The Boston Herald’s Donna Goodison discusses tsunami damage with Global Rescue’s CEO Dan Richards:

Bay State businesses scrambled to recover from yesterday’s massive earthquake in Japan, with one firm asking employees to sleep at a Tokyo office because commuting is impossible.

But the first order of business was making sure everyone was safe.

Dan Richards, CEO of Global Rescue, a Hub-based medical evacuation company with some corporate clients in the hardest-hit areas of the quake zone, said it will take time to account for everyone.

“There’s been some pretty severe infrastructure disruptions, and that includes communication capabilities. It’s not uncommon in these disaster-type scenarios for people to go unaccounted for a period of time,” he said.

More than 200 New England companies have operations in Japan, according to the Massachusetts Office of International Trade & Investment, and the Asian nation — which has the world’s third largest economy — is Massachusetts’ fifth-largest trading partner.