By ELIZABETH VALK LONG President

A disaster on the scale of the Japan earthquake is a human tragedy, but for journalists it also becomes a mundane problem of logistics. When the first reports came in from Kobe last Tuesday, Tokyo bureau chief Edward Desmond dispatched reporter Irene Kunii to the scene. As the death toll rose by dozens an hour, Desmond packed extra sweaters and computer batteries and headed south himself, with photographer Greg Davis and interpreter Yoshihiko Asai. They could fly only as close as Osaka, where roads were clogged with relief-effort vehicles and people hoping to rescue family members.

From there it was a matter of improvisation--persuading someone to drive them toward Kobe, then stopping at the suburb of Nishinomiya, where damage was appalling. In Kobe, Kunii had to cover neighborhoods on foot, masking her mouth from smoke and fumes that burned the throat. One night she took shelter on the concrete floor of a school when the temperature was below freezing. Finally she was able to borrow a bicycle. The owner's stipulation: it must eventually be passed on to another needy person. When she left for Tokyo, Kunii bequeathed it to an arriving German correspondent, wishing she had been that lucky early on.

In the capital, picture researcher Eiko Reed organized the photo coverage, and researchers Hiroko Tashiro and Satsuki Oba interviewed seismologists, engineers and politicians to assess the impact of the quake.

Desmond, who has been with Time for 11 years, is known for his analytical talents, whether pulling together disparate material, as he did in covering the North Korean nuclear-inspection debacle, or thinking beyond immediate events, as when he outlined the implications of President Kim Il Sung's death. But he has reported on catastrophes too, from Afghanistan to Northern Ireland.

The Japan earthquake was different. ``The country is a really efficient, orderly place,'' he observes. ``The people conduct themselves with great self- control. Shoganai--it can't be helped--is a phrase I heard a lot last week. It was a sense of monumental tragedy that had arrived and would pass, like so many before it.'' Looking up at the full moon after long nights of work, he found it hard to believe the disaster had really happened. Still, he stocked up on rations and bought helmets for his wife and three children.