those who survived must help each other. i lost everything in an instant. i could save my life. i m alive but i don t know if it s good or bad. i don t know if it s good or bad that i survived. just a chilling story there from ishinomaki, which is in japan s miyagi prefecture. our anna coren is in the same city and she found the hope of finding any survivors is giving way to a grim reality. reporter: we just arrived on the outskirts of ishinomaki an hour north of sendai. teamed up with the japanese military and they are going through this neighborhood to see if they can find any survivors. but it quickly became apparent this was not a search and rescue operation. they were here to recover bodies.
early hours and as i said, the official death toll is some 1,600 people but one japanese official in the north predicted it could rise to the tens of thousands according to nhk reporting that. another japanese government official today said this is the biggest tragedy to hit japan since world war ii. the biggest tragedy they ve had to deal with since world war ii. in other words, this may be the most expensive earthquake in history. sanjay gupta again joins us from the area around sendai. jim walsh, a cnn contributor as well, focus now on this nuclear emergency that we are facing in an area south of where sendai is. an area called fukushima, just a little bit south of where i am. that s where we flew in earlier today. the biggest plant concern right now there are a number of nuclear facilities in that area but one called the fukushima
when we come back we ll take you back into sendai, show you the latest from there on the rescue and recovery efforts and also long lines of people waiting for food trying to get food and water, surviving the quake, surviving the tsunami is one thing but then you have to continue living your life and just getting basic supplies, gas is very, very difficult. we ll show you all of that ahead.
and helping one another. that s what we re starting to see already. but there is still so much need here. if you re interested in helping, go to cnn.com/impact for a list of organizations that are working on the ground here in japan that could certainly use your help if you re so inclined. want to go back to soledad who s with gary tuchman who s in a town where they believe as many as 9,000 people i think may be missing. soledad? yeah. it is a terrible statistic. kyung lah told you a moment ago of all the coast aal villages h by the earthquake and then the incoming tsunami. gary tuchman is covering north of here and knows what that picture looks like. how far up north did you go from where we are which is about an hour north of sendai, the capital city in northern japan. earlier today we were an hour north of here. what s amazing, in haiti almost every neighborhood in port-au-prince was damaged. here, if you re three or four miles away from the ocean, we don t see any damage whatso
getting around is difficult. many roads are impassable. adding to the apocalyptic scenes, black smoke and flames boil from a refinery. as we video the scene, we notice something else. up until now we heard the sirens and heard the announcements another tsunami coming but nobody seemed that anxious. then we noticed the water here. it s racing out. we re leaving. fortunately, the threat never materializes, which is a good thing because sendai has already seen more than its share of hell and high water. martin savidge, cnn, sendai, japan. it most certainly has. ahead we will look at some of the efforts to get help to those who need it most in japan. aid organizations are mobilizing. we will hear how one is hoping to make life a little more