8.9 Earthquake and my Triumph (ALL JAPAN DISCUSSIONS HERE)
- Thread starter motomaniac
- Start date
motomaniac
Street Tracker
I definitely noticed it! It hit here around 11:45pm. I was sleeping at the time and felt the usual rocking that we have been having nearly every other hour. This one escalated quickly and began the up and down shaking that can be very destructive. I hopped up and got the front door open because if you don't do that pretty quick you may not be able to get out if the building shifts too much. Half the people around me were doing the same thing.
I've had my backpack loaded and ready to go at the front door since this insanity started nearly a month ago. I used it to prop the door open while I got my ass dressed in some warm clothes. The whole place was swaying and the walls were creaking but nothing broke. I could hear the kid next door screaming to wake the dead and the dog across the way started to bark as well. Both animals and humans are getting tired of the constant shaking here. I don't mind the side to side shakes but the up and down shit has got to stop.
The radiation around here has got down a bit. Now it is only about 3 times normal. Still lots of dead people in the radiation zone around Fukushima1 which they can't remove and bury because they are contaminated. Lots of radioactive farm animals and pets are running loose with nothing to eat because everybody that can has bugged out.
Now many people are discovering that the expensive houses or apartments they bought around here were built on reclaimed land. Soil liquefaction occurs in reclaimed land during an earthquake. It has affected an area about 5 miles from my place. About 100 houses have sunk into the ground or tilted over and have had to be abandoned. I'm hoping the same thing doesn't happen here. However, I think the land under my building is safe as it used to be a WWII airfield. Should have lots of steel in the ground because we bombed the ever-loving shit out of the place during the war.
The media and the gov't has started to acknowledge the role of the US military in the relief efforts. There have been a few news stories about their efforts and a teacher told me today that he was surprised to know that foreigners had donated something like 300million dollars to earthquake victims in Japan.
I'm just hoping we don't have another 9.0 as the new school year has started all over Japan. There is a nuke plant, Tokaimura, about 30 miles from my school. They were able to get power to it after the earthquake so it didn't melt down like Fukushima1 but it was unstable for awhile until they got it under control. I think it leaked radiation as monitors near the school showed big spikes after the earthquake even though further north near Fukushima1 the readings were lower. The same fault line that caused the last big one runs just offshore so if a 9.0 hits here it really will be the end as Tokaimura is north of Tokyo and Hamaoka is just a few miles south and is considered the most dangerous nuclear power plant in Japan since it is build directly on top of two major fault lines. The shit will really hit the fan if these two plants get hammered by a big one.
I've had my backpack loaded and ready to go at the front door since this insanity started nearly a month ago. I used it to prop the door open while I got my ass dressed in some warm clothes. The whole place was swaying and the walls were creaking but nothing broke. I could hear the kid next door screaming to wake the dead and the dog across the way started to bark as well. Both animals and humans are getting tired of the constant shaking here. I don't mind the side to side shakes but the up and down shit has got to stop.
The radiation around here has got down a bit. Now it is only about 3 times normal. Still lots of dead people in the radiation zone around Fukushima1 which they can't remove and bury because they are contaminated. Lots of radioactive farm animals and pets are running loose with nothing to eat because everybody that can has bugged out.
Now many people are discovering that the expensive houses or apartments they bought around here were built on reclaimed land. Soil liquefaction occurs in reclaimed land during an earthquake. It has affected an area about 5 miles from my place. About 100 houses have sunk into the ground or tilted over and have had to be abandoned. I'm hoping the same thing doesn't happen here. However, I think the land under my building is safe as it used to be a WWII airfield. Should have lots of steel in the ground because we bombed the ever-loving shit out of the place during the war.
The media and the gov't has started to acknowledge the role of the US military in the relief efforts. There have been a few news stories about their efforts and a teacher told me today that he was surprised to know that foreigners had donated something like 300million dollars to earthquake victims in Japan.
I'm just hoping we don't have another 9.0 as the new school year has started all over Japan. There is a nuke plant, Tokaimura, about 30 miles from my school. They were able to get power to it after the earthquake so it didn't melt down like Fukushima1 but it was unstable for awhile until they got it under control. I think it leaked radiation as monitors near the school showed big spikes after the earthquake even though further north near Fukushima1 the readings were lower. The same fault line that caused the last big one runs just offshore so if a 9.0 hits here it really will be the end as Tokaimura is north of Tokyo and Hamaoka is just a few miles south and is considered the most dangerous nuclear power plant in Japan since it is build directly on top of two major fault lines. The shit will really hit the fan if these two plants get hammered by a big one.
ssjones
750cc
I'm glad you are still OK Motomaniac. I can't imagine living daily under that type of stress, but on the other hand I guess you are thankful not to have been injured or killed. I'm still surprised a 7.1 quake doesn't even get as much as a footnote over here. 15 years ago, that would be been news for a couple of days.
