Abbotsford man feels gov’t failed him while stuck in Japan
Posted Mar 29, 2011 02:52:59 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
ABBOTSFORD (NEWS1130) – He escaped the earthquake and tsunami in Japan with just the clothes on his back and now he’s safe at home in Abbotsford. But Michael Luzia says he got little help from the Canadian government.
Luzia was teaching English in the coastal town of Onagawa on a tiny island when the earthquake hit. “There were about 600 people living on the island. That night, only 150 were accounted for. The rest, we have no idea,” he laments.
After a few days with little water and food, he called the Canadian embassy asking how he could make it home.
“I said, ‘I want to get home. I’m a Canadian citizen. I’m in Japan. What can you do to help me?’ And they said ‘It’s not a state of emergency, so we can’t do anything to help you at this time,'” he recalls.
So he caught rides with friends and made it to Tokyo where he was charged $200 for a temporary passport. He barely had enough money to pay for a flight home.
He says the ordeal left him unhappy. “Before, I was always proud to be Canadian, but they weren’t doing anything to help us.”
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