Citizen Byte: Japan earthquake - Ian MacDougall

From the first you knew this one was different. The constant little quakes we get here rattle the glass in my bookcase; they don't make the whole house creak loud enough to drown out the sound of the glass. Things in other rooms start to crash to the floor.

You're supposed to get under a table to protect yourself from falling objects, but I'm at a desk I can't fit under. Years ago my wife bought me a white earthquake helmet. I laughed at her. Now I wish I remembered where I put it.

Stuff starts falling off my desk. I grab my computer. All my work's on there.
 

This quake seemed to go on and on and on and on. 'Time flies,' they say. 'Not always,' say I. 

Finally it stopped. A siren I've never heard before started up, not rising and falling like they usually do, but rising to its highest pitch and stopping there in an electronic 'whoop, whoop, whoop.' A disembodied woman's voice announced there had been a large earthquake, and that we should move to our local point. That point is almost certainly either the park, or the local elementary school. I made a mental note to find out which it is.

The earthquake smashed one of my wife's nicest pieces of pottery, but that's the worst it did to us. 

The Tokyo trains shut down immediately, and stayed shut down, saying they had no idea when they'd be starting up again. There were huge crowds standing around outside the stations, and endless lines for taxis and buses that weren't showing up because traffic was gridlocked. My niece showed up about 7 p.m. after walking two hours from her office. Her home is another three hours' walk away, so she's on the couch here tonight. (The subways started up at about 11 p.m.) 

The aftershocks started up about 10 minutes after the first jolt, and have been going on roughly every 15 minutes for about nine hours now.  (The glass in my bookcase door is rattling as I type this.) I tell myself that through the day I've gotten used to it, but I'm exhausted right now, and I  haven't been doing anything. But watching the incredibly dramatic footage and the spreading tale of disaster on TV, I realize that we've been very, very lucky. 

And that, I must admit, is a thought that makes me very, very nervous. Tokyo, they say, gets a big earthquake every 70 years. The last one was in 1923. (The glass in my bookcase rattles slightly again.)


More Citizen Bytes from Japan:

Related: Bob Iwami describes being stuck at Narita airport
Related: Yuri Komuro shares her experience

Related: Michael Seid was on holiday in Tokyo when when the quake happened