All Hands in Ofunato: House Work

The city of Ofunato is located at the head of a narrow bay. A river comes down to meet the bay and the town is spread out along both sides of the estuary. The town area is quite narrow and flanked on both sides by extremely steep mountains. You can look at it on the map here (Our base is located in Sakari.).

The tsunami wave here was estimated in excess of 77 feet. Funneled in by the narrow bay, the tsunami continued inland for almost two miles.

Local geography determined whether a house survived or not. Entire swathes of the town were totally destroyed. In some places, a house on a hill or slightly higher elevation managed to remain standing but lost windows and doors and got a serious dose of mud and debris. Maybe a third of the houses in the town were lost.

Most of the destroyed buildings have already been demolished by heavy equipment and the scrap metal piled nearby, ready for pickup. Crews continue work daily. It looks like they've done more work here in just a couple months than has been done in Haiti in a year and a half. In those cases where a house has been damaged but is deemed salvageable, we are able to help save the house by gutting it to let it dry out.

Gutting involves removing the ceilings, floors, and walls and removing any exposed nails. We also spray the interior with a product that kills bacteria and inhibits the growth of mold.

Most houses seem to be built without a basement. There are cement footings may a couple feet high and various support posts spotted around. Vents in the outer cement wall allow air to circulate. This is a snowy place in winter, so insulation is often installed under the floorboards. Usually, the surface under the house is not concrete but merely gravel.

The water from the flooding entered the vents and soaked the gravel surface, depositing a layer of contaminated mud. One of our jobs when gutting a house is to remove the layer of mud. Sometimes we are able to remove flooring in order to access the mud. Other times, a volunteer tunnel rat is sent down to work their way in the two-foot high space and scrape out the mud. The mud is sent outside in buckets. Many homeowners spread lime to help decontaminate.

Much of the woodwork in these homes is really beautiful, painstakingly done by hand. There are many wood beams and posts connected using mortise and tenon techniques. Considerable cross-bracing is evident and one notices metal fixtures to secure the wood to the foundation. Much of this would help resist a hurricane or earthquake but, of course, a tsunami is a much more forceful phenomenon.

Buildings on higher ground fared better