Earthquake/tsunami in Tohoku, North East Japan (11th March 2011)

[echineko 1]

Where did you see this?

[Tubby Beaver 209]

on the Discovery channel

[miller 1]

....on sky perfect

[soubriquet 0]

Back home, too soon, sadly. Had the opportunity to check out the condition of the expressway between Yamagata and Chiba.

 

There has been subsidence, particularly on the elevated sections, all the way. The car going thump thump ever time we crossed a bridge. The worst damage was in Fukushima and Ibaraki, not surprisingly, where there are a number of places where the hard shoulder has fallen away. Still managed the return trip in a smidge over 5 hours though, a record.

 

We also noticed a lot of houses with damaged roofs. Some with whole sections of tiles fallen away, but most with damage to the ridge tiles only. I guess the manufacturers are simply unable to cope with demand for new tiles at present. There's no roof damage in Yamagata. Everyone here uses sheet steel. The excess weight is exactly what you don't want in such a heavy snow area.

[iiyamadude 6]

Last week I went up to Tokamachi for the first time in quite a while and of course had to go through Sakae-mura which got the shindo 6 on March 12th. I wasn't expecting to see so much road damage actually, it's pretty rough in places with lots of bumps, parts part-repaired or in the process of being repaired. I'd say about 5km around Sakae, between the border of Nozawa village and Tsunan town it was worst.

[muikabochi 208]

Really, hmmm.

Just looked it was actually a shindo 6 in Sakae. Scary.

[SnowJapan.Com#4 5]

The guide that we have been putting together is now online:

 

http://www.snowjapan.com/e/japan-tohoku-earthquake/index.html

 

Any comments on that perhaps best in this thread:

http://www.snowjapanforums.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/414043/Great_East_Japan_Earthquake_ou.html

 

Hope you think it fits the purpose.

[cal 6]

On the news this evening they seem to be talking about the prospect of the melt-through GOO to go through and seep into the earth.

 

WTF are we going to catch a break with this?

[muikabochi 208]

Not yet, it would seem!

[grungy-gonads 54]

Quote:

The British government made contingency plans at the height of the Fukushima nuclear crisis which anticipated a "reasonable worst case scenario" of the plant releasing more radiation than Chernobyl, new documents released to the Guardian show.

The grim assessment was used to underpin plans by the British embassy in Tokyo to issue protective iodine pills to expats and visitors. It also prompted detailed plans by Cobra, the government's emergency committee, to scramble specialist teams to screen passengers returning from Japan at UK airports for radioactive contamination.

The UK government's response to the unfolding crisis is revealed in documents prepared for Sir John Beddington, the chief scientist and chair of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), and released to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act. The 30 documents include advice from the National Nuclear Laboratory on damage to the plant, public safety assessments from the Health Protection Agency (HPA), computer models of the radioactive plume from Defra's Radioactive Incident Monitoring Network (Rimnet), and the worst case scenario that might unfold at the plant.

Quote:

A substantial number of documents were withheld on grounds that they contained "information which, if disclosed, would adversely affect international relations," the government's civil contingencies team said.

Quote:

The documents show how seriously the risk to Britons in the Japanese capital Tokyo and Sendai, a major city 70 miles from the stricken plant, was taken. A week into the crisis, the British embassy distributed iodine pills as a contingency measure.

[Ibadaki 0]

Two months after being in a pretty bad state feeling much better now.

 

[sanjo 2]

I see there was a fairly big shaker up off the coast of Iwate this morning, shindo 5 in places.

[soubriquet 0]

Yes. It woke me up, shindo 3 here. I've become quite sensitised to earth movement in the past few months.

[muikabochi 208]

Originally Posted By: soubriquet

Yes. It woke me up, shindo 3 here. I've become quite sensitised to earth movement in the past few months.

An unfortunate result of experiencing something like this.
The slightest shindo 1 movement gets my heart pumping.

[pie-eater 207]

My Mum just called me worried about the new big earthquake that the news in the UK seems fit to be reporting today. She seemed to think I was mistaken when I told her I didn't feel anything and that there was no mass damage and new huge tsunamis.

