{"id":1718,"date":"2011-03-11T20:42:29","date_gmt":"2011-03-11T11:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2011-03-11\/1718"},"modified":"2011-03-11T20:42:29","modified_gmt":"2011-03-11T11:42:29","slug":"todays-quakes-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2011-03-11\/1718","title":{"rendered":"Today’s Quakes in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\nNOTE<\/b>: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.\n<\/div>\n\n\n

There was a cluster of large earthquakes in northeastern Japan today; we didn't feel any of them here in Kyoto.<\/p>\n\n

The main one, a magnitude 8.9<\/strike> 9.0<\/b> monster that would fit as the 7th largest\nearthquake in recorded history at\nthe U.S. Geological Survey<\/a>, just above the one in Chile last year (Wikipedia\nconcurs<\/a>), was luckily fairly far out to sea. It's a smaller<\/span> earthquake\ncloser to the mainland half an hour later that really rocked Tokyo. It's during<\/span> that later\/closer quake that I was<\/span> first alerted to the situation\nhere in Kyoto when a friend<\/span> texted me “Big f#@*!ng earthquake.\nCurrently under table<\/i>.”<\/p>\n\n

Then I went to my go-to source for Japanese real-time earthquake info<\/a>, I saw that<\/span> the larger one had hit earlier, a whopping<\/span> 7 on the Japanese scale of local earthquake perception<\/a>, which maxes out at 7: “Thrown by the shaking and impossible to move at will.<\/i>”.\nI hadn't<\/span> seen a shindo<\/i> number that high since the big quake in Kobe in 1995 (one which I most<\/span> certainly did<\/i> feel).<\/p>\n\n

For the first time since the World Wide Web became mainstream, I turned<\/span> on NHK News in English<\/i> this evening, four hours after the strongest\nquakes. The first<\/span> subject was the transport gridlock in Tokyo, since most\ntrain services have shut down for the day and some bus lines as well.<\/p>\n\n

Eventually they got to the tsunami damage, with some amazing video from\nhelicopters of a tsunami<\/span> washing over an area of sparsely populated\nfarmland\/countryside (see halfway down on this page<\/a>). This particular area was hit an hour and a half<\/span> after\nthe quake, so people had plenty of warning, but in watching the video I see<\/span>\nthe video cut away just as the wave reaches a road<\/span> with moving cars (yet\nthe announcer makes no mention of it), so it's a bit<\/span> eerie. I hope people<\/span>\nare okay.<\/p>\n\n

It seems not many have been hurt or killed, but there's a heck<\/span> of a lot<\/span>\nof damage, and tens of millions of people dependent on the transportation\ninfrastructure are going to be hurting today and tomorrow. [UPDATE: I clearly<\/i> read things wrong that first night.]<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n

As I watch the news, every so often an automated system flashes up an\nalert of a new<\/span> earthquake in the magnitude 5 and 6 range. We see these<\/span> from\ntime to time any time an even mild quake hits anywhere in Japan.<\/p>\n\n

But wow, just as I'm writing the above, a different<\/span> kind of alert just\npopped up... one very much in your face about a particularly<\/span> big\ntremor just detected (but without additional info at this early\nstage), so it seems that it's still an ongoing.<\/p>\n\n

They're also now showing live video of tsunami finally hitting some areas from the earlier tremors.<\/p>\n\n

Anyway, we're fine here in Kyoto, far from the ocean and the epicenters of these quakes. Our prayers<\/span> are with those affected.<\/p>\n\n

The friend that texted me during the quake was up in Tokyo for what was\nsupposed to have been a day<\/span> trip for a conference,<\/span> but he's stuck up there\nand the phones aren't letting calls go through, so I've spent the evening\nchatting via the iPhone WhatsApp SMS\napp<\/a>, shuttling messages back and forth to his family who can't\notherwise contact him.<\/p>\n\n

That reminds me a bit of the situation after the big Kobe quake in 95...\nI couldn't<\/span> make a phone<\/span> call across the street, but I could<\/span> email family in\nAmerica. I took a<\/span> few months from writing the first edition of my book<\/a> to create a web<\/span> site (yes, a web<\/span> site\nin 1995) to help people outside of Japan find out about affected folks in\nJapan, including long lists of the 6,000+ dead. Hopefully such a thing<\/span>\nwon't be needed this time.<\/p>\n\n

In the hour and a half since I started writing this post, there have been well over a dozen<\/span>\nmagnitude 5+ tremors, so I guess<\/span> it remains to be seen...<\/p>\n\n

Update:<\/b> small update on the friend stuck in Tokyo. Rather than spend the night\nat the conference venue, he walked an hour to a friend's<\/span> place. I just got<\/span> a text<\/span> that he\nhad arrived safely, but the elevators have been stopped so he has to walk up the stairs. To the 53rd<\/span> floor.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a cluster of large earthquakes in northeastern Japan today; we didn't feel any of them here in Kyoto.<\/p>

The main one, a magnitude 8.9 9.0<\/b> monster that would fit as the 7th largest earthquake in recorded history at the U.S. Geological Survey, just above the one in Chile last year (Wikipedia concurs), was luckily fairly far out to sea. It's a smaller earthquake closer to the mainland half an hour later that really rocked Tokyo. It's during that later\/closer quake that I was first alerted to the situation here in Kyoto when a friend texted me \"Big f#@*!ng [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}