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Japan 8.8 earthquake & Tsunami
- Thread starter Cestbon
- Start date
Hundreds of vehicles lined the highway in Fukushima in hopes of filling their gas tanks as massive shortages continue following fears of leaked radiation from the damaged Fukushima nuclear facilities.
An employee of a petrol station operates a pedal-powered fuel pump in Minamisanriku, on March 20.
A student volunteer held a sign offering instant noodles for evacuees from Futaba, a city near the quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant, in the evacuees' new shelter at Saitama Super Arena, near Tokyo
A man looked at a package of spinach from Chiba Prefecture on sale at a supermarket in Tokyo.
A rescue worker carries a dead body after finding it in a car damaged by the earthquake and tsunami in Sendai, northeastern Japan
Survivors hug and weep as they look at a board showing names of other survivors at a shelter in a village ruined by an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and tsunami, in Rikuzentakata in Iwate prefecture, northeast Japan
Tsunami disruption spreads deep into Japan
Tsunami disruption spreads deep into Japan AFP – Hundreds of cars queue for gasoline in Morioka, ten days after the deadly March 11 earthquake and tsunami …
by Olivia Hampton Olivia Hampton – Mon Mar 21, 9:57 am ET
MORIOKA, Japan (AFP) – Ten days after Japan's tsunami disaster, towns far from the impact zone are still experiencing shortages that have thrown the neat, ordered lives of local residents completely out of gear.
Gas station queues stretching for several kilometres, long waits at supermarkets, empty store shelves and shuttered businesses have become a part of the landscape in post-tsunami Japan.
At the foot of the Mount Iwate volcano, the people of Morioka city -- almost 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of the devastated coast -- are still trying to adjust to the sudden absence of many things they had simply taken for granted.
At a gas station on the outskirts of the city, motorists waited hours on end before finally reaching the gas pump, clutching a 2,000 yen ($25, 17 euros) daily rationing coupon in their hands. The coupon is barely enough to buy a third of a tank on an average-sized city car.
One man wasted so much gas queuing up that his car ran dry and needed several people to push it up to the station.
Kabuya Kubo said she had waited for nearly six hours to put gas in her tank. Ever since the tsunami, she has had to bike to work whenever the car runs low on fuel -- a one-hour trip, versus 15 minutes by car.
"Now, again, I realize that electricity, gas, all of that is really important," she said. "Because there's no gas, I can't go anywhere that's far away. It's difficult."
Most gas stations have been cordoned off or closed for the better part of the day due to disruptions in the supply system caused by the March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami that devastated Japan's northeastern coastline.
The tidal wave that intruded 10 kilometres (six miles) inland in certain areas engulfed large tracts of arable land in the agriculturally rich prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima.
"There are no more meat and vegetables. I'm eating instant meals all the time," said Naohiko Seki. "I would like to regain my old life, but when I think about people who suffered from the tsunami, I tell myself I shouldn't complain."
A ramen noodle restaurant on the main shopping street downtown only offered a single type of plain fried rice for sale. There were no customers in sight at 2:00 pm and the usually busy room stood empty.
"Ever since the disaster, our suppliers haven't been able to reach us. We haven't been getting many customers recently," said cook Toshiyo Sasaki.
"Our restaurant is usually open 24/7 but now we can't stay open all the time. We have reduced working hours because we can't get the products we need."
As fresh produce grows scarcer, restaurants are serving more prepared foods and noodle- or rice-based dishes than ever before.
Convenience stores, usually open around the clock, had row after row of empty shelves, where prepared foods like the normally ubiquitous 'onigiri' rice balls, water and milk products once stood.
Popular French bakery Pompadour opened at 1:00 pm and had sold out its entire stock of bread and pastries in two hours.
Outside a shopping mall, a handful of school students held up signs about the tsunami disaster and asked customers for donations to buy food and clothes for the victims.
A group of green-clad boy and girl scouts on the main shopping street also urged passersby to donate -- and many did, even encouraging their young children to drop a few coins in the box.
Yoshii Sato said he was a "little afraid" for his very young daughter.
