Japanese earthquake

[Atticus Finch]

Atticus Finch, still, loss of personal things that are filled with memories--photographs, keepsakes, mementos-- are devastating.
It must have hurt very very much.

Thank you, Ma'am. Yes, it was a tad difficult at first, but all turned out well. I have to admit, though, Hurricane Floyd left me with a huge soft spot in my heart for anyone who suffers from the elements. Your comment in post fifty-seven about not changing nature but living with her, struck that chord with me.

AF

 

[PrettySquareGal]

LaMedicine, how are you doing today?

 

[LaMedicine]

Thank you PSG and everyone on FL, I'm fine
Tokyo's fine, too

I realize there is a lot of concern about the Fukushima (I noticed elsewhere --not in FL--that someone had it confused with Fukuoka, which is a city in the south) generators, and it's true that the issue is very very serious, but neither is the situation deteriorating quickly. Of course, even after the situation is under control and stabilized, it is going to take a lot of time and a lot of work to completely resolve the situation, and we're painfully aware of that, too.
However, this city is approximately 140 miles southwest from the site. The radiation readings are released periodically daily, and though they are higher than usual, no where high enough to endanger anyone's health. While above ground nucelar experiments were going on, the air was constantly exposed to radioactive elements released from those experiments, and readings from those experiements were obviously much higher than that from the power plant, where all nuclear fission had been successfully stopped, and what is going on is the difficulty with the cooling of the fuel rods and the containment of the radioactive material, which are both done by keeping the fuel rods immersed in circulating cool water, and it's this water circulation system that got knocked out, not by the earthquake itself, but the tsunami that hit one hour later, and brought down the structures that supported the backup system.

I was talking with my brother last night, and he said that a lot of his friends and acquaintances outside Japan overlap the images of the tsunami stricken areas with Tokyo, and are under the impression that Tokyo is like that, too, which is a complete misunderstanding.
True, there were a few--and only a few--buildings that were damaged. There was a fire at Odaiba, and the ceiling of the hall of Kudan Kaikan, built in 1934, fell which caused 2 deaths and 25 injuries, a few of them serious, plus the slope of the multilevel parking lot of Costco in suburban Tokyo collapsed, which also caused another death. Two deaths due to toxic fume at a plastics factory where some bottles containing chemicals broke. The 7th death was reported a few days ago, which I'm not sure what the cause was, but it may have been one of the Kudan Kaikan victims. Thre are other injuries due to falls and being hit from falling objects--the quake itself was very strong, and also lasted 5 minutes, so at least one or two objects fell in every home. There also was a bridge somewher in Tokyo that fell, but I don't know where, and there are some damaged roads but not so bad that you can't drive, plus areas that are relatively recent land reclamation sites (including Tokyo Disneyland/Disney Sea) saw some liquefaction.
But that is about it. Not anything like Northridge, not anything like Kobe in the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji earthquake. Tokyo is quite comfortable and habitable. Okay, there are the aftershocks, and that can be uncomfortable for some. But they aren't really that bad, especially after having exprienced the big one.
We are also going through scheduled blackouts, but my home is not included in the designated areas. My workplace is, but for reasons unknown, we haven't experieced it yet, while areas only a mile or so away are going through the blackout. So, personally, I am yet to experience that. Besides, a few hours without electricity is nothing compared to what the people in the disater area is going through.

Winter has been making what hopefully is the last curtain call for this season the last few days, and we have been having very cold weather--the temperature in the stricken areas went down into the low 20s, and it snowed yesterday, though not in Tokyo. We had a fine clear day, with strong north winds. A lot of the places still lack electricity, gas, and fuel, so the refugees are suffering from the cold right now. The weather forecast says the cold will let up tomorrow, and I sure hope that will be so.

A week has passed since the catastrophe. The true extent of the damages--both the human casualities and the property damage--is still not yet fully known. A lot of the areas along the coastline are still isolated due to the topography and the water still remaining inland. Contact between people are still not yet fully established in these areas. Among those how's whereabouts are unknown, are quite a few non-Japanese, too. Although many of them may be taking refugee in areas that are isolated, some may have been victims of the tsunami. The final death count will quite surely surpass 10,000, judging from the present death count (over 6,500 at the moment) and the missing reported, and may even surpass 20,000.
However, while the coastline is still far from recovery, the inland towns and cities are slowly recovering, and life is starting to head back to some semblance of normalcy.