Sal Paradise
Hooligan
Makes you wonder what the hell is going on seismically and when it will settle down!! Hang in there!! Be safe and remember - the good old USA is here if you need to come home.
Sal
Sal
geolpilot
Street Tracker
The earthquakes are business as usual for planet earth, especially when located on the zone where an oceanic plate is plunging beneath a continental plate. Humans foolishly forget that they are not all powerful and all important. The planet will knock the snot out of us and it has countless ways to do it. Just have to be lucky to not be in the same location as a major natural event at the same time. Think about it like walking across a busy expressway, except with regard to planet earth, we pretty much do it while deaf and blind.
Kirkus51
Hooligan
As i understand it the Earth's crust floats on a core of molten iron, which causes earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hot springs etc. and if the core ever cools down and hardens no more seismic events, but no more life on the planet too.....
The biggest volcano in the world is Yellowstone National Park. If it ever blows, I'm kissing my ass goodbye.
The biggest volcano in the world is Yellowstone National Park. If it ever blows, I'm kissing my ass goodbye.
motomaniac
Street Tracker
Just had another 7.1 here. The epicenter was just about 80kms away which is the closest yet. It seems as though these earthquakes are just moving further and further south along the fault line. This pn was right off the coast from Fukushima 1 and very near Tokaimura nuke plant in Ibaraki. A tsunami of 2 meters is predicted at Tokaimura so there will be some shit there.
I had just got off my bike and walked into my apartment when it struck. This place was really rocking and rolling! If I had been on the expressway when that hit I would have had some exciting times! This one was the up and down variety and lasted a couple of minutes. Shit was falling off the shelves and the cabinet doors were slamming open and shut.
Ooooops! Just started again....
I had just got off my bike and walked into my apartment when it struck. This place was really rocking and rolling! If I had been on the expressway when that hit I would have had some exciting times! This one was the up and down variety and lasted a couple of minutes. Shit was falling off the shelves and the cabinet doors were slamming open and shut.
Ooooops! Just started again....
motomaniac
Street Tracker
Let me correct that. There are no radiation monitors in schools here. It just happened that the science teacher had an old one for some reason and was waving it around. There are prefectural radiation monitors that were set up after the last FU in 1999 at Tokaimura. I doubt anybody knew they existed until last month. As far as I know, nobody at my school even knows they exist. I have pointed out the webpage for them many times but most say they don't want to know! These boneheads have responsibility for thousands of students but they can't be bothered to check radiation data that is available for the whole region at the click of a button!
The earthquake yesterday left many students stranded at school or on trains until around 11pm. Thankfully, I had already left for the day on the Scrambler. The apartment was really shaking. It was close by so we really got a good long shaking. Luckily the wife was in Tokyo and was able to get home after a few delays.
We had another big one this morning just after I got to school. A 6.3 just off the coast nearby. Still, the school is taking absolutely no extra precautions! No adding emergency exits or even ropes or ladders so the students could escape in case the only two sets of stairs in the main part of the school get blocked or jammed. I asked the homeroom teacher today what students were told to do if the stairway gets jammed with bodies or debris and he just looked at me with a blank face. He hadn't even thought about an alternative to the stairs nearest his classroom. I am quite sure all the students will just line up in the hallway obediently and wait as the building falls down around them. Nobody will try to use another set of stairs or even jump down from one balcony to the next.
People here just seem incapable of anticipating what can happen in an emergency. Even after one of the largest earthquakes in history hits just up the road they still refuse to use some common fucking sense. It boggles the mind.
OK, rant over....back to work.:rocket:
The earthquake yesterday left many students stranded at school or on trains until around 11pm. Thankfully, I had already left for the day on the Scrambler. The apartment was really shaking. It was close by so we really got a good long shaking. Luckily the wife was in Tokyo and was able to get home after a few delays.
We had another big one this morning just after I got to school. A 6.3 just off the coast nearby. Still, the school is taking absolutely no extra precautions! No adding emergency exits or even ropes or ladders so the students could escape in case the only two sets of stairs in the main part of the school get blocked or jammed. I asked the homeroom teacher today what students were told to do if the stairway gets jammed with bodies or debris and he just looked at me with a blank face. He hadn't even thought about an alternative to the stairs nearest his classroom. I am quite sure all the students will just line up in the hallway obediently and wait as the building falls down around them. Nobody will try to use another set of stairs or even jump down from one balcony to the next.
