How prepared are we?
It takes preparation, planning and practice to survive an earthquake.
ON Jan 1, we were “greeted” by a tremor at 2.28pm. What a start to the new year! The 6.8-magnitude quake was centred near Izu Islands, about 595km south of Tokyo. Although there was no tsunami and no major damage or injuries reported, the impact could be felt in Tokyo, Fukushima and the surrounding areas.
As Tokyo is located near a fault zone and a large subduction zone, an earthquake is anticipated to strike once every 70 years. The 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake with a 7.9-magnitude devastated Tokyo and its surrounding prefectures and claimed about 142,800 lives. Many were on tenterhooks about another massive earthquake in 1993, but it didn’t happen.
Instead, the Great Hanshin Earthquake with a 6.8-magnitude struck the southern part of Hyogo prefecture in 1995, killing about 6,434 people. Kobe, being the closest to the epicentre, was the hardest hit among the major cities.
Since that catastrophe, my father-in-law had kept within reach a survival kit in a backpack. As the years passed and no earthquake occurred in the Kanto region, the backpack was moved somewhere and eventually forgotten.
After my father-in-law passed away in 2007, when we cleaned up the attic, we found the backpack with the canned bread and biscuits whose shelf life had expired 12 years earlier!
Big earthquakes had also hit Niigata prefecture in l964, 2004 and 2007. However, last year’s Great East Japan Earthquake with a 9.0-magnitude surpassed them all.
Despite having disaster drills now and then, Japan was not prepared for that megaquake and tsunami. The world watched in horror as almost everything was swallowed up in the disaster-hit areas. More cliffhanging scenes unfolded in the struggle to control the crisisatthecrisis at the Fukushima No.o..11 nuclear plant.
Sendai Airport was badly damaged. Following this, coastal airports nationwide had in place a basic guideline and specific evacuation plans.
According to sources, the Transport Ministry plans to evacuate people at Haneda Airport within 10 minutes after issuing a tsunami warning.
Foodstuffs and other necessities were in short supply during that period. Gasoline stations ran out of gasoline.
After my husband’s scrambler ran out of petrol, he commuted to work in Tokyo on our son’s 50cc scooter, for two days.
With electricity supply cut off, the radio was the chief source of news in the disaster-affected areas. Thus a radio with a flashlight and siren, comes in useful.
Last year’s March 11 quake paralysed transport systems, leaving commuters stranded.
A large-scale evacuation drill involving 10,000 participants was conducted at Shinjuku, Tokyo and Ikebukuro train stations, last month. Tokyo’s foreign residents participated in an annual emergency drill in Shibuya ward in January.
Public facilities and many companies have been stocking up bottled drinks and instant foodstuffs.
My husband recently brought home from his office a food sample given by a manufacturing company: a bottle of mineral water and two packets of mixed rice dish with spoon inside. The rice doesn’t require heating up. Just add water or hot water to soften it.
The tremors have been getting frequent of late. Once, we were jolted from our sleep at 7.43am. Not another big one, please, I prayed silently. My dressing table is just beside the futon I am sleeping on. For low furniture, I could only secure their bottoms with grooved, rubber strips. Fearing that the rattling dressing table would topple over me, I supported it with my hands. Thankfully, the building stopped shaking.
I still keep a backpack of emergency supplies and important documents in my apartment and another survival kit in my car. Learning from my father-in-law’s back incident, I often check the expiry dates of the canned foodstuffs and replenish them.
Some installed their upper kitchen cabinets wiith auto-locks. One friend attached to her cellphone what I thought was a USB..
“No, it’s a whistle. Remember the movie, The Titanic?” Norikoo said, pretending to blow the whistle. Good idea in case her cellphone becomes un-service able in emergency situation.
Last month, two seismologists from a university in Tokyo made headlines when they released a study forecasting that a major quake would hit Tokyo sometime in the next four years. Later, a disclaimer was posted on the university’s website after receiving a backlash from other researchers who think that the study was too simple and more likely to be inaccurate.
As the earth’s climate changes, calamites can occur anywhere. The question now is how prepared are we to prevent the damage and safeguard ourselves?
Sarah Mori, a Malaysian married to a Japanese, has been living in Japan since 1992.