"It's really strange. The stores have almost no baby food and other items. It makes me uneasy and anxious. I am worried because I don't know whether or not I will be able to buy what my child needs," he said.
Still, Sato stressed that others had to cope with much worse.
"In Morioka, we are getting by okay, but toward the coast, many more people have lost their homes and are forced to suffer. We feel very sad for them."
Tsunami disruption spreads deep into Japan AFP – Hundreds of cars queue for gasoline in Morioka, ten days after the deadly March 11 earthquake and tsunami …
by Olivia Hampton Olivia Hampton – Mon Mar 21, 9:57 am ET
MORIOKA, Japan (AFP) – Ten days after Japan's tsunami disaster, towns far from the impact zone are still experiencing shortages that have thrown the neat, ordered lives of local residents completely out of gear.
Gas station queues stretching for several kilometres, long waits at supermarkets, empty store shelves and shuttered businesses have become a part of the landscape in post-tsunami Japan.
At the foot of the Mount Iwate volcano, the people of Morioka city -- almost 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of the devastated coast -- are still trying to adjust to the sudden absence of many things they had simply taken for granted.
At a gas station on the outskirts of the city, motorists waited hours on end before finally reaching the gas pump, clutching a 2,000 yen ($25, 17 euros) daily rationing coupon in their hands. The coupon is barely enough to buy a third of a tank on an average-sized city car.
One man wasted so much gas queuing up that his car ran dry and needed several people to push it up to the station.
Kabuya Kubo said she had waited for nearly six hours to put gas in her tank. Ever since the tsunami, she has had to bike to work whenever the car runs low on fuel -- a one-hour trip, versus 15 minutes by car.
"Now, again, I realize that electricity, gas, all of that is really important," she said. "Because there's no gas, I can't go anywhere that's far away. It's difficult."
Most gas stations have been cordoned off or closed for the better part of the day due to disruptions in the supply system caused by the March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami that devastated Japan's northeastern coastline.
The tidal wave that intruded 10 kilometres (six miles) inland in certain areas engulfed large tracts of arable land in the agriculturally rich prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima.
"There are no more meat and vegetables. I'm eating instant meals all the time," said Naohiko Seki. "I would like to regain my old life, but when I think about people who suffered from the tsunami, I tell myself I shouldn't complain."
A ramen noodle restaurant on the main shopping street downtown only offered a single type of plain fried rice for sale. There were no customers in sight at 2:00 pm and the usually busy room stood empty.
"Ever since the disaster, our suppliers haven't been able to reach us. We haven't been getting many customers recently," said cook Toshiyo Sasaki.
"Our restaurant is usually open 24/7 but now we can't stay open all the time. We have reduced working hours because we can't get the products we need."
As fresh produce grows scarcer, restaurants are serving more prepared foods and noodle- or rice-based dishes than ever before.
Convenience stores, usually open around the clock, had row after row of empty shelves, where prepared foods like the normally ubiquitous 'onigiri' rice balls, water and milk products once stood.
Popular French bakery Pompadour opened at 1:00 pm and had sold out its entire stock of bread and pastries in two hours.
Outside a shopping mall, a handful of school students held up signs about the tsunami disaster and asked customers for donations to buy food and clothes for the victims.
A group of green-clad boy and girl scouts on the main shopping street also urged passersby to donate -- and many did, even encouraging their young children to drop a few coins in the box.
Yoshii Sato said he was a "little afraid" for his very young daughter.
"It's really strange. The stores have almost no baby food and other items. It makes me uneasy and anxious. I am worried because I don't know whether or not I will be able to buy what my child needs," he said.
Still, Sato stressed that others had to cope with much worse.
"In Morioka, we are getting by okay, but toward the coast, many more people have lost their homes and are forced to suffer. We feel very sad for them."
Japan Quake Knocked Out 25% Of Global Silicon Wafer Production
The Japanese earthquake and tsunami have knocked a quarter of the world’s production of silicon wafers off line, according to the market research firm iSuppli. The reduction reflects the suspension of operations at two plants: Shin-Etsu Chemnical has stopped manufacturing operations at its facility in Shirakawa, while MEMC Electronic Materials (WFR) has shut its Utsunomiya facility.
