Japan quake disaster

[Pol]

Re: Japan quake disaster

yoshi, from my view, the guys with you are doing a brilliant job. i can't imagine many other countries that could provide such a response.

keep safe dude.

I agree. It's very impressive.

There's also a good video of a BBC interview with well informed and expeienced UK experts. Look at this, Yoshi, and you'll see that they most certainly are NOT criticising the way the situation is being handled, quite the reverse. They're very encouraging and reassuring.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/12734910

Pol

[yoshi]

Re: Japan quake disaster

Just heard there has been another one at 6 on the scale. Good to see you ok Yoshi, thoughts are out there for you and your family and others affected by this terrible event.
Paul.

Thank you, ekkl. I was just taking a bath when that one came. Looks like it hit Tokyo area harder. The epicentre is seemingly going further down to the south.

They say, if the biggest earthquake we experienced had hit Tokyo area and not northern Japan, then the number of death would have been x100 more.

I do not feel it an earthquake anymore if the scale is 5 or less.
It just comes a few times every hour even now.
yoshi

[Ian]

Re: Japan quake disaster

So Yoshi - you are now getting used to 5.0 Richter scale tremors! That's amazing

Ian

[yoshi]

Re: Japan quake disaster

So Yoshi - you are now getting used to 5.0 Richter scale tremors! That's amazing

Ian

It's just something like driving on a bumpy road which is not rare in my region.
A good massage. It's not strong enough to make rooms messier.
I am now of the opinion that quakes can not do too much bad things in my region.

I'm more worried about the nuke issues atm.
It's getting worse, terribly worse.

The first pic attaced; the forefront on the left --- #3 reactor. The concreet shelter is completely broken due to the explosion on the 14th.
The middle one is the #4 reactor. The wall of the concreet building was damaged and have two large holes.

On 16th morinig, steam leakage was observed from the steel vessel inside (#3). The probability of the damage to this important shelter can not be denied. (the attaced chart)

They planned to drop enormous amount of water from a helicopter this evening but gave it up. One reason is the weather but the larger reason seems to be the leakage of radioactivity above the reactor is far more than the level the pilot and other crews can endure.

The water is badly needed right now.
I do not want to exaggerate but this is what I read and heard.

In the meanwhile, the radioactivity measured at various places of this prefecture seems just normal now. After sudden increase on the 15th , it goes down at each place. But nobody knows what it will be tomorrow.
(Thanks Pol, again, this is the info I got from your link. I did not know local authorities are measuring it every hour at large cities and less frequently at smaller cities. No info about my area, though.)

yoshi

[Pol]

Re: Japan quake disaster

I don't know if you already have this, Yoshi, but Kyodo now has a fully accessible link on the 'nuclear crisis' at

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/japan_nuclear_crisis/

It's upating very regularly, very often and there's a 'breaking news' News Advisory banner along the top of the page.

Pol

[Bob Ross]

Re: Japan quake disaster

Hi Yoshi,
I wondered if the "after shock numbness" would set in. 5 on the RS is kind of high for a threshold. It seems that some of the subsequent quakes on other parts of the fault are sizeable. The possibility of additional damage at other locations is usually not discussed openly and I would guess even less with the reactor problems brewing up.
Glad to hear your comments.
Bob

[Ian]

Re: Japan quake disaster

We have not heard from Yoshi for nearly a day. Maybe he has decided to leave his residence after all?

Ian

[Pol]

Re: Japan quake disaster

We have not heard from Yoshi for nearly a day. Maybe he has decided to leave his residence after all?

Ian

I've heard nothing since last night but he 's been exchanging PMs with me and he's still ok, still at home. He reckons he has enough food for about a week, also has a good supply of water.

He's reviewing his situation continuously and will reconsider leaving his home in over the next 2-3 days. I respect his choices and can appreciate why he's dealing with the situation in his own way.

My only real fear for him would be lack of food and general supplies. His location is geographically within the 30km zone.

I'll contact you privately you, Ian.

