i’m not sure what to call this one, because the earthquake near sendai, japan, has been so shocking.
i think the main reason this quake hasn’t occupied my every waking moment like the haitian earthquake did is because i am married to a haitian woman, while i do not know many japanese or anyone visiting japan. i did take some time today to study the visual images and read about the nuclear power plants after hearing some unnerving details in several conversations and on the radio.
i’m glad i looked at the photos.
usually, i hate getting my news through video or photos, but i certainly had no idea of the magnitude of the emergency or the extent of the damage it has caused. listening on the radio, i could hide behind the idea that “well, japan has the best earthquake engineers on the planet and plenty of money. they also have the most well prepared citizenry… how bad can this really be if the largest buildings are standing.” but listening on the radio, you see neither the images of the tsunami, nor the terror that the 24 aftershocks (6 of which have been of magnitude 6 [or 7, can’t remember] or greater!) might cause. in another way, japan has had at least 6 aftershocks, each of which has been larger than the haitian earthquake of 2010!
all this being said, i am staying amazed at the civil engineering in action. skyscrapers visibly swaying but not collapsing, our inability to guard against the inevitable super-disaster, emergency management and evacuation routing, risk assessment in real-time with the nuclear power plant partial meltdowns, and risk communication. every tool we studied in graduate school addressed in every news article i read or listen to.
i’ll have to write on this later this week after i’ve gotten thoughts together, but from a distance this is exciting, unnerving, unsettling, and awe-inspiring all at the same time. exciting because as a civil engineer i can picture my own role in the design, response, rescue, and rebuilding efforts. unnerving because these events are, ultimately, inevitable. unsettling because we are ultimately powerless before such events. our best and most stringent defenses will always be decimated before the storm or hazard just stronger than the designed capacity of our engineered defenses. awe-inspiring both in the integrity and discipline of the japanese engineers’ and managers’ building code and preparedness praxis and also in observing the very difficult decisions being taken with respect to nuclear power in real-time.
for now, let it suffice to say that i ask God to be with the people of Japan in this catastrophe.