t believe how much `stuff` there still is to be done on all levels. I'm only really dealing with the animal side of things here so that's what I'll stick to.

For the animals affected by these events it has been nothing short of a nightmare, especially in the Fukushima area. A brief recap: Folks were told to evacuate and not to take their pets, they'd be back in a few days. They weren't allowed back. Then restrictions started to ease, people started to go back to either continue to feed their animals OR let them loose. Then the evacuation area became mandatory and people were shipped in in buses (one person per household) and they were given two hours to 'raid ' their own house for important documents. NO pets allowed to be taken back. Then the 20km exclusion zone was calcified and apart from a few stalwarts the area became off limits to everyone.It has been that way since May.There have been some  "official" vet team trips in to assess the animal situation, some trips not allowing animal retrieval AT ALL. In June there was talk of extending the radius to 30km but the plan was successfully argued down given that radiation does not infact actually travel in concentric circles like the founders of the 20km zone seemed to believe. Air had been monitored and it was discovered that particles had traveled in a tear shape pattern to the North West. Since the beginning of the Summer some residents outside the 20km zone but directly under the radiation graphic have started to voluntarily evacuate and many times the animals don't go with.What JEARS are facing now are ghost villages, and because spay neuter was never really a big thing here to begin with they are getting inundated with litters of kittens and puppies. It is heartbreaking to watch unfold, there are so many 'if only's'about the whole situation. I don't want to look back and have those thoughts about my own actions, so I'm still here and still standing up to be counted.



I come bearing donations :-)