Agar Grove civil servant Ed Hawkesworth joins search-and-rescue team in disaster hit Japan
Published: 31 March 2011
by JOSIE HINTON
LIKE millions of others, Ed Hawkesworth watched with horror the shocking TV images of the devastation wrought in Japan by the earthquake and tsunami.
But 12 hours later Mr Hawkesworth, 32, of Agar Grove, Camden, was on a plane heading towards the disaster area.
A communications officer for the government, he received a call from his bosses at 5am telling him to get to the airport. “I didn’t really have time to think about what I was heading for,” he said. “It was kind of stuff everything into a bag and get to the airport.
“I was in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake, but still it is impossible to know what to expect, so I just grabbed what I could.”
Mr Hawkesworth, from the Department for International Development, was with a UK search-and-rescue team. Accompanying firefighters, medics and highly trained rescuers, he acted as a liaison between rescue teams, the government and the media. This meant following firefighters as they searched rubble for survivors. “We were camped out in a school gym in the mountains and every day we made our way down winding roads to look for survivors,” he said.
“It was hard to imagine there had ever been towns where we were. There was nothing recognisable as being somewhere that could be inhabited, but then you’d begin to see the echoes of people’s lives, their possessions strewn about.
“Most hauntingly you would see family photo albums poking through the rubble. I was not prepared for what I would see – whole towns and districts totally washed away. It was like the world was made upside down.”
In the face of such devastation the rescue team had to cling onto the smallest victories. “Obviously, they were looking for survivors but even pulling bodies out of the rubble was a relief to families who could offer them a decent burial,” he said.
“I remember going to one town where an old lady with red wellies and a raincoat was trying to wade into the water. She had already seen her daughter swept away, but was trying to get to her possessions which were in a shrine on top of a hill. The firemen retrieved them, which was a least some comfort to her.”
Mr Hawkesworth said he had needed some “decompression time” since coming home, but was left with “an overwhelming sense of human spirit” by the thousands of volunteers who offered their help.