Sad News on New Year's Day - Japan Earthquake

[mojo]

Well, you probably all know by now, but there has been a huge earthquake in Japan. A magnitude 7.6 off Niigata. Reports are that some people were trapped under collapsed buildings. Electricity is out for many, but gas is okay. Phone and internet services disrupted too.

 

NHK News is covering it non-stop, with a big "EVACUATE!" graphic on screen. Tsunami are possible for up to a week afterwards, as well as after-shocks.

 

This video shows the view from a shinkansen at a station. It was a pretty violent event.

https://x.com/gaasych/status/1741735530671558805

 

There's a live stream of one of the fires, it's been huge for hours:

 

Take care everyone in Niigata and on the northern coast. At least two fatalities have been reported (in the usual Japanese way - "no vital signs").

 

Here's a bit of the TV coverage. It will probably get copyright claimed by NHK at some point, but...

 

 

[Tony Galiani]

BBC is reporting on an earthquake hitting western Japan.  When I first heard the reports I did not realize how serious it appears to have been.

Hoping that this turns out not to be that bad and for quick recovery.  My sympathies to those affected by this - it is a bit surreal to watch this (or any other disaster) from a safe distance.

Tony

[tossedman]

It is sad news indeed. Video coverage shows wide spread damage. It looks like they've lowered the tsunami warning. It's such a sad way to start the new year. Hopefully, there's not much loss of life.

[railsquid]

5 deaths reported so far, lots of buildings damaged, tsunami alert still in effect, continuing aftershocks.

 

TV screenshot ca. 35 minutes after it happened:

 

 

[Grant_T]

I was sitting in the hotel lobby here in Yamagata enjoying a quiet drink. The shaking was light to moderate. We have plenty of earthquakes back home. I feel for all those affected though.

[paolo]

Four Hokuriku shinkansen were stopped after the earthquake hit, between Toyama and Kanazawa stations. They remained there for 11 hours, with 1,400 total passengers onboard. They were given food and water by JR staff.

The finally reached the station at 4am, and passengers were allowed to stay onboard until operations resumed.

I can't imagine how they all felt.

I wonder if in cases like these, there would be any way of having them get off the train in a safe way. I guess the problem is that shinkansen are all on viaducts, so it would be hard to have people reach the ground.

 

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20240102/k10014306491000.html

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20240102/k10014306611000.html

[railsquid]

1 hour ago, paolo said:

I wonder if in cases like these, there would be any way of having them get off the train in a safe way. I guess the problem is that shinkansen are all on viaducts, so it would be hard to have people reach the ground.

 

There will be evacuation points at regular intervals, but in circumstances like this (particularly late in the afternoon on a winter day), the safest and most comfortable place will be inside the train. You don't want to be in the middle of nowhere evacuating hundreds of people in the cold and dark with the aid of just a few train staff, while there are aftershocks going on and you don't know what the damage situation is like.

[mojo]

The language used on the NHK broadcast was interesting. It says にげて, evacuate. If I'm not mistaken that's the "e" form, which is pretty much the lowest level of politeness one can use. It's basically barking an order, usually reserved for sports coaches and army drill instructors. They were not being subtle at all.

 

Here's a video of the initial NHK coverage:

 

 

The announcer, Yamauchi Izumi, has been praised for how forcefully she shouted the instructions from the TV. It's really quite something, if you know how normally reserved they are. She is saying "don't watch TV, run away!" It's so heart felt, it's impossible to ignore.

 

After 3/11, NHK and Japan should be proud of how much their response has improved. I got alerts on my phone before I felt the earthquake, and then move poured in with tsunami warnings almost immediately. They had clear instructions too.

[Tony Galiani]

I have been impressed - from what I have read - about how both recent disasters (earthquake and Haneda airport crash) have been managed.  We work on emergency prep all the time and you can have plenty of plans but the best laid plans don't often survive once reality hits.

