Tsunami Survival

As all of you have heard, a 9.0 earthquake hit Japan on Friday at about 2:45pm followed by a 10m tall tsunami. For starters in case you didn’t hear or haven’t gathered yet, for the moment I’m OK, but there are a few extra elements that may be hazardous to my health in the near future.

Although the earthquake may have been quite large the damage it caused did not seem so severe. From the footage I saw, only ceiling tiles and roof shingles seemed seriously affected. Yes, there were some larger fires but for the most part the earthquake was not impact the country as much as the Tsunami that followed. The Tsunami followed a few minutes after the earthquake and if you haven’t seen the images, it just consumed most of everything in its way. Parking lots, buildings, fields, cars, people. It’s very tragic and shocking to see.

My story is mostly uneventful but for clarity I thought I would explain. Interestingly enough, I don’t have access to Japanese television in my house so since arriving I’ve only had a handful of chances to watch it, but coincidentally enough I was watching TV at this exact moment. I was over at a friend’s house for coffee and he was remarking how he likes to leave the television on so that he becomes comfortable with the language. I rather thought the television in the background was rather distracting and in the back of my mind I was considering asking him to turn it off. For some reason I didn’t. The senate program was interrupted with a calm message informing us that an earthquake was eminent in the northern prefectures. The images seemed typical of a 6.5ish quake that they were reporting. I may have that confused somehow but the point is I wasn’t that shocked. I didn’t feel anything but apparently, Helene felt the house rock back and forth. I was told later that this was a horizontal earthquake which causes houses to teeter back and forth compared to vertical earthquake which causes buildings to fall.

The images that followed seemed right out of a movie. I watched a car sitting in a parking lot be approached by a puddle that eventually turned into a title wave consuming the car. Watching the car float away, the footage cut to a suspended highway with cars flipping off the side from the impact of the water. You can see most of this footage on You Tube by now. The most shocking is this one

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12725646

All the networks were down, probably swamped with panic so I left back to the house to calm Helene and tell her what was happening. The following day we saw the images on television of what was left after the event. To put it simply it was shocking. What makes this different for us compared to people overseas, is the look of the cities, meaning, these are the same buildings, cars, trains and fields that a person would see in my area but not in other countries. The shock was that it looked like it could easily have been in my city . The image of the JR train split in half is quite strong with me since I take a JR train every day.

But to give you some relief the picture here shows you where we are (arrow) and where the earthquake hit (the X) and the damaged areas are the red parts on the east coast. There was no effect in my area short of a loss of cell coverage and some brownouts.

The brownouts are what the real story is for me. Turns out that the earthquake damaged a few nuclear reactors on the coast and the backup generators have failed to work. The relief effort is trying hard to keep the reactor cool but there is huge fear that it might meltdown. Right now we are watching the news and wind direction information carefully in case there is an explosion. The radioactive cloud would probably flow right across Japan given the right wind speed. So some are freaking out and collecting supplies and others are suggesting I leave the country. Maybe they are right but it seems so incredible to me that it just doesn’t seem likely to escalate to such a level. Nonetheless, I’m watching the news (NHK) to be sure. It seems that all other news is about a day behind on events.

If the reactor were to blow and the Canadian government doesn’t try to evacuate me ,then the best I can do is seal up the house as best I can and wait it out. Maybe I’ll have health problems down the line but now I’m talking too hypothetically.

I’m glad that everyone I know appears to be unharmed so far and no truly personal tragedies have come up yet. We have made a few donations and some are even making videos to coordinate a relief effort. I wish all the best to those who have lost their homes, friends, businesses and belongings and I wish there was more that I could do to help.

If I missed anything here let me know.

Thank you so much to everyone who contacted me in the last few days. It truly heart-warming and overwhelming how many of you contacted me to make sure I was alright.

Thank you so much!!!

I will write more as I learn more.