Japan News (4/11)
Apr. 11th, 2011 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mbarker4/9
Quick update... the good stuff is at the end. Short form -- we're still shaking, kids!
In Iwate, the 36 temporary houses are getting residents. They were chosen by lottery from the 1160 people in the nearby shelter. Seem pretty happy to move in, although the commentator points out as they look at the new refrigerator, TV, and stuff that right now, there's no power. Still, they've got a little more privacy.
In Sendai, there are farmers and researchers looking at the salt in the dirt. Apparently it's basically the top layer -- the scientists are taking samples, trying to determine how deep it reaches. There's mention that some tomatoes apparently grow well with a bit of salt in the soil -- there's an area that gets some tidal water that apparently is well-known for tasty tomatoes.
In Fukushima, Iwaki, they've got sakura (cherry blossoms) blooming.
Video bits -- there's a bus sitting on top of a building. And nearby, there's a house up there, too.
Ibaraki -- this is an area that has been embargoed for farm products. However, a group of farmers here went to the Internet. They offered a mixed box of vegetables (spinach, parsley, lotus root, strawberries, other stuff -- pretty good size box, nice assortment) for 2,000 yen, which Mitsuko tells me is pretty cheap for that many vegetables -- and have over 700 orders. They're shipping, too! The reporter didn't ask, but I wondered if the farmers would make out better selling direct instead of going through the normal distribution. Of course, this also makes a mockery of the "official" safety embargo. I told Mitsuko that if I had a supermarket selling vegetables at this point, I'd get a geiger counter and set it nearby, with directions for use.
Apparently someone took a video using their cellphone of the tsunami hitting Fukushima 1 -- the reactors that have had so much trouble? The design spec for the plant apparently was supposed to deal with a 5 meter tsunami, and the "as built" is thought to have been somewhat beyond that. But from the video, someone has determined that the plant was hit with a 15 meter tsunami -- at least that much on the southern end that's visible in the video. That's a bit over 45 feet - call it 5 stories of a building?
Futz! 21:58 Magnitude 5.7 -- but near Kyushu? That's the southern island, down in the part that has been stable so far.
4/10
More footage of pushing flooded, mashed, etc. cars into piles. They are estimating 146,000 cars that need to be dealt with (no idea of the area).
Short bit about the digital remapping effort. Apparently there are volunteers all over who are taking satellite photos and matching them up with maps, then commenting and correcting. Think of it as wikipedia for maps. They talked with a man in Tokyo who does this for fun about two hours a day. He's got satellite photos of the disaster area, and they show him marking a bridge that is only partial now.
Some talk about what is needed now. There's an expert from the Kobe earthquake -- he admits that this is different. As he points out, four weeks after the Kobe earthquake, they had water and electricity going for everyone. This time -- there are still significant areas, shelters, etc. that don't even have those.
Some 14,000 unknown -- missing. Found 69 bodies today.
4/11
Morning news had a board -- lots of messages.
Dead and Missing is officially 27,493 today -- one month afterwards.
Pictures of boats sitting on a road, with a broken traffic signal in the foreground. I guess it doesn't matter, since no one is going to drive with those boats sitting there, anyway.
More reports of water and electric still not being available in many areas. There's a promise that maybe the electric service will reach some of the shelters next week.
Aha! NHK, the national public news, has polled residents of the shelters. 602 residents responded. And... the number one problem? Lack of accurate information -- 55% said this was a major issue. Lack of privacy was second, with 32%. And not being able to take a bath (one month after the disaster?) third, at 22% (I wonder how many have had at least occasional baths?).
6:05 P.M. Walked in this evening, flipped on the news -- and there's a tsunami warning? What? Magnitude 7.1?
Mitsuko came in -- she'd been out this afternoon -- and said take a look at the national public channel. So we changed to that, and they're reporting magnitude 5.2? The poor news anchor is trying to make announcements, and the automated earthquake system is interrupting him. Actually, it's kind of funny, he's clearly repeating the standard warning, which says that there has been an earthquake, may be more shocks, please get away from things that might fall... and the phrase that made me chuckle, "move to a safe place."
Which is it, 5.2 or 7.1? That's a really wide gap. Flipping around, lots of reports... it is the evening news hour, after all.
6:21 -- ah. The Japan meteorological agency official. He announces that it was a 7.0 magnitude -- at 5:16. Apparently another at 5:26, shortly after, at 5.6? He's got one of the most confusing charts I've seen recently, with a bunch of marks -- oh, that goes all the way back to the 3/11 quake, and shows lots of others. Anyway, it looks as if we have a winner -- magnitude 7.0.
There are claims that we had the edges of that down here -- magnitude 1 or so in Nara, Osaka, etc. We didn't even notice.
They talked with one of the shelters. Most of the people kind of shrugged. They seemed to expect it.
And we've had a series of quakes since then. 4s, maybe a 5 or so here and there. The hour since we first saw the news has been full of quake notices.
This one seems to have been centered on land. South of Fukushima prefecture (where the reactors are -- which have announced no problem, even though they did turn off the power or something for a bit).
And another one! Magnitude 4.2 as I'm writing this.
