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Mayor and local officials among thousands dead or missing after earthquake, tsunami and fires devastate town in Iwata prefecture Koki Kato’s last official act as mayor was to set up a command centre for Otsuchi’s disaster response team, outdoors, in front of the town hall and facing the sea. The mayor in his usual hands-on style was helping workers haul out tables and chairs for the outdoor HQ when Japan’s tsunami struck. “All of us scattered to escape,” said Kansei Sawadate, a local government official who was at the meeting. They all made it back into the town hall building – including the mayor. But then, to Sawadate’s horror and disbelief, the waters surged as high as the clock face on the second floor. “The people who went up on the roof were saved, and the people who stayed on the second floor were washed away,” he said. Sawadate and the 21 other local government officials who made it to the roof were rescued the next morning by a military helicopter. Kato’s body turned up nine days later, nearly a kilometre away. At least eight other officials are known to have died and about 20 are still missing. Now the question facing survivors is: can the town rebuild without its leaders? “I have to say that without the mayor it might be difficult to rebuild. We might lag behind unless someone from the outside comes to lead us,” said Yamazaki Seigo, who is connected to Kato by marriage. There’s some suggestion of a time lag already. Further up the coast from Otsuchi, at Miyako, the clean-up is underway, with piles of neatly tied rubbish sacks stacked up along the beached ferry boats, houses and cars washed up by the tsunami. There, officials at one shelter say they have been overwhelmed by donations of winter coats and instant noodles, which the evacuees cannot cook without boiling water. In Miyako, the homeless have been invited to apply for housing in government flats. Moving day for the first 180 apartments is 2 April, according to the neatly typed notices that went up in government shelters. That degree of organisation is beyond Otsuchi for now. At the town’s acting headquarters – high up on a hill above the government building – the bulletin boards are still given over to people searching for the missing. By Tuesday afternoon, it still was not clear to Sawadate whether bodies identified in the town hall on 13 March had been removed. Otsuchi was all but wiped out by the tsunami, which tore through a 10-metre high reinforced concrete sea wall, washing away one bridge entirely, and damaging another. The shell of the town hall is still standing, but its contents – including the town’s records – are gone. To compound matters, the pitifully few buildings still standing after the earthquake and the tsunami burned down after cooking gas tanks exploded. The fires burned for days, because there was no functioning fire department. About 460 people were killed and 970 remain missing out of a town of 16,000. About a third of the population of Otsuchi is now homeless and people say they could use a leader. “I don’t know where we would start,” said Sachiko Mocomochi, a physiotherapist. “The town is completely gone. It really hurts to look at it.” Kato was a popular figure in Otsuchi. He did a long stint on the city council before deciding to run for mayor four years ago. He was elected by a wide margin, casting himself as a leader for the everyman. Locals said he would have easily won re-election at next month’s polls. On the day of the earthquake, he had responded in typical fashion. When the tremors subsided, he ordered staff out of the building until engineers could survey for structural damage. Then he started hauling furniture outside for an emergency command centre which he planned to run from a tent in front of the building. Road signs at the entrance of Otsuchi warn travellers that the town is a known tsunami flood zone. But the last major tsunami warning, after last year’s earthquake in Chile, produced a storm surge of barely a metre. “Even with the warnings about a huge tsunami, nobody ever imagined this could hit us,” said Akihiro Goto, who works in the town’s transport department. Now that the unimaginable has happened, the people of Otsuchi are struggling to envisage a future in the town. Rebuilding after devastation on such a grand scale was always going to be difficult. Like much of this part of Japan, Otsuchi was an ageing town, with a shrinking job market. Sawadate, who worked to attract new industry to the town, said he was worried that young people, and poorer families whose homes were closer to the coast, would migrate. He said the authorities would need to help people to buy land further inland. “Then they might stay,” he said, but he sounded a little doubtful. For other government workers sorting through the wreckage at the toll hall on Tuesday, that thought is unthinkable. “The death of the mayor will have a big effect on the reconstruction effort,” said Goto. “Everyone is responding. I am sure we will make it somehow.” Japan disaster Japan Suzanne Goldenberg guardian.co.uk