 

I watched some of the Tokyo Lens videos that @MeTheSwede posted and in the one where he accompanies a woman truck driver, she notes that she is required to do her route prep manually and not rely on GPS.  It seemed odd at first but makes sense when you think about it as - if something happens and GPS or other systems are not available - they can still function.  Not sure that would happen here as we don't do a lot of manual prep and people become helpless with out the systems they rely on.

 

Tony

 

 

[cteno4]

Tony,

 

So true! Good old paper maps were designed by cartographers to convey distance at scales which made sense for long, medium and short distance trips. You got accustomed to the scale and distances and time and could get a quick visual idea of how far something was from you. Now digital maps fluidly scale in and out and its super hard to keep an idea of scale at whatever screen you are looking at (and many screens bury or just don’t even have a scale bar) and you must rely on the software to tell you how far something is and what time it will take to get there. Take away the technology and folks are lost. There is something very nice at looking at a nicely scaled paper map for thinking out a trip to a new land! But sadly it’s getting very hard to find any paper maps anymore.
 

Don't get me wrong, I love technology and has many wonderful uses, it’s just the idea that only the latest tech is good and previous is a bad and worthless that is the fatal trap culture wants us to leap into. 
 

the airplane crash was another good example as the tech failed with the comm system going down so the attendants in the rear of the plane could not get instructions from the pilots in the front of the plane. But proper training saved the day of what to do without tech in that situation and most likely saved a lot of lives. Japan does seem to have this down well of using bleeding edge tech, but a deep rooted know the manual version as well as a backup. It’s emergency planning 101, but sadly our culture thinks it stupid and backwards and usually just labels it neo-Luddism…

 

jeff

[railsquid]

On 1/4/2024 at 10:23 PM, mojo said:

After 3/11, NHK and Japan should be proud of how much their response has improved.

 

The real improvements came after 1995 (Kobe); the system (both in terms of alerts/information and disaster response) was working very well by 2011, but has been refined even more since.

 

The start of this clip shows the extent of the warning system in 1995, when the Kobe earthquake hit, i.e nothing; this was an early morning live show broadcast from Osaka:

 

 

(first 25 seconds of clip) featuring surprised pikachu faced-announcers (though one does immediately switch to the standard warnings to take cover etc.).

 

I can't find the full clip, but this excerpt is from NHK news about (IIRC) 30 minutes after the quake; at that point it's still not really clear what the extent of the quake is, and there is still no reliable data from Kobe itself:

 

 

Shindo data for Kobe appears about 1 minute into this clip. Also IIRC the prime minister of the time (Murayama, he of the bushy eyebrows) only heard about the quake from the news.

 

Fast-forward to 2011, afternoon of March 11th:

 

 

The alert is issued for most of northeast Japan (which is basically accurate, but should have covered a wider area; see also below); at that point NHK is covering a turgid parliamentary committee, but the announcer smoothly switches to reporting the alert and soberly describing the quake as felt in Tokyo. 90 seconds in, the news comes on, again all the announcer can do with the available information is report what is happening; it gets a bit chaotic as they switch between various live feeds, then at about 3mins 30secs (from the time of the first alert) the tsunami warning is issued.

 

Longer recording of the emergency news broadcast itself:

 

 

Though the tsunami alert is prominently displayed, the focus is more on reporting what is happening (compared to 1995 there's so much more information available from live webcams, social media etc.). As @mojo notes, since 3/11, whenever a tsunami alert is issued, the emphasis is very much on telling people, in no uncertain terms, to evacuate.

 

One improvement with the earthquake alert system since 2011 is that it has been modifed to dynamically expand the alert regions based on real-time observation of the quake's spread; this is 2022:

 

 

with an alert for the first quake (M6.1) at 23:34; while they are reporting that, the alert for the second, larger quake (M7.4) is issued; that one is then successively expanded to cover northeast Japan and northern Kanto and Chiba (but not Tokyo; it was strong here, but not enough for significant damage, though it did knock the power out for about 3 hours).

