| 2011-03-17 | | | The Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake |
This is a message from the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival Office.
Due to the powerful earthquake that occurred on March 11th at 2:46pm and the subsequent aftershocks, the Yamagata City center where our festival office is located experienced power outages in many areas, and telephone and internet communications were disrupted. This situation continued in some areas until the night of the 13th.
Currently, we are still experiencing occasional aftershocks, but electricity, water and other essential services have been stabilized, and telephone and internet communications are mostly back to normal. However, gasoline, kerosene, some foodstuffs and other items continue to be difficult to obtain.
At the time of the earthquake, our festival office was severely shaken and we feared for our safety. As with other buildings in the city center, our office lost power, but it has now been restored. We were also fortunate that there was no major damage to our office or equipment.
We have received many messages of concern from our friends and supporters, but partly due to continued aftershocks, our staff were asked to stay at home on the 12th and 13th, and we regret that we were unable to respond adequately.
We are also deeply grateful for your thoughtfulness.
If you call the Festival Office but are not able to get through, please try contacting us at the mobile phone number and/or email address below. We are checking our email constantly, and are also using email for our own internal communications.
Festival Office mobile phone: 81-(0)90-2957-7946
Festival Office email address: info@yidff.jp
The damage done to Yamagata was comparatively minimal, but we keenly feel the immense losses suffered by people living on the Pacific coast and extend our deepest sympathies. We are also considering what assistance we can provide, to the best of our abilities. For the time being, the situation is unpredictable due to the possibility of further earthquakes and aftershocks, as well as accidents at nuclear power plants. Please, everyone in the afflicted areas, stay strong. We will do the same.
From the staff of the YIDFF Office
| 2011-03-22 | | | From the YIDFF Office |
Our Yamagata office returned to normal operations from Tuesday March 22nd.