Auto graveyard born from Japan tsunami wreckage
 

Auto graveyard born from Japan tsunami wreckage

CARLOS BARRIA/REUTERS Vehicles destroyed by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami are seen at a car dump in Miyako town, Iwate prefecture March 25, 2011.
Jon Herskovitz
Reuters

MIYAKO, JAPAN—The destruction wrought by the tsunami that slammed Japan two weeks ago has given rise to graveyards for machinery pulled from the wreckage.

Cars mangled by the massive wall of water that destroyed into Japan’s northeast coast are being removed by construction equipment, placed on trucks and laid to rest by the thousands on flood plains once covered with water.

The cars, many of which are marked with spray paint to indicate if bodies needed to be removed from inside, are laid in neat rows with licence plates easily visible for owners or family members hoping to find lost vehicles.

In photos: Japan's auto graveyard


Video: Japan tsunami wipes out fleet of cars

“I parked near the office, saw the tsunami from my window and after the water withdrew, my car was nowhere to be seen,” said Motohiro Yamazaki, who was looking for his Suzuki among hundreds of wrecked cars at auto graveyards in the tsunami-devastated city of Miyako.

Workers are slowly clearing paths through the destruction with bulldozers, levelling land after fire fighters have checked and made sure there are no bodies buried in the debris.

The city of Sendai has used parks and baseball fields as dumping grounds for electronics removed from the debris.

Residents trickle into an open field of destroyed vehicles in Miyako to take off license plates and remove registration forms, which will make it easier for them to cut through red tape with insurance companies and the government to declare their cars dead.

“I left my drivers licence, work license and health insurance card in the car. I can’t go to the hospital without that.”

Two weeks after the tsunami, electricity has been turned on again to many areas on higher ground near the devastation, mobile phones service is slowly being restored and goods have finally appeared on once empty store shelves.

Yamazaki’s car, however, was nowhere to be found.

“I guess it’s somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.”



pictures link : http://www.wheels.ca/photoPlayer/794742
video: http://www.wheels.ca/article/794479

someone should get in touch with the wrecker and start importing JDM parts.

Catalytic converters!!!!!!!

relevant to my interest

flood damage jdm parts

and this deserves its own thread because...

Probably loads of rust because of salt water damage. They'd just scrap them all.

^ Yeah, but you'd still be able to score pieces like bumpers and wheels. Anything electronic is gonna be garbage though. What a waste. Stupid tsunami.

I hope they salvage as much parts as they can from those brand new cars.

Yeah because those would be sooo cheap to ship.

Where are my Over Night Parts from Japan?

its cheaper to produce new

the last time the ship that rolled over wrecked a lot of mazdas and they didn't even bother salvaging them. it takes more time and money to salvage parts than to produce new

Sad......... then I hope they at least dispose of the stuff responsibly.

once theres water damage , there isnt much to salvage...

When I lived on the Queen Charlottes as a kid (Haida Gwaii now), after big storms people would go beach combing on the northern beach because sometimes full contains would fall off the ships and end up washing up on that beach due to currents and such. The electronics ones would suck, ( I remember a ton of CRT monitors on the beach one time), but other times stuff that wasnt so affected by salt water would lead to a rush by people from the close by towns to cash in to what washed up.

That means more jdm parts at lower cost? :)