 

The system is not perfect, it does generate the occasional false alarm, and during the Ishikawa quake the JMA managed to mistakenly issue an alert with the original, main quake data, rather than the actual, smaller quake. This is a documentary showing how the alert system is operated:

 

 

 

On 1/4/2024 at 10:23 PM, mojo said:

 I got alerts on my phone before I felt the earthquake, and then move poured in with tsunami warnings almost immediately. They had clear instructions too.

 

Out of curiosity, where were you at the time, and what kind of alerts did you get?

Edited January 5 by railsquid
replace removed video

[mojo]

I was north of Yokohama... Chuo-Rinkan kind of area, I seem to recall. But I have alerts set up for Niigata, because I was/am planning to go up there.

 

I use the Safety Tips app, and that alerted me to the earthquake and then to tsunami warnings.

 

I see the NHK copyright police have been out in force again. I wish they wouldn't, it's a useful historical record. I should have downloaded a copy when I had the chance. They destroyed a lot of old sumo videos last year too, very frustrating because although they do post highlights now there are decades of tournaments where the only coverage was people recording the NHK broadcast and putting it on YouTube. If they aren't going to make it available themselves...

 

Anyway, some info for foreigners who are affected:

 

https://youtu.be/eq99gGcyJ9A?si=fCBapih0NhyRK0vk

 

They were talking on the news today about the people who were affected. Lots of roads still impassable, and a lack of basics in many areas. People are pulling together to help each other.

 

On the accident at Haneda, they are saying that it appears that the coastguard crew misunderstood what ATC said. ATC designated them ナンバ１ (literally "number 1" in English) and they may have interpreted that as meaning they were cleared to enter the runway for take-off. In fact, it just meant that they were at the head of the queue.

[railsquid]

11 minutes ago, mojo said:

I see the NHK copyright police have been out in force again. I wish they wouldn't, it's a useful historical record. I should have downloaded a copy when I had the chance. They destroyed a lot of old sumo videos last year too, very frustrating because although they do post highlights now there are decades of tournaments where the only coverage was people recording the NHK broadcast and putting it on YouTube. If they aren't going to make it available themselves...

 

 

Aargh, it was there this morning. I find it a fascinating bit of history, it's not the first time a clip of that has vanished. Will see if I can find another.

[railsquid]

6 minutes ago, railsquid said:

 

Aargh, it was there this morning. I find it a fascinating bit of history, it's not the first time a clip of that has vanished. Will see if I can find another.

 

Found one.

 

21 minutes ago, mojo said:

I was north of Yokohama... Chuo-Rinkan kind of area, I seem to recall. But I have alerts set up for Niigata, because I was/am planning to go up there.

 

I use the Safety Tips app, and that alerted me to the earthquake and then to tsunami warnings.

 

Ah OK, I was wondering if it was the standard alert (though no idea if those work on non-Japanese phones, come to think of it), but that is only emitted by phones connected to base stations in the areas covered by the alert, which sounds like this for anyone wondering (please don't play on speaker in public in Japan...):

 

 

 

[railsquid]

Apropos of nothing, this is the reason why they say not to go and look at the funny tsunami, because you may well end up learning to climb a tree in a hurry:

 

 

Video from the same location from someone slightly faster in the "getting to a high place" competition:

 

Edited January 5 by railsquid

[MeTheSwede]

On 1/4/2024 at 2:47 PM, Tony Galiani said:

I watched some of the Tokyo Lens videos that @MeTheSwede posted and in the one where he accompanies a woman truck driver, she notes that she is required to do her route prep manually and not rely on GPS. It seemed odd at first but makes sense when you think about it as - if something happens and GPS or other systems are not available - they can still function.  Not sure that would happen here as we don't do a lot of manual prep and people become helpless with out the systems they rely on.

 

I don't really know anything about trucking, but considering that taking a wrong turn (or mindlessly following instructions from a GPS application) could easily have you end up on a too narrow street or get struck under a bridge (I've seen the results of the later a few times near where I used to live before) it makes good sense to me that preparation requirements a strict.

