Re: [tlug] Thoughts and prayers from America

[CL <az.4tlug@example.com>]

On 03/13/2011 05:25 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> NGOs?
>
> Sorry, I don't have any good suggestions. At the moment, there are
> twoJapans.
> The one I live in, which is experiencing mild to serious
> inconvenience, and the one you're seeing on TV, which only trained
> professionals are equipped to even get to, let alone do anything
> helpful. Fortunately, the survivors do have reasonable shelter but
> they're more or less isolated; the transportation system took a
> really big hit, and the "modern" communication system, too. Ie,
> cellphones are spotty touseless
> throughout eastern Japan due to high demand and destruction of
> towersand nodes.
> Landlines and Internet seem fine if they work at all, though. Some
> places can be reached only by helicopter and snowmobile, but those
> are pretty rare. Trains are not yet running (as of noon today) in
> Tohoku at all, and many roads are severed by landslides or bridge
> collapses, or a few feet deep in mud and debris deposited by a
> tsunami.

Heck, there's even two Ibarakis.  In our Ibaraki, our power was restored 
at 17:50 Sunday evening (13 MAR 11) and our Internet came back between 
20:00~21:00 when we were eating dinner. We were without portable phone 
service Saturday and Sunday and the only way to connect was to drive 
about 14km south to Kashima.  I carried over 60 liters of water, fought 
for toilet paper, waited for 90 minutes for 20 liters of "haiokku," and 
stood in line for over an hour for the right to buy JPY 3,000 of food 
dragged out of a supermarket with a broken roof.

Hokota-shi received the second strongest level of the earthquake's
force but there is little obvious damage, especially when compared to
areas adjoining us to the north and south. All of the local bridges are 
now about 8~12 cm above their approaches and the newer bridges collapsed 
or are closed as structurally unsound.  Our house is okay but the inside 
looks like someone left it on "frappe" for about an hour. Everything 
that was more than a meter above the floor wound up on top of it, 
including all of our PCs, printers, and the bookshelves. We're still 
moving around in cleared out spaces. They're predicting another 7.0 will 
strike within 2~3 days, so none of us are too comfortable.

Physical damage wasn't severe compare to that suffered by our
neighboring towns despite the fact that they didn't get hit with as
strong a shock.  Towns to the immediate north and south are unprotected 
by bluffs and they suffered significant tsunami damage.  Go check out 
the tsunami damage on Kokudou 124 along the big box strip in Kamisu for 
an example of what a mess mud can make of a Uniclo, an Autobacs, or a 
K's Denki.

8>< schnitt

> Speaking of aftershocks, throughout this morning I was still feeling
> them in Tsuchiura-shi (Ibaraki-ken).  I'm not feeling them in my
> condo in Tsukuba, but it has the latest anti-quake structure.  I
> imagine they continue, I just don't feel them through the building's
> buffers.  I hope we're through the worst now, but the tsunami warning
> is still up (although the whole Pacific coast is now at the "listen
> for news" level instead of the "get the heck out of there" level),
> and there were quakes severe enough to be announced by the early
> warning network offshore at Sendai and Ibaraki-ken as recently as 6
> hours ago.  Even geologically we're not back to normality yet.  The
> good news is that the weather is gradually getting warmer.

We're living in a building that used to be an izakaya in Taiyo-mura, 
about halfway between Kashimanada and Kasumigaura ... salt water on one 
side and fresh water on the other.  The only thing that stopped the 
tsunamis here was the fact that we're sitting on top of a 30 meter bluff 
and we only had a couple of hundred people to evacuate.

I got to witness the first tsunami to hit Oarai's Golden Beach ... 5 
meters high, traveling 800kph ... from Kokudou 51, about 100 meters 
above the beach.  I was on my way to pick up my wife at her school in 
Mito, 55 km from our house. The round trip, normally an hour each way, 
took over eight hours over roads that looked like concrete waves with 
lanes that had 15~20cm wide cracks and slabs that were almost 20cm 
higher than the lane next to them.  Lots of guys in fast cars trying 
quick lane changes around the turtles and winding up sliding on the roof 
of their car for a couple of hundred meters.

We've been pounded by aftershocks for hours on end.  The first ones were 
in the neighborhood of 6-kyo and have run from 5-jakku down to just 
barely perceptible since.  The dog (16kg of half Shiba-half Husky) is a 
nervous wreck who howls every time the floor shakes and the cats are 
obviously pissed off by his noise.

8>< schnitt
> Maybe somebody else has some good suggestions, though.

Ummm ... got a motorcycle license, experience riding enduro, woods, or 
desert, (or Alpine / green lane in the UK or Europe) and have an 
off-road bike in Japan?  There are  some local police agencies asking / 
accepting help getting to the many small local settlements up and down 
the coastal range that used to be small towns and are now just one or 
two houses. Many are occupied by the elderly who need food, water, and 
medicine and also need to be identified for evacuation. Many of 
the"modern" roads are severely damaged or impassable and there are 
places where riders are resorting to the old commercial footpaths that 
criss-crossed the hills during the Heian~Bakumatsu eras but died out 
from disuse in the early Restoration years. There are many one-two 
family settlements around Kitaura and farther up the coast just a few 
kilometers inland that used to be villages of several hundred.

Many occupants are elderly requiring regular kaigo service and who 
cannot get out without assistance. Right now, local police are asking 
for help from those of us who they know to own bikes and are 
"responsible" (e.g. not bosozoku) but, some locales have police who 
don't see or understand the need, yet.  Ibaraki Kenkei Honbu is grateful 
for the offers but there is a certain amount of hand-wringing over 
liability issues. The local junsa are completely swamped and like the 
idea. YMMV, but you won't know until you try.

I've seen some recommended NGOs on other lists, but I've never heard of 
them ... and I'm always suspicious of groups I have never heard of even 
more than the ones who advertise once an hour on TV.

CL