It sounds like there has been a big earthquake in your area. I hope all is well with you and yours.

https://www.cnn.com/asia/live-news/japan-ishikawa-earthquake-01-01-24/index.htm

What a way to start the new year.

I believe T-Bone lives in Tokyo, which would be fortunate insofar as it's on the other side of the mountains from Ishikawa.

Still, bad news for Japan and particularly for the people on the west coast.

It was 7.5 with a 5 meter tsunami warning. Even the aftershocks will be significant (one aftershock was 6.2) Japan has evacuated many coastal areas to the west.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/massive-earthquake-hits-western-japan-triggering-tsunami-warnings/ar-AA1mik90



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/01/2024 08:34AM by summer.

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I'm in Tokyo, so Ishikawa is on the other side of the island. It's about a 6 hour ride on the bullet train from us. We were totally safe, thanks.

I was in Starbucks at the time it hit, on the third floor, and the building just kept shaking and shaking.

Some of the major temples that people visit to celebrate the new year have Red Cross tents every year. It was the perfect chance to donate because there are people who were injured. A lot of people had to flee their homes.

Many people ask, if Japan is such an advanced country, why are earthquakes so devastating? I used to wonder the same thing.

70% of Japan is mountains. The mountains are very soft. They're not like the Rockies. They're mostly soil. So when we have an earthquake, we have landslides. If we get a big rainstorm, we have landslides.

I thought Japanese did things well. Why do homes fall down? Good question. Because the safety regulations constantly change, and it's cheaper to tear down and rebuild than maintain a home, people simply don't do any maintenance. They let their homes fall apart.

People think of their homes the way many people think of a car in the US. It rapidly depreciates, and when it starts to break down, just trade it in and get a new one.

And since homes are built to last 20 years, there is no secondary market for homes. Once again, no motivation to do maintenance. So you'll see a home that looks like a haunted house; covered in ivy, roof leaking, and windows cracked. And the house might only be 20-25 years old. If you're going to tear it down when it's 30 years old, why replace that window?

As an aside, Japanese homes are built for summer. Summers are sweltering here. Heat, humidity, and a long rainy season mean lack of airflow is a fertile ground for mold. So they don't use insulation. Windows and doors have terrible seals because you don't want an airtight home. But it gets bitter cold. So we spend a LOT on heating.

Tokyo is different. New office buildings and apartment buildings have the highest safety standards in the world. Infrastructure works. Trains are on time. I can stream Netflix while riding the subway.

It's incredibly confusing if you've lived in Europe and bought a 200 year old apartment or lived in New England in a 100 year old home. We just can't do that because we have earthquakes. Add to that the firebombing of WWII and the bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japanese don't think of homes as something permanent. They're disposable just like paper cups.

That's why you see massive devastation after an earthquake in rural Japan.

You are right about the quality of Japanese homes, but there's a more fundamental reason for the disproportionately greater damage.

Put simply, Japan has more powerful events than the United States does. The Richter Scale is logarithmic, so an increase of one full point translates into 10 times more movement and 33 times more released energy.

Over the last few decades the US has had a many quakes between 7.0 and 8.0 and one that reached 8.2, but those were generally in areas with small populations--like remote parts of Alaska. Perhaps the last big earthquake in a densely populated part of the States was probably the San Francisco one in 1989, which registered 6.9 and cost dozens of lives and tens of billions of dollars.

Japan has more intense quakes. This Ishikawa Earthquake measured 7.5, making it six times more powerful than the San Francisco one (measured by movement). Moreover the 2011 quake that damaged the Japanese reactors clocked in at 9.0, meaning that it was more than 100 times as powerful as the 1989 one in San Francisco. (The last 9.0 event that occurred in North America was in the year of our lord 1585.)

Given the magnitude of its disasters, Japan does quite well. Ishikawa has cost 20 lives so far and may end up at 40 or fifty--which is comparable to the toll imposed by the much smaller 1989 San Francisco event.

In short, the combination of huge earthquakes and large populations is what makes Japan more vulnerable. While suboptimal, the quality of home construction is a much less significant factor.

>The last 9.0 event that occurred in North America was in the year of our lord 1585.

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/events/alaska1964/

"On March 27, 1964 at 5:36pm local time (March 28 at 3:36 UTC) an earthquake of magnitude 9.2 occurred in the Prince William Sound region of Alaska."


and possibly this one

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1700_Cascadia_earthquake

"The 1700 Cascadia earthquake occurred along the Cascadia subduction zone on January 26, 1700, with an estimated moment magnitude of 8.7–9.2"

Thank you for the better data. I think the proposition that Japan experiences more very large ones than the US remains true.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Yes, Japan would be expected to have more earthquakes due to their location. There are 4 tectonic plates that meet around Japan.

And much denser population centers.

They also have the best earthquake mitigation plans.

Right -- Japan is at the intersection of several tectonic plates. It's the "perfect storm" of location for earthquakes and the attendant tsunamis.

Thanks for letting us know your report, T-bone! Scary stuff.

Good to hear that you are safe, T-Bone. That's amazing that you felt the shaking in Tokyo. It shows how strong the quake was.

I am glad to hear all is well with you and yours Mr. Bone. You know I am always going to check on you :) Hubs has been off work but when he goes in the first thing he will do in the morning he will check on our friends there. They are North of Tokyo and should be fine but it is always good to know for sure.

Interesting about the buildings. It must be interesting to wander around.

Thank you, everyone, for the kind comments.

We are on the Ring of Fire, which basically extends from the East of Australia to the Philippines, to Japan, then Alaska, the West Coast of the US, and down to South America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire

We get little earthquakes all the time and people rarely even mention it at work the next day. I'll be sitting in a coffee shop, and people will look up from their phones for a second. Then we all just kind of say to ourselves, "That was an earthquake." It's kind of a part of daily life.