 

[AmateisGal]

LaMedicine, I'm so grateful that you are safe, and I am also grateful for these updates. I think our news has a way of skewering the truth - especially where the nuclear situation is concerned. It is rather unfortunate, for example, that some people in the U.S. have felt the need to buy iodide pills for fear of the radiation crossing the ocean from Japan!

I continue to keep you all in my thoughts...

 

[LaMedicine]

Thank you.
IAEA's most recent update states that the radation level in Tokyo and other cities are far below the danger level to require any action.
Plus, they have shown no indication of Idoine-131 nor Cessium-137.
IAEA Briefing on Fukushima Nuclear Emergency (18 March 2011, 14:00 UTC)

 

[Tomasso]

LaMedicine, I'm so grateful that you are safe

Stop it....you're gonna make cry.....No joke.........

 

[PrettySquareGal]

It is rather unfortunate, for example, that some people in the U.S. have felt the need to buy iodide pills for fear of the radiation crossing the ocean from Japan!

I think it's prudent to be prepared for the unknown.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

LaMedicine, thank you for the update! Please keep checking in! I know we've never met but I am concerned!

 

[AmateisGal]

I think it's prudent to be prepared for the unknown.

Of course, but I don't think this situation warrants it.

 

[Effingham]

I hope people won't mind if I throw out an inspirational piece.

This is slightly edited for space, but I left the language (including the naughty words) intact as it really seems to suit the sense of "holy crap"-ness. The full source is here. It's from "Badass of the Week," and I present to you Akaiwa Hideaki.

On the afternoon of Friday, March 11th, Hideaki Akaiwa was at his job, dully trudging out the final bitter minutes of his work week in his office just outside the port city of Ishinomaki in Japan's Miyagi Prefecture. What this guy's day job actually is, I honestly have no idea, but based on the extremely limited information I have on the guy I can only presume that his daily nine-to-five routine probably falls somewhere between the motorcycle chase scenes from the movie Akira and John Rambo's antics in the book version of First Blood on the ridiculousness/badassitude scale. But that's only speculation.

The one thing we know for certain is that Akaiwa was at work on the 11th, when suddenly, right as he was in the middle of jumping over a giant Gatling-gun-armed robot while riding on a rocket-powered jetbike he'd MacGuyvered together out of vines, tree branches, and a couple thumbtacks, something terrible happened -- an earthquake. And not just any earthquake -- a mega ****ing brain-busting insane earthquake the likes of which the island of Japan had never had the misfortune of experiencing before. The ground shook, buildings crumbled, lights smashed apart, and the entire population of the country froze in fear as fault line below Japan rumbled for a ridiculous two-plus minutes.

But, amazingly, an 8.9 magnitude earthquake wasn't the worst thing to happen to the town Ishinomaki on that horrible day. No, that was afterwards, when the tremors from the earthquake churned up a raging tsunami that took a bustling city of 162,000 people and suddenly turned it into little more than a ten-foot-deep lake.

...

Needless to say, poor Hideaki Akaiwa, concerned for his family, rushed out of his office in time to see his city completely submerged under an obscene ten feet of water that buried everything from houses to businesses. He ran to the high water mark and stared helplessly into the sprawling lake that once used to be his home.

But it gets even worse. Hideaki's wife of twenty years was still buried inside the lake somewhere. She hadn't gotten out. She wasn't answering her phone. The water was still rising, the sun was setting, cars and shit were swooshing past on a river of sea water, and and rescue workers told him there was nothing that could be done -- the only thing left was to sit back, wait for the military to arrive, and hope that they can get in there and rescue the survivors before it's too late. With 10,000 citizens of Ishinomaki still missing and unaccounted for, the odds weren't great that Hideaki would ever see his wife again.

For most of us regular folks, this is the sort of shit that would make us throw up our hands, swear loudly, and resign ourselves to a lifetime of hopeless misery.

