[Lara]

Today the reports have some good news, a 16yo and his grandma rescued from her home. They had been trapped in the kitchen and has access to yoghurt, water and coke from the fridge and were able to huddle under a couple of blankets. He's got hypothermia but otherwise OK, she is fine.

Gives the rescue teams some hope that its not all recovery.

The Aust teams have got straight off of duty in Christchurch (New Zealand) and straight up to Japan, along with the japanese who came down to Christchurch to recover in the Language school that was destroyed in the groundfloor of the TVNZ building.

Our parent company, Kirin, has lost over a billion dollars in assets between the Queensland floods/Cyclones, the Christchurch Earthquakes I & II and now the Japanese earthquake/Tsunami. This was all immediately after the Big Aus drought decimated our Juice Growers and our Dairy Farmers and the crop growers that support them. Thankfully all our employees have survived through all of this, but a lot of them are out of work indefinitely and coping with the loss of friends and wider family.

it reminds us mere humans that weather events have the power to erase us from this planet despite all of our inventive intelligence, but only human spirit has the strength to keep going.

Rgds
Lara