「earthquake」タグアーカイブ

Are you prepared?

We all remember what we were doing on March 11, 2011- I had arrived at the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale, Pennsylvania 8 days prior. I was suffering from insomnia at the time so I was wide awake laying in my bed around 2am when I received a text from my mother that read, “There was a 9.0 earthquake in Japan.” 9.0, surely, it was bad.

I am a Los Angeles native so earthquakes are nothing new to me, but 9.0, that’s scary. My mother taught me to always keep shoes by my bed just in case I had to run outside suddenly. I’ve always done that, but storing food and water, keeping emergency supplies and having an emergency backpack ready never made it to the list of routine tasks to do.  I always knew about the importance of preparing for a disaster, but I’ve never felt the need to truly be ready…until now!

Since coming to Japan, I haven’t been worried about earthquakes but the one on January 1st unsettled me a bit. My former housemates had starting preparing emergency water and food supplies last March, but most of the water and food were reaching their expiration date, so I decided to clean out the supplies.

whiteboard

Then, on January 28th, we felt a rather large and steady earthquake around 7:10am.

earthquake

Ironically, I had written that note to my housemates just a day before this earthquake.

-If you don’t have an emergency backpack, go to a website and find out how to prepare one.

-If your shared house does not have an emergency plan, create one.

-If you don’t have emergency food, water and supplies, buy some.

Are you prepared? I’m not, but I will be.

Namaste

Saving Electricity

Due to the nuclear power plant problem caused by the March 11th earthquake, the government is requesting everyone to not use electricity as much as you can.  In order to help preserve the electricity many people have been restricting their usage of air conditioners, including myself.

To help people succeed with not using the air conditioners, stores are offering a variety of products to help us cool down.  One popular item is a kind-of towel that you wrap around your neck and either you can put ice packs inside or another one if you get it wet it stays cool for up to 7 hours!  Many of my students are using these and I think they are good for a bit.  However, I do see some down side to them.  The ones which you get wet don’t really stay that cool for a long time and the ones with ice packs soon turn into water and actually turn warm under the sun!  Oh no!

Another product that I found is a kind-of spray that contains something like menthol or something to that effect.  So when you spray it directly onto your scalp, it really cools it down.  And it has this amazing popping sensation so it feels like pop rocks on your head!  I love it!

Unfortunately with all these products I still usually turn the air conditioner on right when I get home (I bike home and am so hot!!!).  I usually end up letting the room get cooler and then turn it off and then turn it back on when it gets hot and so-on and so-on.  I wonder if this is helping or maybe even making it worse?

How do you act in a crisis?

After the Tohoku Earthquake, many foreign media outlets spoke of the impressive order and civility of the Japanese people.  And of course, in the middle of such destructive chaos, the reality that there was no looting or other crimes is a great and impressive feat.

However, if you take a closer look, in Tokyo (far from the disaster areas) people were lining up at the grocery stores, scrambling for the last bottle of water or cup of noodles.  Irrespective of the stricken area and only thinking of oneself, this only made anxiety spread across Tokyo and beyond.

Uncertainty will do that to people.  If they would have thought clearly, they would have realized that buying many bottles of milk was useless.  However, in a situation where one can not see clearly, running out and buying up all that you can feels safe.

Until the Fukushima nuclear power plant is stable, the prospect of the disaster area’s reconstruction will definitely not improve.  Despite a situation like this, many people in Tokyo, who were unharmed or received no damage to their personal belongings, are slowly but surely started to move forward and think optimistically.   Furthermore, the government is repeatedly saying “This is safe and that is safe” however, many people up north are far from obtaining that sort of piece of mind and ridding themselves from uncertainty.  So the next time we go shopping, let’s think of them and buy wisely.

Earthquake Aftermath

As I sat at my computer pondering the idea of starting back up with my blog entries I thought to myself, “Where do you find the words to continue on after what has happened in Northern Japan?” Everything that I came up with seems so trivial compared to the fact that hundreds of thousands of people lost everything and over ten thousand people lost their lives.  But in the wake of this horrible tragedy I have been witness to an amazing amount of community benevolence.  From the people in Japan courageously trying to grasp on to any kind of normalcy in their everyday lives to the funding raising events around the world, I now know that they can and will overcome this.

After a three week hiatus in Colorado, I look forward to heading back to Tokyo.  Sure, I am a little weary of the Fukushima plant ordeal but my life is there.  I can’t wait to see my friends, students and neighborhood.  We will continue onward stronger albeit cautious into our new future.

For further information on the earthquake and all it’s subsequent tribulations as well as organizations that you can donate to, click the link below for more information.

http://www.thetokyopost.com/tag/earthquake/

Earthquakes = Scary.

With the recent earthquakes and subsequent causalities around the world, I naturally start to feel uneasy about the fact that I live in Tokyo.  Recent earthquakes in China, Haiti, Chile and the recent New Zealand earthquake makes it seem like Tokyo has got to be right down the line.  I can’t help but think morbid thoughts like “it’s just a matter of time”.

However, I do have faith in the fact that Japanese pride themselves on quality and that they have certain codes that one must follow when building a structure (at least the new ones! When was this building built?).  This doesn’t necessarily ward off the possibility of mass causalities however it may give some people a bit of relief.

For example, The Great Hanshin Earthquake in Kobe, was one of the worst earthquakes in Japan’s recent history with 6,000 causalities.  However, according to Wikipedia, despite the extensive damage to the city center, most of the deaths were due to the tiled roofs  (meant to resist typhoons) in the Hyogo Prefecture.

So as I was walking around Shinjuku last night staring up at the huge buildings and trying to fathom how they could resist a huge earthquake, I was a little relieved to know that Japanese building practices are safe, at least that is what it seems.  It’s still all a bit scary and makes me feel like a hardhead for moving here purposely from the natural disaster free zone of Denver, Colorado (although looking at an earthquake website there are quite a few in Colorado!).

Nonetheless, I send out my sympathies to people around the world dealing with this type of disaster and any others for that matter.  I certainty hope that I don’t have it happen to me or my loved ones but if it does, let me handle it with grace and dignity.

Night-time earthquakes

Yesterday night, there were two perceptible earthquakes in the Kanto region. The first one was at 1:02 am, the second at 1:45 am.

The second earthquake was a bit stronger and long, with 5 in intensity in the north of Ibaraki prefecture, and 3 in Tokyo. In the house where I live, the doors started trembling and the hole building was shaking. What is important in this kind of situations, is to stay calm, even if it’s not an easy thing to do, especially with night-time earthquakes as they come when you’re sleeping.

I think that opening windows and doors to secure an escape route is important. But one must not run out during the earthquake. It is also better to have some shoes nearby to avoid walking on shattered glass.

There was no damage yesterday, but it was not easy to sleep again after that.