'This Week' Transcript: Disaster in the Pacific

March 13, 2011 — -- (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR (voice-over): This week, disaster in the Pacific. As my team and I cross Japan to find almost biblical scenes of destruction, fears of a nuclear meltdown after the powerful earthquake, the devastating wall of water. A race is on to stop a dangerous radiation leak and rescue tens of thousands.

ANNOUNCER: From ABC News, a special "This Week" with Christiane Amanpour, disaster in the Pacific, live from Tokyo, starts now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Hello again. And we are here live broadcasting from Tokyo, where the government is scrambling to deal with this massive crisis: an earthquake, a tsunami, and a nuclear disaster.

The prime minister said on television tonight that this is an unprecedented crisis, the worst challenge this country has had to deal with since World War II. And we are here near the Narita Airport, which is the staging ground for U.S. and other international help that is now rushing in.

The government is concerned about a possible second meltdown at a second reactor, the Fukushima plant. It is also concerned about a possible explosion at that second reactor, although it's playing down the idea of leakage of nuclear radiation. And we are going to talk about that.

We're also going to talk about what we saw today. My team and I went up to the north, where the most devastation has been, and also my colleagues have reached some of the worst-hit areas, as aid officials also are reaching those areas for the first time. We will have all that in this broadcast.

And later, Jake Tapper, my colleague, will turn to all the news from Washington. President Obama and the United States administration is not only having to monitor this international crisis, but also the civil war in Libya and, as well, a bitter budget battle on Capitol Hill.

But first to the situation here in Japan.

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AMANPOUR: Let's take a look at a map of the country. The earthquake struck just off the coast of Japan, and it sent strong tremors that shook and damaged buildings at least 200 miles from the epicenter. And the tsunami wave then destroyed and damaged two-thirds of the east coast of this island nation.

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AMANPOUR: And now government officials north here in the Miyagi prefecture, which is home to Sendai, the worst-hit area, are saying that there could possibly be 10,000 people dead in that one place alone. The government is calling on all people here to conserve electricity. It's warning that electric power will be rationed because so much of Japan's electricity comes from those nuclear power plants that are now shut down.

My team and I took a helicopter tour up north. We saw the devastation firsthand from the air.

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AMANPOUR (voice-over): As we make our way through the outskirts of Tokyo, life looks surprisingly normal. The trains are running again, three days after the powerful earthquake that shook even this capital, hundreds of miles from the epicenter. Last night, there had been an explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. And as we're driving now, we hear that another reactor is overheating.

(UNKNOWN) (through translator): We are acting -- assuming that a meltdown has occurred. And with reactor number three, we are also assuming the possibility of a meltdown.

AMANPOUR: As we continue to make our way towards the quake zone, we wonder how much of the country has been affected by this kind of chaos and destruction. We're about to find out, as we arrived at the airfield.

(on-screen): The helicopter is taking on fuel, and we're going up to the Sendai earthquake zone. Japan is not a massive country, but part of that Sendai area is quite remote. Some of the roads have been damaged. There are mountains in the greater area around there. And that's hampering not just assessment, but also relief and the delivery of supplies.

(voice-over): On the hour-long ride to the city of Sendai near the epicenter, little evidence of the earthquake. Much of the countryside appears unscathed. And even as we approach Sendai, we see the city still standing.

But as the chopper turns to the coast, the full extent of the devastation reveals itself. Huge swaths of land along the coast remain underwater. We fly past this massive plume of black smoke, billowing 3,000 feet into the air. The petrochemical plant below has been burning since the earthquake struck. And oil is spilling into the water.

Japanese rescue operations are being launched by sea and by land. And search-and-rescue teams are coming to help them from across Europe, the United States, Australia, and South Korea.

(UNKNOWN): We do know that the longer time goes on, the less likely it is we'll find survivors, so the imperative is for us to get there as soon as we possibly can.

AMANPOUR: And a team of Japanese workers which had gone to New Zealand to help with recovery efforts after last month's 6.3 earthquake here are now heading home.

(UNKNOWN): We have heard quite severe situation in Japan, and we are going back to Japan today. We have heard quite severe situation in Japan, and we are going back to Japan today.

AMANPOUR: Already we've seen dramatic rescues taking place this weekend, workers searching through rubble and rescuers transporting survivors to safety, but the fear here among so many is palpable.

(UNKNOWN) (through translator): My husband hasn't come here yet. He left home a little later than me. Our house was swept away.

AMANPOUR: They search the names of the missing.

(UNKNOWN) (through translator): My son might have been engulfed by the tsunami. I hope he's taking shelter somewhere.

AMANPOUR: And this young mother can only hope that her worries are unfounded.

(UNKNOWN) (through translator): That's my name. The tsunami swept away my car, and my house was burned down by the fire afterwards. My sons must be very worried about me. The phone lines are bad, and I could only send out one text message. I just want to let my family know that I'm alive.

