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Whistler rallies to support quake victims

Japanese restaurants to organize flea markets, auction fundraisers

A devastating earthquake near Sendai, Japan that sent buildings rocking as far away as Tokyo has Whistlerites rallying to raise money for victims.

Under the leadership of the Sushi Village restaurant, Japanese food outlets from throughout Whistler are working together to raise funds for quake and tsunami victims who've just borne witness to the biggest shake-up Japan has seen since the Kobe earthquake in 1995.

Restaurants including Sushi Village, Samurai Sushi, Teppan Village, Sachi Sushi and Fuji Market are working together to put on two fundraising events on both days next weekend (March 26 and 27).

First, on March 26, there will be a flea market held at Myrtle Phillip Community School from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event is free of charge and the public is invited to sell their wares such as snowboards, t-shirts, books and just about anything else, with all profits going to the Canadian Red Cross to aid in relief in Japan.

Then on March 27, from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., the restaurants will be putting on a charity auction at the Hilton Resort and Spa. Whistler businesses have donated several items for auction including snowmobile trips, heliskiing, hotel nights and gift certificates.

Wendi Gable, manager of Samurai Sushi's locations in Whistler and Squamish, said in an interview that the restaurants will be donating free Japanese food to the auction and that people will be able to come for an as-yet-undisclosed entrance fee. There, too, profits will be donated to the Red Cross.

"Businesses are really just donating huge to this," she said. "We have a girl at Samurai Sushi who can't get a hold of her father or sister. Everyone's really feeling it."

Organizers are still looking for people to set up tables at the flea market and anyone interested can e-mail Samurai Sushi owner Ru Mehta at whistlerfleamarket@gmail.com. Anyone wishing to make a donation to the fundraiser can also e-mail Mehta at teppan10@gmail.com.

People in Whistler can't, however, be feeling it nearly as much as Japanese citizens, who bore witness to a major earthquake last Friday that registered a 9 on the Richter scale.

The epicenter was located off the east coast of the Oshika Peninsula and it caused a tsunami up to 18 metres high that threw cars off freeways and flooded the Sendai Airport. The Japanese National Police Agency has confirmed 3,373 deaths and 7,558 people missing.

Certain areas of Japan are on alert for a meltdown after 11 reactors were automatically shut down after the earthquake.

Cooling systems have likewise shut down, leading to an explosion at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant and radiation up to 1,000 times its normal level. The explosion resulted in the evacuation of several residents.

The shutdown of cooling systems at nuclear plants has also led to concerns about radiation wafting across the ocean to the west coast of British Columbia - concerns that were very quickly put down by Perry Kendall, British Columbia's Public Health Officer.

He said in a news release this week that based on current information, there is no expected health risk associated with radiation from Japanese nuclear plants.

"Small amounts of low level radiation released from the nuclear reactors in Japan will have been dispersed in the atmosphere there and are not a health risk to British Columbians," Kendall said. "The BC Centre for Disease Control, provincial and federal governments as well as Washington State and international authorities such as the World Health Organization continue to monitor the events, including radiation levels."

But while British Columbians have little to worry about when it comes to radiation, the risk of an earthquake is a whole different story. The province is due for a giant earthquake after the last big one happened in 1700, registering at 8.7 to 9.2 on the Richter scale.

Such an event, dubbed a "megathrust earthquake," happens every 250 to 850 years along subduction zones, where tectonic plates are forced beneath each other and cause vibrations that can be felt on the Earth's surface.

John Clague, a professor of natural hazards research at Simon Fraser University, said the biggest risk to the Sea to Sky region is along the highway between Horseshoe Bay and Squamish.

"Strong shaking from whatever source, whether it be a huge subduction zone earthquake like in Japan or a strong local earthquake that can produce rock slides or rockfalls that would obviously block the highway," he said in an interview. "That's where we've had a fair number of landslides even without earthquakes.

"When you get more than one, one's enough of a problem, but when you imagine having a bunch, it would disrupt transportation for some time."

Landslides on the highway in the past have dropped volumes of debris on to the highway that have taken as many as two or three days to clear away, such as the slide that occurred near Porteau Cove in the summer of 2008.

"That's from one landslide," Clague said. "So if you have a bunch of them, that's going to, off the top of my head, if the highway were blocked in a number of places, given what else is going on, it would probably take more than a week, maybe weeks to clear all the rock off the road. There's going to be other demands on emergency facilities."

The only way he can think of to prepare is to have communities discuss the possibility of isolation. The Sea to Sky Highway is really the only quick link to the city for Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton, and communities ought to know whether they could survive for some unspecified length of time.

The District of Squamish, for one, has a "state of the art" Emergency Operations Centre, according to Mayor Greg Gardner, one of two like it in the province. It has a full-time emergency coordinator and its operations centre is comprised of a search and rescue unit, as well as emergency social services. There's also a communications group with a direct line to the Provincial Emergency Program (PEP).

The Resort Municipality of Whistler also has an emergency operations centre that's triggered in the event of the earthquake. Senior representatives from the RMOW, the RCMP, BC Ambulance Service and BC Hydro report to the centre to share information and facilitate response coordination.

The earthquake comes as Whistler readies to host a group of ten students from Karuizawa, its sister city in Japan. Their city was not impacted but a planned trip from March 19 to 25 has been postponed to take place March 25 to 30.

While here they will Home Stay with families, ride the mountains, go on a Ziptrek tour and visit both the Whistler Museum and the Squamish-Lil'wat Cultural Centre.

The Resort Municipality of Whistler has sent correspondence to Karuizawa expressing its "heartfelt support" for the community.

On the tourism side, there are approximately 50 Japanese visitors currently in the resort. Several Japanese guests, not necessarily Whistler visitors, were stranded at Vancouver International Airport on Friday with delayed flights that were rescheduled to depart on Monday.

Major tour operators in Whistler have cancellation plans in place and are offering those cancellations at no charge for departures from Japan up to mid-April if they opt to cancel this week.

Tourism Whistler is asking operators to "exercise compassion" when considering requests for re-scheduling and cancellations.