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22 Feb ’12
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Pretty much what the thread title says. Apologies for the TL;DR posts, I'm going to try to stay on topic but this may wander and go off on tangents. I've put in enough posts to let me write everything I want to without having a mess of questions and posts in together.
Background: In 2011 I was living in Tokyo with my partner, we rented a small apartment and weren't really 'prepared', although we probably were more prepared than most as I'm a big believer in always leaving yourself outs (there's always a gallon of water and at least some food wherever I live). We didn't own a car (as is the norm in Japan).
The Quake: Earthquakes are a fact of life in Japan and so normally noone bats an eyelid when one happens. I was in the teacher's room at a High School where I worked 1-2 days a week, doing some paperwork (the school term was over although sports teams were at school practicing). As per usual with an earthquake there was the normal "Jishin? (earthquake?)" from a few colleagues but it really didn't feel any different from the usual earth tremors we have on a weekly basis, give it a few seconds and it would stop.
This one didn't stop, it just kept building to the point where I had to hold the papers on my desk and the light fixtures started to sway alarmingly. There still was no real panic though, most of the banter at this point was about how those people who weren't in the office were going to have a hell of a time cleaning up.
I think after about a minute of concerted shaking people were starting to get worried and considering their options if this did in fact escalate, the principal started making announcements over the tannoy system about getting off balconies and following the drills (Japanese schools have 3 earthquake and 3 fire drills every year so the kids knew in theory what was up) and the 'earthquake alerts' started going off on people's phones (In Japan you can sign up through your cellular provider to get an alert if there is an earthquake imminent, in theory this is great unless you're in an office with 60 people all of whom are signed up too).
Then as soon as it started the earthquake stopped, at no point was there any panic or any real sense that this was anything more than a "thing you'll chat about on Facebook".
Immediate Aftermath: Obviously the first thing I do after the earthquake is update my social media (actually it was to go and check that there weren't any obviously broken kids laying around, there weren't), as much as anything I find that most 'regular sources' are slow to update it's usually far quicker to get the news filtered through my friends. Sadly with hindsight I went with the flippant "Wibble Wobble Wibble Wobble. Hope everyone on the East coast is safe..." which I think might give a sense of the mindset. I also tried calling my partner, but couldn't connect. At the time I put this down to everyone in the country trying to do the same and didn't worry about it (as it turns out it was because the cell tower had fallen down).
It is not uncommon for trains to stop running in Japan when there is a major earthquake, this is to give them time to check the lines and power. Usually this only takes 30 minutes or so (but can take longer). I had work to do anyway so didn't much care. The TV got flipped to the news channel, I largely ignored it to be honest. It was around this point that the first reports of the Tsunami started to come in. Again no big deal, they happen all the time I thought. Even watching on the news I had no idea of the magnitude of the destruction that was happening.
By about 16:00 I was done working and more interested in the train situation, especially as I still couldn't get in touch with my partner, we were getting regular updates from our principal all of which were of the "soon" or "in the next hour or so" variety. I decided to stick around at work, if nothing else because I lived a good 2-3 hour walk from my house, a $200 cab far and Japanese busses are 100% a 'last resort' mode of transport.
It was around this time someone declared it an official emergency and broke out the "emergency biscuits"...
22 Feb ’12
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Emergency Biscuits?: Japan is a country built on systems or processes. This means that things are prepared for (not necessarily well, but there is a plan in place). Part of schools preparations for a major disaster in which people have to shelter in place is to have a supply of dry foods. My school's dried food stock was canned biscuits, they were allegedly nutritionally balanced so that the average person would need one can a day to survive. We had hundreds of cans of these things in a store room in the basement, three for each student and member of staff. There was almost a sense of relief when we finally got to use them, probably because it meant we would get new stocks after storing them for years. On a similar note there were people who seemed rather excited about getting to wear their hard hats and follow their 'disaster plans'. Having all these plans and protocols in place really did add to a sense of calm and organization, everyone knew what should be done and went about doing it. One downside of everything being planned out is that it completely eradicates the ability to improvise or to deal with situations where there is no plan such as when a nuclear reactor starts to melt down...
Getting Home: By about 6pm it was becoming increasingly clear that the trains weren't going to come back online that night. Most of my colleagues were either heading home or had already left. I made the call to try to get home without the trains. One of my colleagues offered to drive me part way home to where the bus line began. The traffic was almost at a standstill but eventually I made it to the bus-stop. The wait for the bus was epic but after approximately 2 hours I managed to catch the bus, the journey home was ridiculously slow and would probably have been quicker had I decided to walk. However I felt staying on the bus was my best plan as I would get home *eventually*. I noticed that various parts of the city were without power. I finally got close enough to my house that I was able to walk the last leg and arrived home at around 3am. My partner was home safe and sound but due to having no power (and by extension no internet) couldn't get in touch with me. The only 'damage' to our property was having to rest our gas supply which had be remotely shut off (another awesome Japanese safety feature). The next plan was to head to bed and work out where we were in the morning.
Taking Stock:I woke up with a blinding light in my eyes, apparently I'd left the bedroom light on while the power was out and now it was back on. This meant communications were probably back and I could work out what the real situation was.
A quick internet check told me that this was a bigger deal than I had initially thought but the local news were concentrating on the devastating effects of the Tsunami and the massive disruption to transport that was happening. Given that it was 6:30am I figured now was a good time to take stock of the house. We were in a pretty decent position even if we couldn't re-stock, we still decided to go and join the inevitable queue for the supermarket when it opened. The only thing we really were short on was water but given that the mains were connected and I didn't envisage things getting worse I didn't freak out about it.
