A week after a destructive tsunami wiped out their home town, problems are mounting for the more than 1,000 survivors of the small fishing village of Otsuchi. Water, electricity, and scant food have given them problems.

Aside from that, unseasonal snowstorms have produced temperatures reaching below zero and have covered the tsunami debris in white. Friday’s magnitude 9 earthquake has turned villages, hamlets, and towns of northeastern Japan into virtual ghost towns. Currently, the official death toll is at 5,000 with thousands still unaccounted for.

An estimated 850,000 households is still without electricity with the weather reaching near-freezing temperatures. According to the Tohuku Electric Power Co., approximately 1.5 million households had no running water. The Otsuchi survivors have only received half a rice ball and small bowl of miso soup, which the survivors are taking gratefully.

Fears among the survivors have also grown over radiation leaks from the Daiichi nuclear plant. According to Dr. Richard Wakeford from the University of Manchester, people are getting worried about the low level of radiation but the real concern is how to deal with the earthquake and tsunami.

Luckily, Japan is not a developing country otherwise a lot of the survivors would have already been taken down by diseases such as typhoid and cholera. Problems such as the condition of the drinking water and sewerage system is starting to set in as well.

Naoshi Moriya, a Math teacher who is volunteering at the evacuation center’s makeshift logistics office, is worried about the possibility that the food will run out in a matter of time. If that’s not enough, external help has been slow and sparing. On Wednesday, a Self Defense Forces truck arrived with a fresh supply of water as well as two Red Cross teams arriving to treat patients.

The cold weather has caused some people to become sick of diarrhea and other symptoms, bared Takanori Watanabe, a Red Cross doctor based in Himeji, Western Japan.

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