The first foreign chartered flights to evacuate citizens from quake- and tsunami-hit Japan have taken off as uncertainty grows over whether efforts to douse a stricken nuclear power plant with water from the air has been effective.
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The United States and Britain have chartered flights for nationals trying to leave and China moved thousands of citizens to Tokyo for evacuation.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade advised Australians to leave Tokyo due to the radiation risk from the earthquake-damaged nuclear reactors, upgrading its travel advice to "do not travel" for the capital city Tokyo, its surrounding areas and Honshu Island north of Tokyo.
Despite the official advice, the Australian government has not organised charter flights for expatriates, instead advising they take commercial flights home.
"Australians in Tokyo and northern Honshuareas should, unless their presence is essential, leave to Southern Japan or elsewhere," the DFAT travel advice said, adding that Australians should also abide by a US advisory asking people to observe a 80-kilometre exclusion zone from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
As of 11.30pm last night, 14 Australians remained unaccounted for, with 4062 Australians, including 250 in affected areas, confirmed as safe, a DFAT spokeswoman said.
Airline tickets were scarce and some companies hired private jets to evacuate staff.
Not clear if helicopter water-bombing worked
The evacuations came as emergency workers frantically tried to battle the overheating of nuclear fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, spraying it with police water cannons, while military helicopters dropped tonnes of water.
But it was not clear if the measures worked, with the UN's nuclear watchdog saying: "It hasn't got worse, which is positive."
"The situation remains very serious but there has been no significant worsening since yesterday," Graham Andrew of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.
"It is still possible that it could get worse."
Chief government spokesman Yukio Edano told reporters: "Based on what experts have told us, it's important to have a certain level of water [in the pools] before we can start to see any positive effect."
Mr Andrew said the situation at the Daiichi plant's reactors No.1, No.2 and No.3 - whose cores he said had suffered damage - appeared to be relatively stable with seawater injected into all three units to cool them.
But reactor No.4 in particular remained a "major safety concern" he said, adding that no information was available on the water level in the spent fuel pond.
"The water levels in the reactor pressure vessels of reactors 5 and 6 have been declining,"; he added.
Work to reconnect power
Japanese engineers worked through the night to lay a 1.5-kilometre electricity cable to the crippled nuclear plant in the hope of restarting pumps desperately needed to pour cold water on the overheating fuel rods.
Officials could not say when the cable might be connected, but said work would stop on Friday morning to allow helicopters and fire trucks to resume pouring water on the Daiichi plant, about 240-kilometre north of Tokyo.
"Preparatory work has so far not progressed as fast as we had hoped;" an official of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) told a news briefing, adding that a cold snap was hampering the effort.
Dead and missing almost 15,000
The official toll of the dead and missing from the twin disasters, which pulverised Japan's north-east coast, now approached 15,000, police said, as aftershocks continued to rattle a jittery nation.
The number of confirmed dead rose to 5692, with more than 80,000 buildings damaged and 4798 destroyed.
But as Japanese and international teams mounted a massive search and relief effort, reports from some battered coastal towns suggested the final death toll could be far higher.
Millions of people have been left without water, electricity, fuel or enough food, and hundreds of thousands more are homeless, the misery compounded by heavy snowfalls, freezing cold and wet conditions.
A cold snap has brought heavy blizzards over Japan's north-east, covering the tsunami-razed region in deep snow, all but extinguishing hopes of finding anyone alive in the debris.
"We're already seeing families huddling around gas fires for warmth," said Save the Children's Steve McDonald.
"In these sorts of temperatures, young children are vulnerable to chest infections and flu," he added, estimating that the disaster had left 100,000 children homeless.
with agencies