As we walked to the supermarket we started to make a plan, as a seasoned 'sales' shopper I expected to only be guaranteed to be able to get the first thing you go to. Top of my list for any lengthy stay is toilet roll, so I was heading to that first, the wifey was aiming for the rice aisle as this is our dry staple, from there we would try to acquire any other basics we could.
We got to the supermarket at about 8:30 (it opened at 9:00) and were surprised at how few people were there before us. We were told by the security guard that they would be limiting the number of people heading in and to basically chill out. I was impressed by how organised the whole affair was.
By the time the store was due to open though there was a fair sized crowd. The general mood was calm though and there was none of the near riot that I would expect if a similar scenario were to play out in the West. On time the doors opened, we bought our stuff and left looking forward to the start of the weekend.
The Real Disaster Begins: Getting home, I tried to keep abreast of the news, mostly trying to work out if I would be able to get to work on Monday. Trying to get good information was something of a struggle as the Japanese media were just repeating the same information, while the BBC (who are unquestionably the least biased news agency) were well off the pace. Then I came across something worrying, the first reports of problems at Fukushima Dai-Ichi and Fukushima Dai-ni nuclear power plants via the BBC. I tried to confirm with Japanese news sources, but there was no information, but when I heard confirmation on AFP (Armed Forces Programming) I started to really worry.
Issue one was securing our water supply. Given that the mains water was still on and uncontaminated we filled our bathtub and headed out to see if we could acquire any additional bottles of water from anywhere. By the time we got back to the store it was closed and pretty much picked clean of anything useful. Signs suggested it wouldn't re-open until Monday at the earliest due to no deliveries. We managed to find a few litres of water and soda at the convenience store but shit was starting to get real.
Next on my list of stuff was Potassium Iodide, for anyone who doesn't know the big problem with low level radiation exposure is that is gets taken up by the Thyroid where it concentrates before slowing releasing itself into the body causing various cancers. Potassium Iodide is more rapidly absorbed by the Thyroid and reduces the space for the radioactive elements to collect.
Sadly the Japanese chemist looked at me like I was crazy when I went in to try and buy some, thankfully a friend reminded me that seaweed has a high proportion of it so we bought a goodly stock and set about trying to follow what was happening.
22 Feb ’12
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Stay or Go: Reliable information was still in short supply, but by the end of the day it was pretty clear that the Japanese media line was "everything is fine", whereas the foreign media were going with "bad stuff might be happening, but we don't really know". We had a decision to make, whether to shelter in place, or to try to bug out.
We decided that our best course of action given the information we had was to try and shelter in place. We mad this decision on the back of the following:
1) We were secure where we were. Our house was reasonably well stocked, was comfortable and defensible from any radiation that might leak. We also had communications where we were, this meant monitoring the situation was far easy if we didn't leave.
2) Nothing bad had happened to that point and we didn't want to jump ship for no reason.
3) Leaving was hard. At this point a number of foreigners were trying to exit the country on the back of the earthquake. The airports were not fully open and I felt putting us into a situation where we were surrounded by a number of people who were already panicking was not a good one. The train network was also only running intermittently (and none of the intercity trains were running) so there was a very real risk of getting stuck at the airport if we tried to exit by air.
4) People, both official and family knew where we were. We had at least a modicum of faith that our embassies, or the Japanese government would offer assistance if things were to go badly.
My biggest concern was that one of the reactors would melt down and explode. If this happened the most likely outcome would be a cloud of radioactive dust. To try to minimize any effect that would have on us we set about sealing our apartment. We used plastic sheeting and tape to cover any gaps and cracks that would allow particles to enter and began to pack bags with essential items in case we were evacuated for any reason. I began to charge as many batteries as possible as it seemed likely that the power would be on and off.
Then began the wait.
A Tactical Retreat:Waiting for something bad to happen sucks, it sucks even more when your world is slowly unraveling in front of your eyes.
My day on Sunday was a mostly spent ordering radiation pills on the internet and desperately trying to get reliable information about what was really going on. I got a lucky break when I called a friend who has lots of tattoos and probably won't have all of his digits forever, mostly I called because I wanted to make sure he was safe and well but he is a useful source of information. In most countries organised crime and unions have a close relationship and Japan is no exception. I asked him what he was hearing and learned that bad shit was happening and that a lot of high level negotiations were going on for Tokyo members to be allowed to travel to the West of Japan in the event of things deteriorating. I asked him to keep me updated.
Sunday was marked by regular blackouts and a sense that maybe leaving wouldn't be such a bad idea. Especially with the video footage of the reactor building exploding. Again the Japanese news claimed this was all fine and nothing to be worried about. "Go about your day" was the general line from the press.
Around 10pm I got the call from my friend, he claimed that his boss had spoken to a union boss at Fukushima who had reported a big hole in the containment vessel and that all of his 'colleagues' were heading out of Tokyo for the next few weeks. While I was still relatively confident we could tough it out, it seemed like the veneer would soon crack and word of how bad things were getting would spread to the general population. I was worried what would happen in this scenario as I've never seen Japanese people panic and I feared the worst.
My partner and I talked about our options and decided our best bet would be to jump on a train and head over to Osaka (a few hours west of Tokyo). We felt this would give us options in the event of things getting worse. We felt like it would take until the end of the day Monday for any real panic to set in and once we got to Osaka we would be ahead of the rush. Osaka also has an international airport if shit really did hit the fan.
Living With It
22 Feb ’12
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Lessons for Today
19 Feb ’12
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Interesting. Can't wait for the next installment(s).
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