Early Earthquake Warnings
You're given 30 seconds to react. Advised through an automated telephone message - an advisory alarm really - that an earthquake has been detected and you will very soon feel the earth move. That, in itself is alarming.
On the other hand, with that 30-second advance notice, there is time to grab the emergency backpack prepared and ready for just such an event, sitting in the front hall closet. Or wherever else in a Japanese home of typically crowded conditions, and more likely a small apartment in a high-rise building than a single home, this might be handily located. And then exit.
We never once grabbed for the backpack that sat in the front hall closet of the very spacious and gracious home we lived in on Meguro Dori. When quakes struck, we tended to sit where we were, and to wait them out. It was certainly a frightening experience to feel everything shake about us, the walls of the house, the pictures on the walls, the tinkle of glass if something tipped and broke.
It seemed to go on forever, before finally the Earth regained its bearings and sensibly settled back into its usual quiescent state.
It's hard to say whether it affected us more when we realized, while in the out-of-doors that an earthquake was in progress, and the very earth beneath our feet swayed.
That happened to us while we were in the historic courtyard of the 47 Ronin, an already mysterious place, with mist rising in a peculiar atmospheric condition that lent an other-worldly air to the environment, hugely enhanced by a state of unreality when the earthquake struck. And seemed to go on, forever.
Japanese seismologists appear now to have formulated a system of advance notice, using mobile phones as warnings. There were no mobile phones when we lived in Japan. The tremors occurred frequently enough, and perhaps because of their frequency, although they felt alarming, they did not appear to us then to be as threatening as they might have done.
We simply did not believe they would result in catastrophe.
They might have done, of course. It's just that people have this tendency to somehow believe that nothing truly awful is about to happen to them. Peculiar natural phenomena perhaps, movements of the Earth to marvel at, but not to direly threaten one's existence. That does happen, but elsewhere, to others.
If we lived in a state of constant apprehension it would exhaust us, so we do not.
The Earthquake Early Warning System was developed almost a decade after we left Japan. You might think that the protocol that was developed in Japan would be taken up elsewhere in the world, where earthquake-prone tectonic plates are known to exist. Too costly for some countries, and perhaps not seen as practical or required in other countries which haven't experienced truly destructive earth movements.
Despite which, living in Ottawa, along a known fault line in the Earth's crust, we've experienced a few incidents of quakes that were even more alarming than those we did in Japan.
On the other hand, with that 30-second advance notice, there is time to grab the emergency backpack prepared and ready for just such an event, sitting in the front hall closet. Or wherever else in a Japanese home of typically crowded conditions, and more likely a small apartment in a high-rise building than a single home, this might be handily located. And then exit.
We never once grabbed for the backpack that sat in the front hall closet of the very spacious and gracious home we lived in on Meguro Dori. When quakes struck, we tended to sit where we were, and to wait them out. It was certainly a frightening experience to feel everything shake about us, the walls of the house, the pictures on the walls, the tinkle of glass if something tipped and broke.
It seemed to go on forever, before finally the Earth regained its bearings and sensibly settled back into its usual quiescent state.
It's hard to say whether it affected us more when we realized, while in the out-of-doors that an earthquake was in progress, and the very earth beneath our feet swayed.
That happened to us while we were in the historic courtyard of the 47 Ronin, an already mysterious place, with mist rising in a peculiar atmospheric condition that lent an other-worldly air to the environment, hugely enhanced by a state of unreality when the earthquake struck. And seemed to go on, forever.
Japanese seismologists appear now to have formulated a system of advance notice, using mobile phones as warnings. There were no mobile phones when we lived in Japan. The tremors occurred frequently enough, and perhaps because of their frequency, although they felt alarming, they did not appear to us then to be as threatening as they might have done.
We simply did not believe they would result in catastrophe.
They might have done, of course. It's just that people have this tendency to somehow believe that nothing truly awful is about to happen to them. Peculiar natural phenomena perhaps, movements of the Earth to marvel at, but not to direly threaten one's existence. That does happen, but elsewhere, to others.
If we lived in a state of constant apprehension it would exhaust us, so we do not.
The Earthquake Early Warning System was developed almost a decade after we left Japan. You might think that the protocol that was developed in Japan would be taken up elsewhere in the world, where earthquake-prone tectonic plates are known to exist. Too costly for some countries, and perhaps not seen as practical or required in other countries which haven't experienced truly destructive earth movements.
Despite which, living in Ottawa, along a known fault line in the Earth's crust, we've experienced a few incidents of quakes that were even more alarming than those we did in Japan.
Labels: Canada, Environment, Nature
posted by Pieface @ 6:57 PM
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