Message to Japanese media: “Stop asking people to open their fridges during a blackout!”

As if things in Chiba aren’t bad enough, now these people have to put up with nosy parkers letting the cold air out.

As Typhoon Faxai slammed into Japan’s Chiba Prefecture, it caused widespread damage and disruption. While the transport chaos at Narita Airport subsided relatively quickly, upwards of 640,000 homes were still left without power throughout the prefecture because of toppled power lines.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the following day saw a severe spike in temperatures and humidity in the area that had to cope without air conditioning or refrigeration.

That video above is a very long news report showing how people in the area are coping with conditions that are arguably worse that the typhoon itself. However, at the part the video is cued to you’ll see something kind of jerky pulled by the reporters, which was noticed in other coverage of the disaster by Twitter user Assamu (@lemon2059).

マスコミ各社へ 停電の取材で一般家庭を訪れた時、冷蔵庫を開けさせないで下さい。 冷蔵庫は通電していなくても保冷庫になるのでドアを開閉すると内部の冷気が逃げ、外の温気が入り食材が腐ります。 昨年の大阪台風の時5日間開けずにいると食材は無事でした。

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あっさむ (@lemon2059) September 10, 2019

▲ “Dear Mass Media,
When covering a power outage, please do not get the homes you visit to open their fridge doors. A refrigerator becomes cold storage even when the power is off. So if you open and close the door the cold will escape, the hot air will enter, and the contents will rot.
Last year when the typhoon hit Osaka I kept it closed for five days and the food inside was fine.”

As Assamu points out, the fridge’s sealing allows it to retrain cold air for some time, even when it isn’t producing any. However, the moment that seal is broken, the cold air rapidly escapes and the effect can be lost in a matter of seconds.

So, these doors should be opened as sparingly as possible and only when needed – not when a camera crew wants to get a shot of it. Here’s another example of these looky-loo reporters in action.

▼ More fridge-peeping

These examples might make it seem like ANN is the only culprit, but it is a problem found in reporters from many news outlets. Online, NHK seems to be the main target of backlash.

“I saw a reporter from the public broadcaster doing that. Obviously it was dark and had no power. I’m not sure what they were expecting.”
“Dumb NHK reporter: ‘Can you open the fridge a bit?'”
“I saw that too on NHK and thought the same thing!”
“That’s important information!”
“Or better yet, let them open it and then give them a bottle of ice to put inside. How about that, media?”
“My freezer lasted about two days during the Hokkaido blackout, but a fridge doesn’t need to stay as cold I guess.”
“NHK is a natural disaster.”
“There’s no way food would last five days in a fridge without power. False information like that is worse that what the media is doing.”

It’s important to keep in mind, though, that the amount of time a fridge can keep food without power largely depends on both the quality of the appliance and the contents, but five days does seem like quite a stretch. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, it is said that a freezer can hold out about two days without power if fully stocked and unopened. However, a fridge is only given a few hours under the same circumstances. 

But the key lesson to take away from this is that the fridge is a still a valuable tool during a crisis and one that needs to be treated very carefully. So, when stocking up on supplies, remember that ice (or dry ice if possible) can be just as precious as food to prolong the fridge’s usefulness.

It’s also good to know what alternatives are available for perishable food such as milk, by making sweet “jam” out of it, or putting frogs in it to prevent it from spoiling. Personally, I’d go with the jam, but to each their own.

Source: Twitter/@lemon2056, Hachima Kiko, USDA
Top image: SoraNews24

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