Yesterday the Japanese Embassy in Bratislava expressed its thanks to everyone who had shown support and solidarity for those affected by the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan this week.
Embassy representatives also thanked the Slovak government, which had reacted immediately with an offer of assistance, while informing it that assistance from the EU would be co-ordinated on an EU level rather than by individual countries, in line with the request on Tuesday from the Japanese Government for humanitarian assistance from the EU.
Slovakia offered to send out experts in dealing with situations like after a tsunami, along with doctors, divers, sniffer dogs and other specialists. It is also ready to send equipment like fuel power generators, sludge pumps, blankets and anything else that might help the Japanese people. All the offered equipment can be sent out within 24 hours from receiving the order from the EU’s Monitoring and Information Centre (MIC).
News from Japan talks about 80,422 buildings being damaged and around 5,000 being destroyed, but these figures and the number of dead and missing are continually rising as strong aftershocks keep coming and its nuclear power plants erupt from overheating as cooling systems have failed.