Shin-Etsu’s facility, which alone supplies 20% of the world’s wafers, makes 300 mm wafers used mostly for producing DRAM and flash memory chips. “Because of this, the global supply of memory semiconductors will be impacted the most severely of any segment of the chip industry by the production stoppage,” iSuppli reports, with logic devices also significantly affected. Shin-Etsu has said there has been damage to the plant’s production facilities and equipment, and that the time needed for repairs is still uncertain.
MEMC said the Utsunomiya plant, which produces about 5% of global wafer output, last week issued a statement saying “operations at the facility remain suspended pending the conclusion of building and equipment safety inspections and an analysis of potential damage,” and that “shipments from this facility will be delayed over the near term.”
The research firms warns that suspension of operations at the two plants “could have wide-ranging implications” for global chip production.
Meanwhile, iSuppli also said that two Japanese companies – Mitsubishi Gas Chemical and Hitachi Kasei Polymer – have shut down production at plants that make 70% of the world’s supply of copper-clad laminates – the raw material used to make printed circuit boards. Both say they will resume production within two weeks.
iSuppli also noted the following production issues in Japan:
* Elpida Memory said its semiconductor assembly facility in Yamagata has been damaged and that it also is having power issues. The facility’s utilization rate now is at less than 50 percent.
* The quake damaged about 40% of the wafer capacity of Renesas Electronics.
* Half of the wafer capacity at Fujitsu has been damaged.
The Japanese earthquake and tsunami have knocked a quarter of the world’s production of silicon wafers off line, according to the market research firm iSuppli. The reduction reflects the suspension of operations at two plants: Shin-Etsu Chemnical has stopped manufacturing operations at its facility in Shirakawa, while MEMC Electronic Materials (WFR) has shut its Utsunomiya facility.
Shin-Etsu’s facility, which alone supplies 20% of the world’s wafers, makes 300 mm wafers used mostly for producing DRAM and flash memory chips. “Because of this, the global supply of memory semiconductors will be impacted the most severely of any segment of the chip industry by the production stoppage,” iSuppli reports, with logic devices also significantly affected. Shin-Etsu has said there has been damage to the plant’s production facilities and equipment, and that the time needed for repairs is still uncertain.
MEMC said the Utsunomiya plant, which produces about 5% of global wafer output, last week issued a statement saying “operations at the facility remain suspended pending the conclusion of building and equipment safety inspections and an analysis of potential damage,” and that “shipments from this facility will be delayed over the near term.”
The research firms warns that suspension of operations at the two plants “could have wide-ranging implications” for global chip production.
Meanwhile, iSuppli also said that two Japanese companies – Mitsubishi Gas Chemical and Hitachi Kasei Polymer – have shut down production at plants that make 70% of the world’s supply of copper-clad laminates – the raw material used to make printed circuit boards. Both say they will resume production within two weeks.
iSuppli also noted the following production issues in Japan:
* Elpida Memory said its semiconductor assembly facility in Yamagata has been damaged and that it also is having power issues. The facility’s utilization rate now is at less than 50 percent.
* The quake damaged about 40% of the wafer capacity of Renesas Electronics.
* Half of the wafer capacity at Fujitsu has been damaged.
No quick fix seen at Japan's nuclear plant
FUKUSHIMA, Japan – Officials raced Monday to restore electricity to Japan's leaking nuclear plant, but getting the power flowing will hardly be the end of their battle: With its mangled machinery and partly melted reactor cores, bringing the complex under control is a monstrous job.
Restoring the power to all six units at the tsunami-damaged complex is key, because it will, in theory, power up the maze of motors, valves and switches that help deliver cooling water to the overheated reactor cores and spent fuel pools that are leaking radiation.
Ideally, officials believe it should only take a day to get the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear under control once the cooling system is up and running. In reality, the effort to end the crisis is likely to take weeks.
Late Monday night, the deputy director general of Japan's nuclear safety body suggested to reporters why there is so much uncertainty about when the job will be finished.