 

Why was that reported I wonder.

[joshnii 2]

Originally Posted By: pie-eater

Why was that reported I wonder.

Probably sounded nice and dramatic.

[soubriquet 0]

I guess a magnitude 6.7 is news. I found a report in the Grauniad, but not the Torygraph. Headline: "Small earthquake in Japan; no-one killed".

[pie-eater 207]

Mum heard it on the news on the radio in bed this morning:

 

"Major earthquake in Japan. Next up, the boy in Chester who owns lizards that sing".

[muikabochi 208]

Yes it was a big one, but I can just imagine how the "reported" it.

[muikabochi 208]

Haha something like pie-eater just said perhaps!

[soubriquet 0]

And another one. Up down, that was close.

[RobBright 35]

Originally Posted By: soubriquet

Up down, that was close.

That's what she said.

[igloo 3]

Hey, are we still expecting a M8 aftershock?

I remember there being talk of that happening and I have no idea how these things work.

[muikabochi 208]

That was just a "looking at historical data the largest aftershock is usually -1 Magnitude" kind of thing. There's always the chance apparently.

[Curt 1]

Dash Village affected:

 

--

 

An agricultural project run by pop group TOKIO and local farmers for more than 11 years in Namiemachi, Fukushima Prefecture, has been direly affected by the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant.

 

The farming venture "Dash Village" was regularly featured on TV variety show "Tetsuwan Dash" (NTV, Sundays, 7 p.m.-7:58 p.m.).

 

The true location of the village had been a well-kept secret since the show began, but the program decided to reveal that the village is in Namiemachi after the area was designated as part of the planned evacuation area around the nuclear plant.

 

Program staff and local residents who have evacuated from the area have vowed to revive Dash Village someday.

 

When the Great East Japan Earthquake struck on March 11, TOKIO members Shigeru Joshima and Tatsuya Yamaguchi were at the village taping a segment for the TV program.

 

"We were eating lunch by the hearth in the main house when we felt the big shake. It blew us away," said Akio Sanpei, an 81-year-old local resident, who has been teaching TOKIO how to grow vegetables and other crops since the TV program started.

 

Fortunately, there was no damage to the old farmhouse that serves as the hub for the activities at Dash Village. The staff and other people who worked there were also safe. The peaceful environment, however, was rocked as the nuclear crisis escalated.

 

Sanpei and other residents were eventually forced to leave and go live with relatives in other places.

 

"We took the sheep and goats from Dash Village to a farm in Gunma Prefecture and some other places. I think wild boars have been making a mess of the place recently," said the program's producer Soichiro Shimada.

 

With the most serious concerns taken care of, program staff began thinking about the next step. Sanpei was the first to take the bull by the horns. "I couldn't plant rice this year, but I want to learn farming techniques from places around the country to use when we go back home," Sanpei said.

 

Shimada said he was deeply touched by the strength of Sanpei and other residents. "They've never complained, even about the problems at the nuclear plant. I realized I was seeing their true selves," he said.

 

Sanpei and other local residents started cultivating the land Dash Village sits on after World War II. They cut down big trees to clear the ground for their fields. Using their experience from the hard times after the war, locals taught TOKIO what it meant to do manual work.

 

"Dash Village isn't just the places shown on the TV program. It's the whole area that supported us, like the residents who brought us lunch," Shimada said. "I think we should report on how our friends are living positively even though they had to evacuate. They're not giving up hope of getting back the life we shared--farming and eating together."

 

The program is currently featuring a series of trips that Sanpei and TOKIO took to learn different framing skills, such as growing Moriguchi daikon radishes in Aichi Prefecture and a special brand of rice in Niigata Prefecture.

 

Shimada said he and TOKIO are talking about how Dash Village will be after people are allowed to return, including how to decontaminate radioactive soil.

 

"We know we have to work hard so the program will keep going [until residents return]. Some people have said, 'Dash Village is history,' but the only thing we think about is how to bring it back," Shimada said.