But Hideaki Akaiwa isn't a regular guy. He's a ****ing insane badass, and he wasn't going to sit back and just let his wife die alone, freezing to death in a miserable water-filled tomb. He was going after her. No matter what.

How the **** Hideaki Akaiwa got a hold of a wetsuit and a set of SCUBA gear is one of the great mysteries of the world. I'm roughly twenty hours into Fallout 3 and I'm lucky to come across a ****ing vacuum cleaner in that godforsaken post-apocalyptic wasteland, yet this guy is in the middle of a real-life earth-shaking mecha-disaster and he's coming up with oxygen tanks, waterproof suits, and rebreather systems seemingly out of thin air. I guess when you're a truly unstoppable badass, you, by definition, don't let anything stand in your way. You make shit happen, all the time, no matter what.

Regardless of how he came across this equipment (borrowing, stealing, buying, beating up a Yakuza SCUBA diving demolitions expert, etc.) Hideaki threw on his underwater survival gear, rushed into the ********** tsunami, and dove beneath the rushing waves, determined to rescue his wife or die trying. ... He dove down into the water, completely submerged in the freezing cold, pitch black rushing current on all sides, and started swimming through the underwater ruins of his former hometown.

Surrounded by incredible hazards on all sides, ranging from obscene currents capable of dislodging houses from their moorings, sharp twisted metal that could easily have punctured his oxygen line (at best) or impaled him (at worst), and with giant ****ing cars careening through the water like toys, he pressed on. Past broken glass, past destroyed houses, past downed power lines arcing with electrical current, through undertow that could have dragged him out to sea never to be heard from again, he searched.

Hideaki maintained his composure and navigated his way through the submerged city, finally tracking down his old house. He quickly swam through to find his totally-freaked-out wife, alone and stranded on the upper level of their house, barely keeping her head above water. He grabbed her tight, and presumably sharing his rebreather with her, dragged her out of the wreckage to safety. She survived.

But Hideaki Akaiwa still wasn't done yet.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering what the **** is more intense than commandeering a wet suit, face-punching a tsunami and dragging your wife of two decades out of the flooded wreckage of your home, but, no shit, it gets even better. You see, Hideaki's mother also lived in Ishinomaki, and she was still unaccounted for. I think you all know where this is going.

First, Hideaki searched around the evacuation shelters and other areas, looking for his mom among the ragtag groups of survivors who had been lucky enough to flee to higher ground. She might have escaped, and he needed to find her. Now. He ran through the city like some post-apocalyptic action hero, desperately trying to track her down, but when a couple of days went by without any sign of her, he knew what he had to do. The water had only receded a few inches by this point, the rescue teams weren't working quickly enough for his tastes, and Hideaki Akaiwa ****ing once again took matters into his own hands -- rushing back into the waterlogged city looking for his mom.

So, once again Hideaki navigated his way through the Atlantean city, picking his way through crumbling wreckage, splintered wood, and shredded metal to find his elderly mother. After another grueling trek, he tracked her down on the upper levels of a house -- she'd been stranded there for four days, and would almost certainly have died without the timely aid of her son. He brought her to safety somehow as well, as you might expect at this point.

Now, while most people would have been content in the knowledge that their family was safe, Hideaki Akaiwa isn't the sort of badass who's going to hang up his flippers and quit just because he'd taken care of his own personal shit -- this guy made an oath to keep going back into the wreckage on his own to find people and help them to safety. Today this 43-year-old Japanese badass rides out every single day, multiple times a day, riding around on a bicycle with his legs wrapped in plastic to keep himself dry. His only equipment ñ a pocketknife, a canteen, a flashlight, a change of clothes, and a badass set of aviator sunglasses ñ packed into a trusty trio of backpacks, he rides out in search of people needing rescue, a modern-day, real-life action hero.

Tonight, I'm having a drink in that man's honor.

Damn.

 

[The Good]

I hope people won't mind if I throw out an inspirational piece.

This is slightly edited for space, but I left the language (including the naughty words) intact as it really seems to suit the sense of "holy crap"-ness. The full source is here. It's from "Badass of the Week," and I present to you Akaiwa Hideaki.



