Yesterday I was talking to a friend who does field work in Chile. She told me that a friend of hers was on a skype video-call with her husband who was waiting for his flight at Tokyo airport when the unimaginable 8.9 earthquake struck. She could see the place shaking wildly. Shortly afterwards the skype connection went down. She was worried sick until she was able to reach her husband again. My friend survived a couple of 6.4s in Chile and what struck her then was the overwhelming powerless feeling... some quakes were so strong that she could not stand on her feet, nor was she able to see as she stepped outside because everything around her was shaking so much. She realized then that this thing we call earth is extremely fragile and that such astounding force can destroy all in a matter of seconds. The footage from Japan today is horrendous: continuous quakes, massive tsunamis, multiple fires. This article on The Economist hits the right chords... here's the beginning:
BENEATH the Japanese archipelago lies a mythical catfish, brutish and capricious. For most of the time, its head is pinned down by a granite keystone, held in place by the Shinto god of the earth. But occasionally, the god drops his guard. Then the fish thrashes, convulsing the earth. In mid-afternoon on March 11th a massive earthquake erupted, 24 kilometres (15 miles) down, off the north-east coast of Japan’s main island. A tsunami followed. Cars, ships and buildings were swept away. People in Tokyo 370 kilometres away poured out of buildings as high-rises swayed. An anxious roar went up in the shopping district of Omote-Sando as the first of the aftershocks struck. After wreaking damage along low-lying parts of the coast, the tsunami rolled across the Pacific, testing the Pacific-wide early-warning system set up after the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004. (...)
BENEATH the Japanese archipelago lies a mythical catfish, brutish and capricious. For most of the time, its head is pinned down by a granite keystone, held in place by the Shinto god of the earth. But occasionally, the god drops his guard. Then the fish thrashes, convulsing the earth. In mid-afternoon on March 11th a massive earthquake erupted, 24 kilometres (15 miles) down, off the north-east coast of Japan’s main island. A tsunami followed. Cars, ships and buildings were swept away. People in Tokyo 370 kilometres away poured out of buildings as high-rises swayed. An anxious roar went up in the shopping district of Omote-Sando as the first of the aftershocks struck. After wreaking damage along low-lying parts of the coast, the tsunami rolled across the Pacific, testing the Pacific-wide early-warning system set up after the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004. (...)
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