People here just seem incapable of anticipating what can happen in an emergency. Even after one of the largest earthquakes in history hits just up the road they still refuse to use some common fucking sense. It boggles the mind.
OK, rant over....back to work.:rocket:
koifarm
Hooligan
Moto, you are simply a fucking Hero dude, thanks are not enough to compensate you for the truth you are printing on here, I cannot imagine what you must be feeling about this whole thing but I tip my hat to you for what you're doing, and hope you survive intact and healthy.
I'm sending prayers your way for your safekeeping. Do not hesitate to ask for help if you need it.
koi
I'm sending prayers your way for your safekeeping. Do not hesitate to ask for help if you need it.
koi
Rhodie
Street Tracker
The WaPo is now reporting that the Japanese authorities planned Tuesday to raise their rating of the severity of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis to the highest level on an international scale, equal to that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, according to the Kyodo news agency.
A level 7 accident, according to the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, is typified by a “major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects.”
Japan reportedly to rate nuclear crisis at highest level
A level 7 accident, according to the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, is typified by a “major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects.”
Japan reportedly to rate nuclear crisis at highest level
My son finally got his Visa back from the Japanese Consulat in San Fran, he leaves this Friday morning to go to Japan (Chiba) to Teach English. He'll spend 4 days in Tokyo for training, then start teaching in a GEOS school. I am a bit nervous, but he's 28, did his 8 yrs in uniform, got his BA in Teaching, speaks some Japanese, and still looks at life as an adventure. What can he expect in Chiba right now. How are they being affected by whats happening. He's been online with a couple of other English teachers in Japan and they have sent differing reports. One is outside of OSAKA, and the other is by Nagono.
motomaniac
Street Tracker
It depends on where he is in Chiba. The whole place is shaking these days but as long as he is not near the coast I think he will be ok. I live in Chiba so I can help him out. Will he have a bike? Highly recommended. Can introduce him to other foreign riders around him.
He sounds just like me when I fist came here. Right out of the army. I was 30 at the time.
Not a hero in the least. If I was I would be raising HELL with these knuckeheads and leading the lynch mob through the gates of TEPCO with a noose in one hand and a torch in the other.
The Japanese gov't has known that this was extremely bad from the beginning but in typical fashion they tell everybody it's nothing and then week by week raise the level of alert and release the damning evidence of their stupidity bit by bit very quietly and hope that people have grown too weary of the whole mess to care anymore. I think the intervention in Libya was the best thing that could happen for these boneheads because it got the critical foreign media off their backs. The Japanese media is extremely controlled here so the gov't can almost guarantee that nobody will dispute anything they say. They have been running what amounts to propaganda messages on the TV during every commercial break since the big earthquake telling people to be nice to each other and not to cause trouble. In one hour you may hear the messages about 30 times. My students have memorized all of them verbatim because they have now heard them millions of times.
He sounds just like me when I fist came here. Right out of the army. I was 30 at the time.
Not a hero in the least. If I was I would be raising HELL with these knuckeheads and leading the lynch mob through the gates of TEPCO with a noose in one hand and a torch in the other.
The Japanese gov't has known that this was extremely bad from the beginning but in typical fashion they tell everybody it's nothing and then week by week raise the level of alert and release the damning evidence of their stupidity bit by bit very quietly and hope that people have grown too weary of the whole mess to care anymore. I think the intervention in Libya was the best thing that could happen for these boneheads because it got the critical foreign media off their backs. The Japanese media is extremely controlled here so the gov't can almost guarantee that nobody will dispute anything they say. They have been running what amounts to propaganda messages on the TV during every commercial break since the big earthquake telling people to be nice to each other and not to cause trouble. In one hour you may hear the messages about 30 times. My students have memorized all of them verbatim because they have now heard them millions of times.
motomaniac
Street Tracker
Just had another mag. 7. Thats the third big one in less than 24 hours....
This one was off the coast from Fukushima 1.
I was on my way out the window when it finally stopped....:eeek:
This one was off the coast from Fukushima 1.
I was on my way out the window when it finally stopped....:eeek:
Kirkus51
Hooligan
As an aside, when I lived in SoCal, there was a pretty good quake one day, big enough to knock down the cinder block fence in the back yard. Quakes put you on edge a bit, anticipating the aftershocks.
About a week later and a couple of hours after I got to bed. The whole house seemed to be shaking again so I hop out of bed to get under the door sill.......... turns out it was my roomie having wild sex in the next room.
just trying to put a bit of levity in the thread.