Tonight, I'm having a drink in that man's honor.

Damn.

Thank you for sharing this. Akaiwa Hideaki's very brave to have done that, and continue carrying on with this! He's definitely an inspirational figure, and a real badass. People like him under such difficult circumstances are few and far between...

 

[LaMedicine]

People like him under such difficult circumstances are few and far between...

I beg to differ. The areas that were hit worst are all closely knit local societies, so there were many people helping each other to survive. Maybe not as eyecatching as this story, but plenty of unobserved heroics.
I hope you'll all raise a glass to every one involved in the rescue effort, and also to the men working to control the situation at Fukushima Daiichi power plant as well.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I beg to differ. The areas that were hit worst are all closely knit local societies, so there were many people helping each other to survive. Maybe no as eyecatching as this story, but plenty of unobserved heroics.
I hope you'll all raise a glass to every one involved in the rescue effort, and also to the men working to control the situation at Fukushima Daiichi power plant as well.

I agree! Bravery comes in different forms!

 

[Effingham]

I hope you'll all raise a glass to every one involved in the rescue effort, and also to the men working to control the situation at Fukushima Daiichi power plant as well.

I can do that. I have a couple of large bottles of scotch here. I'll be totally potchkied when I'm done, but it's worth it.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I can do that. I have a couple of large bottles of scotch here. I'll be totally potchkied when I'm done, but it's worth it.

I don't drink so I raised my metaphorical glass and donated to the Red Cross.

 

[Effingham]

That works, too.

 

[LaMedicine]

Three weeks today since the earthquake-tsunami.
[video=youtube;tu056xg4hc8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu056xg4hc8[/video]
30-45' (10-15 meters) tsunami that gutted out 3-4 floor buildings. Towards the end of the footage, multiple oil tanks can be seen floating. The oil spill from them later caught fire that went on for 2-3 days, and gutted out the debris that the tsunami left.
The latests analysis is that the sea floor rose by 15' (5m) which caused the waves to rise by another 15-20' (5-10m) as they approached the coast and the sea became shallower.

Total of dead and missing count is over 28,000 now, and an intensive sea-air search along the coast by the combined Japanese US forces started today to go on over the weekend.

On the other hand, the nuclear power plant is still in precareous condition. Two steps forward, one step backward. TEPCO is trying hard to contain and control the leak but is not yet quite successful.
Radiation levels have gone down in most places where it rose, though, and many are back to background level, which means the rise was the result of the hydrogen explosions early out. The immediate area around Fukushima Daiichi is another story. The cleanup effort will be long, painful, and difficult.

In the meanwhile, Tokyo is almost completely back to normal, though stores and entertainment centers have quit pulling all-nighters. The rotating blackouts have been called off the last few days, and will be called off over the weekend, too.
Tokyo Disneyland-Tokyo Disney Sea is located right outside Tokyo, and occupies part of a large land reclamation area that suffered severe liquefaction. The park is closed indefinitely, until the parking lot can be cleaned up, plus the electricity issue is stabilised.

One of our staff spent the last few days in Kyoto and said that it wasn't as crowded as she had expected. Not may foreign tourists. So, if there's anyone interested in visiting Kyoto, this might be a good time, actually. Kyoto is several hundred miles removed from the disaster area, and totally unaffected.

 

[Dan'l]

LaMedicine,

We still have all of Japan in our thoughts and prayers for the coming weeks and months. Thank you for the update.

I would love to visit Kyoto right now. When I first learned of the disaster the people of Japan were my first concern and then those beautiful gardens.

Best wishes,
Dan'l

 

[scotrace]

Thank you again. LaMedicine. It's almost too much to comprehend.

 

[sheeplady]

Thank you for the update LaMedicine. Although I am really saddened by the catastrophe, I am so hopeful and honored as a human being to think, read, and hear of the Japanese people (and others) who are pulling together and helping one another. It is heartening to think of all of the good people everywhere who are helping one another out.

There was a very good NOVA special on the quake, looking scienitifically at what happened. It is available online through PBS, although the quality is a bit poor. (If you check it out, please be warned that some of the footage can be a little disturbing).