Pol

[yoshi]

Re: Japan quake disaster

Hi Yoshi,
I wondered if the "after shock numbness" would set in. 5 on the RS is kind of high for a threshold. It seems that some of the subsequent quakes on other parts of the fault are sizeable. The possibility of additional damage at other locations is usually not discussed openly and I would guess even less with the reactor problems brewing up.
Glad to hear your comments.
Bob

Hi Bob,
yes, it's numbness. I think I've become totally numb to less devastating quakes. Some might become more nervous about any quakes but some others become numb.
I do not know if any reasonable threshold exists but I know from my recent experiences that the human beings are quite flexible and so threshold inevitably fluctuates.

The seismic intensity scales used seem different among nations and/or regions. I learned that in the US they use Mercalli scale and in Europe they now use EMS, while in Japan we use JMA.
Our scaling system has only 10 classifications, while in US and in Europe there are 12.
In JMA, in the order of from the weakest to the strongest, 0,1,2,3,4,5 weak, 5 strong, 6 weak, 6 strong and 7 (10 scales in total)
(peculiar to have weak/strong for each scale 5&6 but its due to changes made in 1996 without changing the old scale range which had 8 scales from 0 to 7.)

While I'm writing this, we have just now a quake of scale 4 in my city and I continue to write without stopping. (scale reported by radio, in a few minutes, they report, one after another)
We still have quakes of 3 or so in our scale maybe 20 times a day or more and 4 or 5 in the scale once or twice every day.

For the scale of 4 or 5, we just say "Oh, we have today relatively a big one." - "Yes, we have." The conversation would not continue very long as still it is within the scope of experiences of many people.
Somewhere sometime, most of us have experiences of earthquakes of scale 5 and virtually all people up to scale 4, I guess.
In case the scale is 3 or less, we normally do not talk about the quake, as nothing special. If you stick to the quake conversation of that scale too long they will surely find you weird.

As my writing is slow, we now have another scale 4...
We cannot worry about those one by one and so resulting numbness. good or bad.

will continue.　I think it is too long already.

yoshi

[Ian]

Re: Japan quake disaster

It's good to hear from you again, Yoshi.

I heard that the earthquake scales are exponential, so there is an increasingly big difference with each whole number. In fact 5 is ten times stronger in intensity than 4, and 6 ten times more than 5, etc.

Ian

[yoshi]

Re: Japan quake disaster

We have not heard from Yoshi for nearly a day. Maybe he has decided to leave his residence after all?

Ian

I'm still here Ian.
They started a sort of witch hunting today. A guy within the 20km radius was found by police. Actually his neighbours reported to the police that he was most likely staying at home. The guy did not accept the police's persuasion and is continuously staying at his home. Bad guy.

When sometime in future I happeded to have a chance to meet him, I have to say "hey, commrade!"

The living environments at evacuation centres are getting worse because of shortage of foods and especially lack of heating. At an evacuation centre in Iwaki city, 70km south-east, 14 aged persons died. They "evacuated" from hospital/aged people's home to a gymnasium of a high school. All in all, 23 persons died at various evacuation centres. Now flu is spreading at some places.

Evacuation from what, I wonder.

Here at my home, no such worry is necessary. Food (for the time being), water, heating, internet, telephone, ... Only petrol is what I need and the radioacitivity leakage is what I do not need.

I'm now more inclined to stay here until I get petrol sufficient enough and then leave here to say hello to people in other areas. Some of them think I'm staying in a hell. Definitely not. Quiet and peaceful here. Taken yesterday.

Hope Japanese police do not read this. I do not want to give them a hint that at least one more is "hiding"- no not true, I'm not hiding in any sense. They just do not find me, living in a dead-end in a mountain.

yoshi

[Pol]

Re: Japan quake disaster

I'm still here Ian.
They started a sort of witch hunting today. A guy within the 20km radius was found by police. Actually his neighbours reported to the police that he was most likely staying at home. The guy did not accept the police's persuasion and is continuously staying at his home. Bad guy.

yoshi

I read about that evacuation centre where the hospital patients died, dreadful for them! It must be so very stressful in the centres where they can't keep up-to-date with what's happening.

Bad witch hunters!

If they couldn't persuade him to leave and he's continuing to stay in his home, I would hope they will look in on him occasionally to make sure that 'bad guy' has the things he needs - supplies maybe more food etc.

If they do, maybe he'll share it with you if he happens to comes round your mountain?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ctRVrpM8UUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ctRVrpM8UU

Pol

[yoshi]

Re: Japan quake disaster

It's good to hear from you again, Yoshi.