"We have experienced a very huge disaster that has caused very large damage at a nuclear power generation plant on a scale that we had not expected," said Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
The nuclear plant's cooling systems were wrecked by the massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan on March 11. Since then, conditions at the plant have been volatile; a plume of smoke rose from two reactor units Monday, prompting workers to evacuate.
In another setback, the plant's operator said Monday it had just discovered that some of the cooling system's key pumps at the complex's troubled Unit 2 are no longer functional — meaning replacements have to be brought in. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it had placed emergency orders for new pumps, but how long it would take for them to arrive was unclear.
If officials can get the power turned on, get the replacement pumps working and get enough seawater into the reactors and spent fuel pools, it would only take a day to bring the temperatures back to a safe, cooling stage, said Ryohei Shiomi, an official with the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
And if not?
"There is nothing else we can do but keep doing what we've been doing," Shiomi said.
In other words, officials would continue dousing the plant in seawater — and hope for the best.
An official of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in Washington that Units 1, 2 and 3 have all seen damage to their reactor cores, but that containment is intact. The assessment dispels some concerns about Unit 2, where an explosion damaged a pressure-reducing chamber around the bottom of the reactor core.
"I would say optimistically that things appear to be on the verge of stabilizing," said Bill Borchardt, the commission's executive director for operations.
Monday's evacuation of workers from the plant came after smoke began rising from the spent fuel storage pool of the plant's problem-plagued Unit 3, Tokyo Electric spokesman Hiroshi Aizawa said. Unit 3 also alarmed plant officials over the weekend with a sudden surge of pressure in its reactor core.
What caused the smoke to billow first from Unit 3 and then from Unit 2 is under investigation, nuclear safety agency officials said. Still, in the days since the earthquake and tsunami, both reactors have overheated and seen explosions. Workers were evacuated from the area to buildings nearby, though radiation levels remained steady, the officials said.
Problems set off by the disasters have ranged far beyond the shattered northeast coast and the wrecked nuclear plant, handing the government what it has called Japan's worst crisis since World War II. Rebuilding may cost as much as $235 billion. Police estimate the death toll will surpass 18,000.
Traces of radiation are tainting vegetables and some water supplies, although in amounts the government and health experts say do not pose a risk to human health in the short term. That has caused the government to ban sale of raw milk, spinach and canola from prefectures over a swath from the plant toward Tokyo. The government has just started to test fish and shellfish.
Tokyo Electric said radioactive iodine about 127 times normal levels and radioactive cesium about 25 times above the norm were detected in seawater 100 yards (meters) off the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Despite that concentration, a senior official at the International Atomic Energy Agency said the ocean was capable of absorbing vast amounts of radiation with no effect and that — comparatively — the radioactivity released so far by the plant was minor.
"I would stress that the levels concerned are really very, very small, compared to the natural radioactivity that you find in the oceans," said Graham Andrew, senior adviser to IAEA chief Yukiya Amano. "The quantities are tiny compared to the reservoir of natural radioactivity in the oceans."
The Health Ministry has advised Iitate, a village of 6,000 people about 19 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of the plant, not to drink tap water due to elevated levels of iodine. Ministry spokesman Takayuki Matsuda said iodine three times the normal level was detected there — about one twenty-sixth of the level of a chest X-ray in one liter of water.
"Please do not overreact, and act calmly," Chief Cabinet spokesman Yukio Edano said in the government's latest appeal to ease public concerns. "Even if you eat contaminated vegetables several times, it will not harm your health at all."
Edano said Tokyo Electric would compensate farmers affected by bans on milk, spinach and canola.
The World Health Organization said Japan will have to do more to reassure the public about food safety.
"Walking outside for a day and eating food repeatedly are two different things. This is why they're going to have to take some decisions quickly in Japan to shut down and stop food being used completely from zones which they feel might be affected," WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said.
In a travel warning, the State Department offered potassium iodide to its staff in Japan as a precaution but advised its employees to refrain from taking the compound at this time. The government says it is making potassium iodide available "out of an abundance of caution" to its personnel and family members, and the compound should only be consumed after specific instruction from the U.S. government.
The troubles at Fukushima have in some ways overshadowed the natural catastrophe, threatening a wider disaster if the plant spews more concentrated forms of radiation than it has so far.