AMANPOUR: Best of all, scenes like this one, a man reunited with his wife.

(UNKNOWN) (through translator): I'm so lucky to have survived.

(UNKNOWN) (through translator): I'm relieved to see him again, but I can't rejoice completely because people are still waiting to be rescued.

AMANPOUR: And pictures continue to emerge reminding us of the enormity of this tragedy. In the city of Kaesunuma (ph), residents look on helplessly as entire houses are carried away by the powerful waters. Here is what the city of Minamisanriku (ph) looked like before the quake and here is what it looks like now. The local hospital is the only building left standing in this neighborhood.

This is a country united in grief, in shock, and in their struggles. Many residents in Fukushima, near the nuclear power plant, expressed fear about the fallout here. This factory worker said, "20 kilometers away is safe, but the radiation may change and go out wider. It's very disturbing. There's no way to get out of here."

"I thing it's safe at the moment," said another local resident, "but I'm worried that the radiation might have already reached us."

Throughout the day, the government said radiation levels were safe outside the 20-kilometer evacuation zone and offered treatment for evacuees coming from near the plant, but there have also been reports of higher than normal levels and people suffering from full-on radiation sickness.

"The place where I work might be contaminated," said this schoolteacher, "so I came here to have a check and try to find out what I have to do next."

At the airport in Tokyo yesterday, I spoke with a German journalist who's trying to get close to the plant. He came prepared.

(on-screen): Tell me what you've got here.

(UNKNOWN): A Geiger counter, I think it's called in English, yeah?

AMANPOUR: What does it measure, the Geiger counter?

(UNKNOWN): It measures the radioactivity right now here in the airport in Tokyo.

AMANPOUR: Is it high or low here?

(UNKNOWN): It's completely low. It's nothing.

AMANPOUR: But if it should rise as he approaches...

(UNKNOWN): We should go, yeah, because then it's rising, and you should -- you should leave. But now it's nothing dangerous at the moment.

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AMANPOUR: And now, as you know, there have been mixed reports about the radiation issues. The government has been saying lately that it's going down, but there have been so many reports about how the levels have been much, much higher than is acceptable, several times higher than the Japan -- Japanese legal limits.

As we were in the air over the Sendai area, our colleague, Clarissa Ward, had reached Sendai and gives us now a snapshot of some of the worst-hit areas that she got to just as we were in the air.

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WARD: Christiane, one of the first things we noticed driving into the city was just the amount of traffic. Literally, there were 10-block lines of cars waiting for gas, which is now being rationed out, also, long lines of people waiting outside of convenience stores. It's been two days since that quake, people getting very anxious now that supplies are dwindling.

But for the most part, this area of the city looks pretty normal. There was some electricity. Traffic lights seemed to be functioning. And it was only really when we hit the port area that we saw the scope of the devastation. Really, that area just felt like a warzone. There were sirens wailing, soldiers pouring into this area trying to assess the damage, smoke billowing up into the sky.

It's almost impossible really to describe the level and the scope of that devastation. Even the process of just trying to get into this city turned out to be quite an epic journey.

We're on our way to the city of Sendai. And we've been traveling now for 36 hours. We've been diverted through three different cities. Japan's internal transportation system, which is normally a sort of model of efficiency, has been completely crippled by this earthquake. And we've actually come across a mountain range in the middle of the island, and we're now coming towards the city of Sendai.

Getting to this part of the port on foot is actually pretty tough. There are cars driving around with loudspeakers telling people to evacuate the area because there are still fears of another possible tsunami.

And when you look at the damage here, you can understand why they're so nervous. It's just incredible, the scope of the devastation, these cars strewn like toys. Everything was destroyed by this massive wave of water.

Authorities have now completely blocked off that port area. They say it is simply too dangerous for anyone to be there at night.

Christiane?

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AMANPOUR: Clarissa Ward in the Sendai area, and she talks about a possible another tsunami. Well, the government has said that, in the next three days, there could also possibly be another earthquake, of a 7.0 magnitude, and that, of course, is worrying all those people around the nuclear power plants.

David Muir of ABC has gone up north and has got to the limit of where people are allowed to get to when it comes to that nuclear reactor area.

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MUIR: Christiane, good morning.

As you know, we've been traveling around the perimeter of the evacuation zone that's been set around those nuclear reactors that are now causing so much concern here in Japan. One of the things that we first recognized on our route was that driving at night, obviously, hard to see the true damage out there, workers stopping us at roadblocks, telling us the road was too buckled to pass over.

Then in Hitachi City, this was really hard to miss, cars piled atop one another. They'd been carried up the street by the tsunami.

And then further out in rural Japan at daybreak, you could see that even inland homes were completely flattened. The neighbors told us in this particular home that the older couple living inside actually survived, that they're now living with their own grown children.

But there was something that we did notice a little bit eerie: children's music still coming from inside that flattened home. We couldn't tell whether it was a toy or an alarm, still going off long after the earthquake.