I heard that the earthquake scales are exponential, so there is an increasingly big difference with each whole number. In fact 5 is ten times stronger in intensity than 4, and 6 ten times more than 5, etc.

Ian

Hi Ian,
I do not know well if or not the earthquake scales are exponential. As far as the Japanese scale is concerned, it is most likely not.
The magnitude scale which shows the energy of quakes at epicenter seems to be based on exponential. It looks like you call it RS.
So magnitude 6 is 1000 times bigger than magnitude 4.

The seismic intensity scale shows, on the other hand, the strength of quaking at particular place.
The one we had here last week is Magnitude (or RS) 9.0 and the seismic intensity at my place is 6 strong which is the second strongest according to Japanse scale system JMA.
At some part of Miyagi prefecture that is directly northern neighbour of us, it was 7, the strongest.

All the information from Wiki, not from my working knowledge. (^^);;;

yoshi

[yoshi]

Re: Japan quake disaster

this is a continuation to Bob's question.

*********
You pointed out quite important thing, Bob.

The epicenter is heading to the south. Now they are going to have more quakes in near Tokyo area and its off coast. (Scale 5 to 6 in some region)

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB:Map_of_Sendai_Earthquake_2011.jpg

down below the chart, they show the epicenter from March 11th through to the 14th.

My near-future problem might be that even if I evacuate from Fukushima right now to the south west Japan, it could mean a funny move. By that I mean from a place where the huge quake has just finished to another area where a big quake is likely to be approaching.
Acutually middle Japan to the south-west Japan is the very area where scientists have long been forecasting strong quakes in near future. It could come at any moment. In every 150 years there is big one in this area and now it is the time for it. The peple in that region are all alert to the coming super big one.

They are imho more well trained against quakes than in this Tohoku area (north-east Japan. Fukushima is a part of it) where this quake hit last week.
They, in the south-west Japan, have a evacuation practice every year against big quakes.At schools or at offices or at community.

I think there were 10 to 15 min. or so last week until tsunamis attack the coastal area after the quake hit. Radio news were repeatedly warning that the tsunami would be 10 m high or more. (Actually it must be higher than 10m. Even people on the 3rd/4th floor of a building were wiped away by the tsunami.)
I thought that pre-warning was long enough to escape from but nevertheless this huge disaster.

Yes, numbness at the most important moment is fatally dangerous. Many people underevaluated it or they just stick to their properties at home ...

19 Chinese workers immediately escaped from a plant located at a coastal area to a nearby hill following the alarm and all of them were safe, today's news say, although the plant and their residents were completely wiped away by tsunami. People who had no practice experineces survived while many others with lots of experiences did not.

Numbness both has good and bad.

yoshi

[yoshi]

Re: Japan quake disaster

This is the last part to answer Bob's last question.
His post was short but has lots of profound questions, I think.

The last but not the least, the Nuke plant issues. My largest concern atm.

I just do not like the way, the Japanese government is following.
Simply symptomatic couner-measures. No overall systematic measures, I would say.

What they shoud not be afraid of telling people is the worst case scenario. They know it of course but are afraid of the announcement or explanation to people. They think poeple will get panics and scream, if the worst case scenario is made open to the public. They are right in some points but that's not all..

In the business world, to be well prepared against the worst case is just an important commonsense. "Prepare for the worst" is the words all businessmen should know.

Since the governmental people hide it and do not tell it, I got it from the home page of the British Embassy in Tokyo. I got the link while following the links Pol gave to me the other day.

Once we are mentally ready for it, then less probability of huge problems/panics. Lack of information causes much more unnecessary panics among people.
(Of couse, there are always some people who get panic whatever it is. We have many here. I do not deny that.)

http://ukinjapan.fco.gov.uk/en/news/?view=News&id=567559482

OF course I understand why they have to be following the symptomatic countermeasures, as until the power supply to the pump that is used for circulation of coolant water recovers, the only way to prevent is just to pour lots of water by all means, whether it is by fire engines or helicopters.

I learned that 10 diesel power generators are coming or have already arrived in Japan from Florida to replace the old damaged ones. The news said earlier some of them start tomorrow to generate powers to the water circulation system. I hope it was not too late. It took already one week.

yoshi