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An
earthquake is no laughing matter
Melvyn D. Magree Originally published in Reader Weekly June 8, 2006 On our recent trip to Japan it seemed that every time one of our Japanese hosts talked about an excursion, they mentioned a major destination and maybe one or two other stops. Invariably we would stop at several more places and we would wonder when we would get to the major destination. This was true of a visit to some friends outside Osaka. They said that they wanted to take us to an Italian restaurant and said we would take a ferry to get there. I assumed it was for lunch. Soon after we piled into their car, we were on a ferry to the island of Awaji that almost divides Osaka Bay. We drove along the shore through towns and countryside, past tile factories and onion and flower fields, up into the hills and back to the shore. We stopped for lunch, not at an Italian restaurant but a traditional Japanese restaurant. After lunch we went to a park next door. It was a relatively peaceful place with paths among the trees and brooks. The park’s real fame was its gold museum, worth an article itself. One of our next stops was another museum, an earthquake museum. We pulled into a parking lot between a low-lying building and a huge wind turbine. After craning our necks to gawk at the wind turbine we entered the building. The building’s main room was long and narrow because it straddled a portion of the fault from the 1995 Kobe Earthquake, a quake of magnitude 7.2, nearly eight times the force of the quake that hit Java shortly after we got back to Minnesota. Outside the main building was a house with a wall around it. The wall was cracked in two places; the right section was lower than left section and the middle section sloped between them. The fault ran right behind the house that appeared to have only minor cracking in its walls, as if the stucco had dried too quickly. The most memorable part of the house was the kitchen. A cupboard had fallen across the kitchen table and there were dishes and food containers all over. When we came back into the museum we entered a room with an earthquake simulator. It was a small room with a table, some chairs, and a couch, and it had an open front. People were invited to sit in the room. The attendant gave an explanation of what was going to happen and threw a switch. A great rumbling began, the room began to shake, the people held on to what they could, and then they began to laugh. After about 20 seconds the “quake” subsided, but then began again for about 10 seconds. When we took our turn, I sat at the table. Shortly after the “quake” began, my chair tilted quickly to the left, and I grabbed the table for stability. I don’t know if I laughed. I managed to sit still for the remainder of the time, feeling like it was no worse than really rough turbulence in an airplane. When the “quake” stopped, we walked wobbly-legged out of the room. If it had been a real quake, I would not have laughed and would have been very worried, maybe even panicked. The main building has several physical examples of the quake’s damages as well as many photos. Imagine yourself in some of these situations. You are driving on a road and the pavement buckles under you tossing your car around. You are walking down a rutted path through the grass when you are thrown to the ground. When you pick yourself up you do not see the path in front of you, but turning around you see the path behind you. As you turn around again, you see that the path in front of you is now a meter to your right. Imagine you are driving a bus on an elevated expressway. As the road begins to shake you stop as quickly as you can. Before you stop, the road in front of you drops from sight and you wind up hanging over the edge. You may be laughing, but it is from hysteria because you are still alive. Over 5,000 people died in the Kobe quake. Pictures convey the magnitude of this disaster better than words. You can see photos from the museum at http://www.scec.org/news/00news/feature000912.html. You can take your pick of sites to visit by doing a search on Kobe, earthquake, and 1995. One with lots of information is http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/class/100/effects-kobe.html. Shortly after we left the museum we boarded another ferry to continue our journey to the Italian restaurant. As we passed under a suspension bridge with cars, buses, and trucks at least 20 stories over our heads, I wondered if the bridge was built with very good engineering or the people on it were optimistic that no quake would occur as they crossed. ©2006, 2007 Melvyn D. Magree |