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It’s been almost a year since the quake brought Christine and her mother, brother and sister to this muddy sprawl of tents by a garbage-choked canal, where planes roar overhead and cars and trucks zoom close by.

 Her memories of Jan. 12, 2010 are vivid and sad. “We were standing in the middle of the street: myself, my mum and my younger sister,” she said. “We were holding each other. We were in a circle, screaming: ‘Jesus, save us, save us.’

The school is only 100 meters from shore. A CNN crew accompanied Asokawa, principal of the school, on Tuesday as he climbed the steps and inspected the total damage to the school for the first time. There is mud, seaweed and fishing nets in the top floor of the 3-story building.

On one of the walls of the school the clock is frozen at 2:46 -- the time when the 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck. Toys, bags, wood, sand and seaweed are tangled in confusion. A stool hangs from the ceiling. Backpacks were orderly placed on cupboards, where 107 students ages 6 to 12 left them on Friday, when they ran for their lives.

But Asokawa is worried: the school has 108 students. One child was absent that day and he is missing. The rest of his students are in a nearby shelter, taken care of by their teachers, he said.