About a week later and a couple of hours after I got to bed. The whole house seemed to be shaking again so I hop out of bed to get under the door sill.......... turns out it was my roomie having wild sex in the next room.
just trying to put a bit of levity in the thread.
Sal Paradise
Hooligan
Watch this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrxKqLeZYD0
Dr. Michio Kaku, Theoretical Physicist: Fukishima Daiichi Nuclear Facility is a "Ticking Time Bomb"
DR. MICHIO KAKU: Yeah, first of all, I have relatives in Tokyo, and they’re wondering about evacuation. In fact, some of my relatives have already evacuated from Tokyo. They have little children. And radiation has already appeared in the drinking water in Tokyo. And so, people are wondering, you know, especially for young children, for pregnant women, should they leave. People are voting with their feet now. A lot of people are voluntarily evacuating from Tokyo, because they simply don’t believe the statements of the utility, which have consistently lowballed all the estimates of radiation damage.
DR. MICHIO KAKU: Well, in the best-case scenario—this is the scenario devised by the utility itself—they hope to bring it under control by the end of this year. By the end of this year, they hope to have the pumps working, and the reaction is finally stabilized by the end of this year.
AMY GOODMAN: Oddly, it’s sounding a little bit like BP when they were trying to plug up the hole.
DR. MICHIO KAKU: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: "It will happen. It will happen."
DR. MICHIO KAKU: They’re literally making it up as they go along. We’re in totally uncharted territories. You get any nuclear engineering book, look at the last chapter, and this scenario is not contained in the last chapter of any nuclear engineering textbook on the planet earth. So they’re making it up as they go along. And we are the guinea pigs for this science experiment that’s taking place. Then it could take up to 10 years, up to 10 years to finally dismantle the reactor. The last stage is entombment. This is now the official recommendation of Toshiba, that they entomb the reactor over a period of many years, similar to what happened in Chernobyl.
AMY GOODMAN: Entomb it in...?
DR. MICHIO KAKU: In a gigantic slab of concrete. You’re going to have to drill underneath to make sure that the core does not melt right into the ground table. And you’re going to put 5,000 tons of concrete and sand on top of the flaming reactor.
Dr. Michio Kaku, Theoretical Physicist: Fukishima Daiichi Nuclear Facility is a "Ticking Time Bomb"
DR. MICHIO KAKU: Yeah, first of all, I have relatives in Tokyo, and they’re wondering about evacuation. In fact, some of my relatives have already evacuated from Tokyo. They have little children. And radiation has already appeared in the drinking water in Tokyo. And so, people are wondering, you know, especially for young children, for pregnant women, should they leave. People are voting with their feet now. A lot of people are voluntarily evacuating from Tokyo, because they simply don’t believe the statements of the utility, which have consistently lowballed all the estimates of radiation damage.
DR. MICHIO KAKU: Well, in the best-case scenario—this is the scenario devised by the utility itself—they hope to bring it under control by the end of this year. By the end of this year, they hope to have the pumps working, and the reaction is finally stabilized by the end of this year.
AMY GOODMAN: Oddly, it’s sounding a little bit like BP when they were trying to plug up the hole.
DR. MICHIO KAKU: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: "It will happen. It will happen."
DR. MICHIO KAKU: They’re literally making it up as they go along. We’re in totally uncharted territories. You get any nuclear engineering book, look at the last chapter, and this scenario is not contained in the last chapter of any nuclear engineering textbook on the planet earth. So they’re making it up as they go along. And we are the guinea pigs for this science experiment that’s taking place. Then it could take up to 10 years, up to 10 years to finally dismantle the reactor. The last stage is entombment. This is now the official recommendation of Toshiba, that they entomb the reactor over a period of many years, similar to what happened in Chernobyl.
AMY GOODMAN: Entomb it in...?
DR. MICHIO KAKU: In a gigantic slab of concrete. You’re going to have to drill underneath to make sure that the core does not melt right into the ground table. And you’re going to put 5,000 tons of concrete and sand on top of the flaming reactor.
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Well Son made it to Chiba last night, day one good so far. Didn't bring his bike, wants to give it a year to see how it goes before he has it shipped or buys one there. Gonna learn his way around, get some advice from Motomaniac before he dives in head long into the shallow end of the pool.
Just hope the world doesn't start rockin an rollin too bad and he has to beat feet the hell out of there.
Just hope the world doesn't start rockin an rollin too bad and he has to beat feet the hell out of there.
motomaniac
Street Tracker
Don't worry! He'll get used to the shaking. We are down to one big shake a day instead of two or three. He is also in a safer location than I am. Only an hour away if he needs help and have given him the links to the foreign biker community who can get him squared away on almost any issue he may have.