Guess the catfish under the island got itchy again.
Quick update... the good stuff is at the end. Short form -- we're still shaking, kids!
In Iwate, the 36 temporary houses are getting residents. They were chosen by lottery from the 1160 people in the nearby shelter. Seem pretty happy to move in, although the commentator points out as they look at the new refrigerator, TV, and stuff that right now, there's no power. Still, they've got a little more privacy.
In Sendai, there are farmers and researchers looking at the salt in the dirt. Apparently it's basically the top layer -- the scientists are taking samples, trying to determine how deep it reaches. There's mention that some tomatoes apparently grow well with a bit of salt in the soil -- there's an area that gets some tidal water that apparently is well-known for tasty tomatoes.
In Fukushima, Iwaki, they've got sakura (cherry blossoms) blooming.
Video bits -- there's a bus sitting on top of a building. And nearby, there's a house up there, too.
Ibaraki -- this is an area that has been embargoed for farm products. However, a group of farmers here went to the Internet. They offered a mixed box of vegetables (spinach, parsley, lotus root, strawberries, other stuff -- pretty good size box, nice assortment) for 2,000 yen, which Mitsuko tells me is pretty cheap for that many vegetables -- and have over 700 orders. They're shipping, too! The reporter didn't ask, but I wondered if the farmers would make out better selling direct instead of going through the normal distribution. Of course, this also makes a mockery of the "official" safety embargo. I told Mitsuko that if I had a supermarket selling vegetables at this point, I'd get a geiger counter and set it nearby, with directions for use.
Apparently someone took a video using their cellphone of the tsunami hitting Fukushima 1 -- the reactors that have had so much trouble? The design spec for the plant apparently was supposed to deal with a 5 meter tsunami, and the "as built" is thought to have been somewhat beyond that. But from the video, someone has determined that the plant was hit with a 15 meter tsunami -- at least that much on the southern end that's visible in the video. That's a bit over 45 feet - call it 5 stories of a building?
Futz! 21:58 Magnitude 5.7 -- but near Kyushu? That's the southern island, down in the part that has been stable so far.
4/10
More footage of pushing flooded, mashed, etc. cars into piles. They are estimating 146,000 cars that need to be dealt with (no idea of the area).
Short bit about the digital remapping effort. Apparently there are volunteers all over who are taking satellite photos and matching them up with maps, then commenting and correcting. Think of it as wikipedia for maps. They talked with a man in Tokyo who does this for fun about two hours a day. He's got satellite photos of the disaster area, and they show him marking a bridge that is only partial now.
Some talk about what is needed now. There's an expert from the Kobe earthquake -- he admits that this is different. As he points out, four weeks after the Kobe earthquake, they had water and electricity going for everyone. This time -- there are still significant areas, shelters, etc. that don't even have those.
Some 14,000 unknown -- missing. Found 69 bodies today.
4/11
Morning news had a board -- lots of messages.
Dead and Missing is officially 27,493 today -- one month afterwards.
Pictures of boats sitting on a road, with a broken traffic signal in the foreground. I guess it doesn't matter, since no one is going to drive with those boats sitting there, anyway.
More reports of water and electric still not being available in many areas. There's a promise that maybe the electric service will reach some of the shelters next week.
Aha! NHK, the national public news, has polled residents of the shelters. 602 residents responded. And... the number one problem? Lack of accurate information -- 55% said this was a major issue. Lack of privacy was second, with 32%. And not being able to take a bath (one month after the disaster?) third, at 22% (I wonder how many have had at least occasional baths?).
6:05 P.M. Walked in this evening, flipped on the news -- and there's a tsunami warning? What? Magnitude 7.1?
Mitsuko came in -- she'd been out this afternoon -- and said take a look at the national public channel. So we changed to that, and they're reporting magnitude 5.2? The poor news anchor is trying to make announcements, and the automated earthquake system is interrupting him. Actually, it's kind of funny, he's clearly repeating the standard warning, which says that there has been an earthquake, may be more shocks, please get away from things that might fall... and the phrase that made me chuckle, "move to a safe place."
Which is it, 5.2 or 7.1? That's a really wide gap. Flipping around, lots of reports... it is the evening news hour, after all.
6:21 -- ah. The Japan meteorological agency official. He announces that it was a 7.0 magnitude -- at 5:16. Apparently another at 5:26, shortly after, at 5.6? He's got one of the most confusing charts I've seen recently, with a bunch of marks -- oh, that goes all the way back to the 3/11 quake, and shows lots of others. Anyway, it looks as if we have a winner -- magnitude 7.0.
There are claims that we had the edges of that down here -- magnitude 1 or so in Nara, Osaka, etc. We didn't even notice.
They talked with one of the shelters. Most of the people kind of shrugged. They seemed to expect it.
And we've had a series of quakes since then. 4s, maybe a 5 or so here and there. The hour since we first saw the news has been full of quake notices.
This one seems to have been centered on land. South of Fukushima prefecture (where the reactors are -- which have announced no problem, even though they did turn off the power or something for a bit).
And another one! Magnitude 4.2 as I'm writing this.
Guess the catfish under the island got itchy again.
