I've been worrying about the Japanese earthquake since I heard about it.

[conuly]

Well, not worrying - the people I know in Japan seem to have all checked in already - but generally being concerned.

I spoke about it with the nieces today (our Doctors Without Borders map is really coming in handy, though I ought to go and buy a bigger map), but I'm kinda glad that when I did it I hadn't checked the news again yet. I had no idea the death toll was already so high - though it may help to consider that it's lower than it could've been, in no small part to their early warning system. (And for that matter, rapid communication allowed people in the tsunami zone to evacuate. Can you imagine how devastating that would have potentially been 200 years ago?)

The nieces were more upset than I am. Sometimes I feel slightly bad about that, but you can't actually start crying every time there is a natural disaster somewhere in the world. Or I can't, anyway. I care in a general sense, but... I don't know. It's not about me, anyway.

The usual people are collecting donations and information about survivors.

Comments

[redbird]

Not just the early warning system, but serious infrastructure, much of it either built by government (seawalls that stopped tsunami waves) or mandated in serious building codes. Skyscrapers swayed, and stayed up; in Turkey (or probably most of the eastern US, whose codes don't think much about earthquakes because we don't get that size of quake) those buildings would have collapsed.

[conuly]

Skyscrapers swayed, and stayed up; in Turkey (or probably most of the eastern US, whose codes don't think much about earthquakes because we don't get that size of quake) those buildings would have collapsed.

Yes, that's something else to think of.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I've been on edge, checking the news, rechecking. The earthquake was horrible. The tsunami was horrible. The fires caused by the earthquake were horrible. But there's also the nuclear reactors damaged by the earthquake, and we don't yet know exactly what will come of that... I'm really hoping that the bad news will stop.

At least the Pacific coast didn't get hit as badly as it might have. Very low death count for the US. And while the property damage for northern California (roughly my area, depending on how you define my area) was pretty bad, it was limited to right around the water. Many boats destroyed, a harbor destroyed, other harbor damaged. But the tsunami didn't make it to houses.

I've been really kind of glad and amazed that we live in a day and age where an earthquake happens in Japan and they can warn the people in California to stay away from the beaches and ocean. The only local missing presumed dead person was someone who was warned, but decided to take photos. That's still sad, but not nearly as tragic as people who had no choice in the matter. There could have been tons of people on the beaches not knowing to expect anything. Apparently tsunami waves don't necessarily look like much. It's not that they're big that makes them dangerous; it's that they have the force of most of the ocean behind them when normal waves don't. Kind of like how a baseball bat is big, and it can hurt, but a bullet is much smaller, but if it's coming at you with more force, it's far more dangerous.

We didn't have a beach full of people just enjoying the day. That's something.

[conuly]

Yes, I just heard about the nuclear reactors an hour ago. I do hope nothing terrible happens with that. New Zealand had relatively few casualties because it's not very populous, but Japan is just packed. A nuclear disaster on top of an earthquake would be well more devastating than either of them alone.