The nuclear safety agency and Tokyo Electric reported significant progress over the weekend and Monday. Electrical teams, having finished connecting three of the plant's six units, were working to connect the rest by Tuesday, the utility said.
Once done, however, pumps and other equipment have to be checked — and the reactors cleared of dangerous gas — before the power can be restored. For instance, a motorized pump to inject water into Unit 2's overheated reactor and spent fuel storage pool needs to be replaced, said Nishiyama, the official with NISA.
The World Bank said in a report Monday that Japan may need five years to rebuild from the disasters, which caused up to $235 billion in damage, saying the cost to private insurers will be up to $33 billion and that the government will spend $12 billion on reconstruction in the current national budget and much more later.
All told, police estimate around 18,400 people died from the 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami. More than 15,000 deaths are likely in Miyagi, the prefecture that took the full impact of the wave, said a police spokesman.
Police in other parts of the disaster area declined to provide estimates, but confirmed about 3,400 deaths. Nationwide, official figures show the disasters killed more than 8,800 people and left more than 12,600 missing, but those two lists may have some overlap.
The disasters have displaced another 452,000, who are in shelters.
FUKUSHIMA, Japan – Officials raced Monday to restore electricity to Japan's leaking nuclear plant, but getting the power flowing will hardly be the end of their battle: With its mangled machinery and partly melted reactor cores, bringing the complex under control is a monstrous job.
Restoring the power to all six units at the tsunami-damaged complex is key, because it will, in theory, power up the maze of motors, valves and switches that help deliver cooling water to the overheated reactor cores and spent fuel pools that are leaking radiation.
Ideally, officials believe it should only take a day to get the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear under control once the cooling system is up and running. In reality, the effort to end the crisis is likely to take weeks.
Late Monday night, the deputy director general of Japan's nuclear safety body suggested to reporters why there is so much uncertainty about when the job will be finished.
"We have experienced a very huge disaster that has caused very large damage at a nuclear power generation plant on a scale that we had not expected," said Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
The nuclear plant's cooling systems were wrecked by the massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan on March 11. Since then, conditions at the plant have been volatile; a plume of smoke rose from two reactor units Monday, prompting workers to evacuate.
In another setback, the plant's operator said Monday it had just discovered that some of the cooling system's key pumps at the complex's troubled Unit 2 are no longer functional — meaning replacements have to be brought in. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it had placed emergency orders for new pumps, but how long it would take for them to arrive was unclear.
If officials can get the power turned on, get the replacement pumps working and get enough seawater into the reactors and spent fuel pools, it would only take a day to bring the temperatures back to a safe, cooling stage, said Ryohei Shiomi, an official with the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
And if not?
"There is nothing else we can do but keep doing what we've been doing," Shiomi said.
In other words, officials would continue dousing the plant in seawater — and hope for the best.
An official of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in Washington that Units 1, 2 and 3 have all seen damage to their reactor cores, but that containment is intact. The assessment dispels some concerns about Unit 2, where an explosion damaged a pressure-reducing chamber around the bottom of the reactor core.
"I would say optimistically that things appear to be on the verge of stabilizing," said Bill Borchardt, the commission's executive director for operations.
Monday's evacuation of workers from the plant came after smoke began rising from the spent fuel storage pool of the plant's problem-plagued Unit 3, Tokyo Electric spokesman Hiroshi Aizawa said. Unit 3 also alarmed plant officials over the weekend with a sudden surge of pressure in its reactor core.
What caused the smoke to billow first from Unit 3 and then from Unit 2 is under investigation, nuclear safety agency officials said. Still, in the days since the earthquake and tsunami, both reactors have overheated and seen explosions. Workers were evacuated from the area to buildings nearby, though radiation levels remained steady, the officials said.
Problems set off by the disasters have ranged far beyond the shattered northeast coast and the wrecked nuclear plant, handing the government what it has called Japan's worst crisis since World War II. Rebuilding may cost as much as $235 billion. Police estimate the death toll will surpass 18,000.
