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Kuni Takahashi / Kuni Takahashi
An earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear meltdown -- residents of Japan's northeast coast suffered through three intertwined disasters after a massive 9.0 magnitude temblor struck off the coast on March 11, 2011.
The family of a 58-year-old Japanese woman who set herself on fire after the 2011 quake and tsunami will file a lawsuit against the operator of a nuclear plant that went into meltdown after the giant wave hit, local media reports say.
They will seek $910,000 in damages in the death of Hamako Watanabe from the Tokyo Electric Power Co., according to The Japan Times and The Mainichi. They plan to file the lawsuit -- which would be the first over a suicide linked to the nuclear crisis -- on May 18 in Fukushima District Court.
Her husband, Mikio Watanabe, 61, said his wife suffered depression in the aftermath of the accident on March 11, 2011.
The couple lived about 25 miles from the Fukushima power plant and their home had been designated as being within a planned evacuation zone. She killed herself at a garbage incinerator after going back to clean the house in Kawamata, The Japan Times said, citing sources.
Nearly a year after an earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan, Fukushima City residents fear the radiation is spreading outside of the government mandated exclusion zone. The government has asked residents to bury radiated soil in their own backyards, but how dangerous is the dirt and where should it go? NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel reports.
"The accident changed everything in our lives,” Watanabe told The Mainichi. “I decided to go to court because I thought no more victims should cry themselves to sleep."
The couple had moved around after the 9.0 quake and ensuing tsunamis struck, triggering meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant and leaving nearly 16,000 dead.
AP
A 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggers a tsunami, causing enormous damage and killing thousands.
As of last Saturday, Japan had shut down the last of its 50 usable nuclear reactors amid strong opposition from the public and local governments to keeping them up and running, The Associated Press reported.
Tsunami town's fishermen vow to 'bring joy back'
Hamako Watanabe's workplace was shuttered after the tsunami, and she began to show signs of insomnia and had a poor appetite. A group of lawyers representing victims of the nuclear crisis said her depression and suicide were due to the nuclear disaster, The Mainichi reported.
'Can it be the end of nuclear power?' Japan to shut down last reactor
Tepco declined to make comment to the newspapers, though the family notified the utility on April 20 of its intention to file the lawsuit. Tepco said in a letter dated May 1 that it would consider the matter.
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Stupid. I hope they lose and are charged for all the money spent on this thing.
This is absolutely ridiculous. It is absurd to try and hold the power company responsible for this woman committing suicide. The lawyer who filed this suit should have his license to practice revoked. In addition, the lawyer and the husband should have to reimburse the power company for all of their legal expenses resulting from this absurd lawsuit.
The people at the power company did everything in their power to try and limit the damage and the effects of the accident. Many of the people who stayed to try and stabilize the situation and prevent an even more catastrophic failure did so knowing full well that they were likely going to suffer severe consequences from radiation exposure as a result. Aside from the fact that this earthquake and tsunami was far beyond what anyone expected could ever happen and that the plant had been built to meet all safety requirement, to try and blame this woman's suicide on the accident at the plant is an incredible stretch. I do not see how the power company could have done any more to keep this accident from happening short of not building the plant, or how they could have done any more to try and contain the damage once the accident occurred. Several power company employees have likely sacrificed their lives in their attempt to limit the damage, as they will probably die very early as a result of the radiation exposure they have suffered.
The fact that this woman committed suicide, which was a permanent solution to the temporary problem of having to evacuate her home, tells me that there was much more going on with her. A rational, healthy person does not commit suicide over something like this. Many people lost far more than she did in this tragedy and did not kill themselves over it. With everything that other people in that part of Japan have gone through as a result of this disaster, her committing suicide seems like a severe overreaction. Of course as far as I am concerned, suicide is pretty much always an overreaction (unless you are terminally ill and in severe pain). She did not lose her family the way many people did, all she had to do was leave her house, and possibly only for a period of time.
Agree..hard to believe that the earthquale and tsunami didn't affect her ..only the nuclear plant? I certainly sympathize with her family's loss, but don't see how this disaster could have been prevented.
How about by having the foresight to not build a plant on the shoreline in a country notorious for Tsunamis?
I mean the word itself is even Japanese in origin, how many English words have Japanese roots?
Origin:
1905–10; < Japanese, equivalent to tsu harbor (earlier tu ) +nami wave
sure lets not build power plants in countries or states that have earthquakes, lets not build refineries in countries or states that have huricanes, lets not drive cars on roads and bridges in countries r states that have earthquakes, mayb e we also should not build anything in countries or states that have tornadoes. We should just get rid of everything go back into the forests and caves.
Hey "DanTheMan" - here's one you'll understand. Bukkake.
Good to see that the USA isn't the only country with scummy lawyers who will take on any lawsuit.
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Japanese Tsunami Suicide Toll -
Japanese: 1
Dolphins: 0
but, but.......
I thought we had all the sleazy lawyers in the world.
They should sue God.
It makes as much sense to sue God as anybody. Crazy.
They should sue Japan they are the country that had the earthquake. What a bunch of loons.
What a joke, all the people here think that TEPCO is not responsible for choosing where they built the reactor? It wasn't the earthquake it was the tsunami that caused it and it was TEPCO's choice to put a reactor on the shoreline in a country who gave the English language the word "tsunami."
TEPCO should be put out of all business except for the business of controlling the problem they created.
Nuclear power won't be missed in Japan.
We shuld lose them here too. The risks are too great and the power too expensive per Mw generated.
We should shut down all LWRs and replaced them with the newer generation reactors.
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors are passively safe, ~1000x more efficient than light water reactors, and can get rid of the long lived radioactive waste from Light Water Reactors. Plus Thorium is 4x more abundant than Uranium and requires no expensive isotope enrichment.
We have the technology to make safe, cheap, reliable nuclear power. People are just too afraid of the word 'nuclear' to look into it.
Sueing over something like this is stupid. But I'll bet they got the idea from watching American television.
the exclusion zone, will be radioactive at unsafe levels for the next 1000 years, or more, looters have taken every flat screen tv, laundry machine and bits of furniture out of the abandoned cities, spreading the contamination all over the country,lawsuit, sheesh! these people should get a one way ticket off the island.
The woman's suicide was a reaction to the overwhelming pain she was in from the devastation she witnessed. You never know unless you walk in someone else's shoes. As for the impending law suit...it is a response to their pain...Actually though...Japan's department that governs the reactors was woefully slow and inaccurate in their assessment and response time. So...who knows who will win...
As someone who lives in Japan and lived through those triple disasters perhaps you might try looking at this from the victims point of view? But, you won't.