Been glued to the news feeds on the Sendai earthquake -- my word. People are saying it's the fifth largest quake in recorded history. If it'd been centered on Tokyo, we would have needed some new landmarks for Godzilla to destroy. As it is, the coasts look like they've been destroyed pretty badly, but there hasn't been too much damage from the shaking itself.
Of course, there have been at least 5 major aftershocks as I write this, each of them large enough to be newsworthy by itself, so the shaking isn't over yet.
But right now, the tsunamis are bad enough. The amazing thing is that, after the quake, you could watch the news come in with new videos showing buildings dissolving like sand castles in the surf. All very postmodern. It's also a funny feeling seeing the Wikipedia article, "
2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami". It's as if we're looking back at the name that history will eventually apply to this disaster. And TBS's dead/missing counter is truly chilling.
News ticker's showing the capacity of evacuation sites. Japan does have an impressive disaster response plan, and the citizens are much better trained than they would be in, say, the U.S. I didn't talk about this much when I was watching
Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, but it was one of the most impressive things about the series, this massive and organic response at every level to a devastating earthquake. (Which, I should point out, was perhaps 1/25th the size. This could easily have been worse than the Great Kanto Earthquake.)
Anyway.
Tokyo Magnitude. It was almost like a government PSA for disaster response -- fast, efficient, pervasive. And now we're seeing how it translates to reality. Based on the news, looks pretty good.
Unfortunately, though, looks like Reitaisai 8 is off until further notice. Good thing I didn't get it into my head to try to attend.
words from chris, 2011-03-11 05:22:44, los angeles
