Free Heating Oil Distributed to Thousands of Tsunami Victims

Posted by Jackson Stone on April 8, 2011 at 2:48 pm

About 28,000 are dead or missing after an 8.9 magnitude earthquake triggered a massive tsunami last month, devastating northeastern coastal parts of Japan. (image: healthystylist.com)

An American-based non-profit organization is handing out free heating oil to desperate residents in disaster-ravaged Japan.

Decimated coastal populations are still reeling after last month’s magnitude 8.9 earthquake triggered monster tsunami waves, wiping away entire villages. About 28,000 people are dead or missing. And the world’s third biggest crude oil user suffered fresh anguish this week when it was rocked by a huge aftershock on Thursday, bringing more death and injury.

Ted Honcharik has been providing oil aid relief in Japan amid mass shortages, The Press-Enterprise reported on Friday. He arrived home this week to Riverside, California – whose longtime Japanese sister city of Sendai lost 300 lives.

Honcharik runs Pacific Tank Lines, a multi-state petroleum trucking company. He also chairs the Fuel Relief Fund – a Riverside-based non-profit organization that assists disaster victims by supplying much-needed fuel.

Ted Honcharik chairs the Fuel Relief Fund, which has been handing out free heating oil to thousands of tsunami victims. (image: pe.com)

He raced to northeast Japan days after the initial quake with military rations and iodine pills to guard against radiation from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant. Using a supply tanker, he and his team dished out thousands of gallons of heating fuel over 12 days in three tsunami-damaged towns. With temperatures in Japan still near freezing and supply lines disrupted, he estimates they have already helped 15,000 people.

Honcharik said the scale of the disaster was unimaginable. Residents would wait in line for hours clutching plastic containers just to get heating oil rations to warm their homes.

People with kids, old ladies hunched over pushing a cart, whatever, people on bicycles, people driving, literally driving over just to get two-and-a-half gallons of heating oil. Sometimes we’d have people in line a couple of hours just waiting for us to show up.

Many Japanese homes use small oil-powered space heaters. Grateful fuel aid recipients clapped, bowed and gave food as tokens of their appreciation. One woman gave Honcharik a piece of original art.

US military personnel at Misawa Air Base, which is located near the areas hardest hit by the disasters, were forced to ration heating oil following the disaster due to major shortages.

Honcharik is no stranger to working in disaster zones. In 2005 he supplied gasoline in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and he worked for three months in Haiti handing out diesel for generators after the 2010 earthquake. “In a disaster, it’s fuel, water, food, medicine [that are needed], and without fuel, some of those other things don’t occur.”

But nothing had prepared him for the scenes of utter destruction in Japan. Five-story concrete buildings have been washed away. Fishing boats, wrecked vehicles and debris clutter swamped streets. Military personnel continue the grim task of searching for submerged bodies.

Stricken Japanese residents wait in line for free rations of heating oil. The fuel is needed to heat homes but is in short supply following last month's twin natural disasters. (image: pe.com)

“You can take a thousand photos but unless you’re actually there and see what that size tsunami can do to a coastline and destroy everybody’s lives in 30 minutes – it’s unbelievable.”

It would take “years and years” for Japan to recover, he said.

The Fuel Relief Fund is trying to raise more money so it can keep distributing free heating oil to stricken Japanese. The aid team plans to remain in Japan for the next month.

“You feel like you’re accomplishing something right away,” Honcharik said. “You feel like you’re making a difference in these people’s terrible lives right away.”