 

By the way, GPS was knocked out in parts of southern Sweden during Christmas. The Russians military was playing with some of their toys based in the Kaliningrad area.

 

[railsquid]

On 1/5/2024 at 5:27 AM, cteno4 said:

It’s emergency planning 101, but sadly our culture thinks it stupid and backwards and usually just labels it neo-Luddism…

 

I've actually been called a "Luddite" because I mentioned that when out and about in Tokyo, I carry a paper map (as it's reasonable to assume that mobile navigation will be highly impractical in a disaster situation, and I've experienced that situation once already in my life).

[cteno4]

I was taking my wife to an appointment this week and I was pretty sure from my looking at the map before going that i had spaced out and had just missed the exit off the highway. My wife had her phone google map running and looked at it when I said oops and said “no wait the exit is coming up” after looking at the phone. I was pretty sure it wasn’t and in a minute it was clear we had passed the exit. Then she said “oh, the phone just flipped the map around, we did miss the exit!” Phone map, like they do, got confused for a minute and was turned upside down… I’ve had this happen when walking around trying to use phone maps and it getting a bit lost with tall buildings about the direction you are moving. Always makes you stop and scratch your head if you are going to believe the flip flopping gps in the phone.

 

jeff

[railsquid]

Going back to the earthquake, looks like some of the coastal maps will need to be revised, as there is more coast than before due to the land rising (the opposite of what happened in 2011 on the other side of Japan):

 

Edited January 6 by railsquid

[mojo]

On 1/5/2024 at 10:40 PM, railsquid said:

 

Found one.

 

 

Ah OK, I was wondering if it was the standard alert (though no idea if those work on non-Japanese phones, come to think of it), but that is only emitted by phones connected to base stations in the areas covered by the alert, which sounds like this for anyone wondering (please don't play on speaker in public in Japan...):

 

 

 

 

Ah, you know what, I turned off the alerts and forgot to turn them back on again. I don't trust the British government with them, but meant to have them on in Japan. Maybe I'll just leave them on.

[mojo]

17 hours ago, MeTheSwede said:

By the way, GPS was knocked out in parts of southern Sweden during Christmas. The Russians military was playing with some of their toys based in the Kaliningrad area.

 

As someone who works with GPS (for timing, not navigation) I find that interesting. I'll have to look into it, to see if other satellite navigation services were affected. The Russian GLONAS uses a different frequency and ideally a different antenna for best reception, possibly because it allows them to jam GPS but not their own system. Then you have Galileo and the Chinese Compass system.

 

Japan has additional satellites that improve GPS accuracy for them, and there are ground based stations that help when space based signals are not available. But still, jamming happens. The worst part is that GPS is easy to spoof, as in to create false signals that make you think you are somewhere other than where you are. The Galileo system is resistant to that, but only newer devices support it.

[mojo]

Today on the news they are talking about the risk to survivors who lack basic facilities. Apparently in previous earthquakes a lot of people have died due to the hardships faced afterwards. They highlighted sleeping on the floor of a gymnasium as an example, because inhaling dust and the cold can lead to respiratory diseases.

 

Frustratingly there is a shortage of materials to fix the roads, and it seems that the local government is struggling to organize and has not yet issued orders to the company that does the work.

[MeTheSwede]

One of the first videos I saw of damage from the earthquake was of the more light hearted sort.

 

 

 

[mojo]

I saw an interesting story on Yahoo News:

 

 

A woman called Coca-Cola to confess that she and some other people affected by the earthquake looted a vending machine because they were running out of stuff to drink, and there was no way of knowing how long it would be before aid reached them. The Coca-Cola company have said they are not going to file a criminal complaint, given the circumstances, and by the look of it the machine was probably trashed by the earthquake anyway.

 

As horrible as the situation is, it's heart-warming how people try to help each other out. Especially businesses that in other countries would put commercial interests above all else, where as, at least according to the news, they seem to be focused more on helping the community. I read that some vending machines can switch to free-vend mode in a disaster, for example.