Originally Posted By: Arney
Originally Posted By: Lono
Pete, do you have a citation or source for the allegation that "the US and the UK are pulling out their rescue teams from Japan"?

There are a number of British references to their team pulling out, like this BBC article.

Sky doesn't say which American team is leaving and I never saw any articles about it, but last night, CNN did a piece on Fairfax County's team that I watched and they said they'd only be there one more day. Maybe even LA County Fire Rescue is also pulling out at the same time.

As I understand it, they are leaving not because they have given up all hope or because of radiation, but it's more a bureacratic thing about Japan not requesting their help beyond this point.


Actually I think you will find that its a matter of search and rescue teams discontinuing SAR operations, meaning search for living victims of the disasters - it has moved into the recovery phase, meaning corpse recovery. Frankly some SAR units don't do recovery (as well), and it is not a task I would wish upon my worse enemy. Add to this, resources such as food, equipment and gasoline to power that equipment are still extremely scarce in these areas affected by the disasters.

Rescue teams have to make this difficult decision - if they can't rescue, is their presence to perform recovery in a disaster zone outweighed by the literal cost of being in the disaster area? Japanese authorities may also put corpse recovery at a lower priority than other efforts, I dont know. But in no case that I'm aware of is any rescue team being pulled at all because of the risk of radiation, which I think is the premise of Pete's post.