Traces of radiation are tainting vegetables and some water supplies, although in amounts the government and health experts say do not pose a risk to human health in the short term. That has caused the government to ban sale of raw milk, spinach and canola from prefectures over a swath from the plant toward Tokyo. The government has just started to test fish and shellfish.
Tokyo Electric said radioactive iodine about 127 times normal levels and radioactive cesium about 25 times above the norm were detected in seawater 100 yards (meters) off the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Despite that concentration, a senior official at the International Atomic Energy Agency said the ocean was capable of absorbing vast amounts of radiation with no effect and that — comparatively — the radioactivity released so far by the plant was minor.
"I would stress that the levels concerned are really very, very small, compared to the natural radioactivity that you find in the oceans," said Graham Andrew, senior adviser to IAEA chief Yukiya Amano. "The quantities are tiny compared to the reservoir of natural radioactivity in the oceans."
The Health Ministry has advised Iitate, a village of 6,000 people about 19 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of the plant, not to drink tap water due to elevated levels of iodine. Ministry spokesman Takayuki Matsuda said iodine three times the normal level was detected there — about one twenty-sixth of the level of a chest X-ray in one liter of water.
"Please do not overreact, and act calmly," Chief Cabinet spokesman Yukio Edano said in the government's latest appeal to ease public concerns. "Even if you eat contaminated vegetables several times, it will not harm your health at all."
Edano said Tokyo Electric would compensate farmers affected by bans on milk, spinach and canola.
The World Health Organization said Japan will have to do more to reassure the public about food safety.
"Walking outside for a day and eating food repeatedly are two different things. This is why they're going to have to take some decisions quickly in Japan to shut down and stop food being used completely from zones which they feel might be affected," WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said.
In a travel warning, the State Department offered potassium iodide to its staff in Japan as a precaution but advised its employees to refrain from taking the compound at this time. The government says it is making potassium iodide available "out of an abundance of caution" to its personnel and family members, and the compound should only be consumed after specific instruction from the U.S. government.
The troubles at Fukushima have in some ways overshadowed the natural catastrophe, threatening a wider disaster if the plant spews more concentrated forms of radiation than it has so far.
The nuclear safety agency and Tokyo Electric reported significant progress over the weekend and Monday. Electrical teams, having finished connecting three of the plant's six units, were working to connect the rest by Tuesday, the utility said.
Once done, however, pumps and other equipment have to be checked — and the reactors cleared of dangerous gas — before the power can be restored. For instance, a motorized pump to inject water into Unit 2's overheated reactor and spent fuel storage pool needs to be replaced, said Nishiyama, the official with NISA.
The World Bank said in a report Monday that Japan may need five years to rebuild from the disasters, which caused up to $235 billion in damage, saying the cost to private insurers will be up to $33 billion and that the government will spend $12 billion on reconstruction in the current national budget and much more later.
All told, police estimate around 18,400 people died from the 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami. More than 15,000 deaths are likely in Miyagi, the prefecture that took the full impact of the wave, said a police spokesman.
Police in other parts of the disaster area declined to provide estimates, but confirmed about 3,400 deaths. Nationwide, official figures show the disasters killed more than 8,800 people and left more than 12,600 missing, but those two lists may have some overlap.
The disasters have displaced another 452,000, who are in shelters.
Local people are out on a street to inspect the aftermath of a massive tsunami triggered by March 11 earthquake, in Tagajo, near Sendai, northern Japan
Local people are out on a street to inspect the aftermath of a massive tsunami triggered by March 11 earthquake, in Tagajo, near Sendai, northern Japan
Electric poles stand tilted near a port in Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture (state) one day after a massive Tsunami triggered by a huge earthquake hit northern Japan
a man snaps a picture of the aftermath of tsunami following Friday's massive tsunami triggered by a powerful earthquake in Sendai, Miyagi prefecture, northern Japan
Volunteers arrange food, water, medicine and blankets donated for evacuees from Futaba, a city near the quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, at the evacuees' new shelter near Tokyo, March 20.
Volunteers serve hot-and-sour soup during lunch Sunday in an emergency refugee center set up inside the junior high school in Rikuzentakata, Japan.
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