The orphan tsunami of The Pacific

Tsunami can cause devastation, taking the souls of entire towns and villages as they arrive with a single wave front, taller than many buildings and stretching as far as the eye can see. They're not like a beach wave, crashing and gone, tsunami keep going, some for minutes before they recede only to arrive again as the next front impacts the shore line. And they travel across seas and oceans at the speed of a jet liner.

An earthquake in Chile has set this process in motion. Usually an earthquake precedes a tsunami, providing a warning that it will arrive, the ground shakes and the seas rise. But orphan tsunami are not like this. The earthquake may have generated the wave nearly half a planet away, there's no feeling of shake or temblors, no sudden shock followed by a rolling sway as the ground moves under your feet. Today we receive warning via satellite and TV. But that was not always the case.

In 1700 a massive earthquake on the Cascadia fault line, offshore from Vancouver, sent a stealth wave directly at Japan. Unrecorded in North America, it's known from Japanese records kept at the time. Again in 1960, a M9+ quake in Chile sent waves across the ocean that arrived at over three meters high. Communications, having been substantially improved over the years, allowed for warning and evacuation. But that orphan wave still took over 100 lives, and that was after it had taken out Hilo. Today's wave was ok, 80cm at most when it reached Japan. Stay safe everyone.

Tsunami waves simply don't stop for anything

The flotsam and jetsam of Fukushima

"Highly radioactive" is a somewhat emotional phrase being regularly applied to the debris drawn into the Pacific Ocean after the tsunami of March 2011. Although elements of this disaster have been washing up on the shores of the west coast of North America for quite some time now, recently the first traces of radiation, identified to come from Fukushima, have also been identified along the Oregon shores. You needed to read a long way into the reports to see the levels were fractions of fractions of a percent of the everyday background radiation. Not really something to worry about but it makes a great headline.

The debris field is the remnants of millions of tons of the everyday items that made up the towns and villages of the Tohoku coast that was scoured away that day. Whole habitats simply disappeared along with everything they contained. A football crossed the oceans quickly and was emotionally returned to its owner months later. A motorbike, a Hog, kept in a weather-proof plastic garden shed landed in British Columbia and was refurbished and presented to a delighted owner. The wreckage of floating docks, ghost ships, houses and even fishing tanks with live fish still in them (hmmm, I question that one) regularly wash up on the shores of the Pacific countries now.

The debris itself set off on its sojourn across the oceans in the days before the meltdown at Fukushima and is generally not considered to be radioactive or pose a risk of wild mutation. What it does carry is the ability to pollute the shorelines when the wreckage comes to rest and potentially this poses an even greater risk is to wildlife. The flotsam carries with it hitchhikers, species native to the waters of Japan but that were not necessarily established elsewhere. Although the process of ocean current transfer has always existed, this time it is on a scale never seen before. Radiation isn't the problem, fare dodging passengers are. This could be an ocean wide environmental disaster to follow the natural one of 2.42, March 11, 2011. But it just might be forgotten until it's too late.

So run. Run uphill.

Just run. Run uphill. Don't worry about the others. Save yourself first. 

And tell the future generations that a tsunami once reached this point. 

And that those who survived were those who ran. Uphill. 

So run! Run uphill!

March 11, 2011

A tsunami warning in Tohoku

At 8.06 this morning, northern Japan was shaken by an M6.9 earthquake centred off the Sanriku coast of Tohoku, northeast Japan. Although barely perceptible in Tokyo it was intense closer in and triggered a tsunami warning which appeared on all television and satellite stations within minutes. The city of Ofunato issued an evacuation order for the port area which remained in place for over two hours. Thankfully the wave came in at only a few centimetres, not enough to cause any damage.  

A magnitude 6.9 is a serious earthquake, enough to slam doors 200km away; by comparison the 1995 Kobe event was an M6.8 and that razed a city being closer in. Mild by comparison, here is an M6.6 I filmed on my iPhone sitting in my office in Tokyo about 250km from a quake back in 2011 (we had become a little blasé about aftershocks by then). Remembering that the scale is logarithmic, this morning's rattle will have been significantly stronger than this in Iwate, the closest prefecture to the epicentre. 

You can see the fours and threes being reported across the map below. Rather than representing magnitude (M), essentially a measure of the energy released by an earthquake, the Japanese system measures the local intensity of the temblor, in this case by prefecture. Effectively it tells you the strength of the shaking at any particular location and is recorded on a scale of 1 - 7. Luckily this morning's quake was way offshore, reducing the impact as the shockwaves spread and dissipated, but it still won't have been too pleasant. Hope you guys are OK up there today.

A TV screenshot thirty minutes after this mornings M6.9 

The sorrow of Fukushima

March 11, 2011 saw one histories greatest earthquakes. I use the word "great" here in the sense of scale; there was nothing good that actually came from it. The devastation it unleashed on the Tohoku coast line will scar the region for decades to come with many areas unlikely to ever be rebuilt or recover as the younger generation looks to the cities further south to start a new life. Many communities were declining before the events that day, now they're in free fall.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant remains a catastrophe area with exclusion zones still in place. Decommissioning will not begin for many years to come and the technology required doesn't exit for much of the process. But the meltdown at Fukushima caused a secondary issue, it became a "distraction" to the real and present crisis. The meltdown and radiation released forced the relocation of many thousands of people but the tsunami forced the relocation of hundreds of thousands when nearly twenty thousand died in the tsunami within minutes of the earthquake. 

Over a million buildings were partially or totally destroyed by the combined effects of the temblor and black wall of water and in many areas the reconstruction process has hardly begun. And the world and Japan remain focussed on the one issue, Fukushima. The sense of urgency has left the country though 170,000 still live in temporary housing. The Mayor of Rikuzentakata has issued an open invitation for anyone to visit and maybe a little gaiatsu, external pressure, might help things along. To paraphrase The Economist, "what will all the foreigners think when they come for the Olympics?".  It's been four years, that should have been enough.

Just run. Run uphill. Don't worry about the others. Save yourself first. And tell the future generations that a tsunami once reached this point. And that those who survived were those who ran. Uphill. 

So run! Run uphill!

Nuclear power, earthquakes, tsunamis and the choices for Japan. And the planet.

This blog is designed and deliberately written to be family friendly. As such, here, I don't tackle controversial subjects and don't aim to argue subjective points. I simply set out to explain interesting aspects of life in Japan. And following a couple of major earthquakes over the last few days which always re-ignites the debate, here we go on nuclear power….

Before the earthquake of March 2011, approximately 30% of Japan's electricity was generated by the nuclear industry. Soon after, all 100+ reactor cores were shut down for politically acceptable "maintenance". And since then Japan has been looking for an alternative. Scrambling that first summer the country brought older power stations out of mothballs, started to import vast quantities of oil and natural gas and even plugged two massive floating generators used for powering oil rigs into the Tokyo grid.

Whilst renewables are obviously a good idea, the lack of power storage systems means they will remain marginal until that issue is resolved. Tidal power is beginning to develop, wind farms are progressing and even micro-hydro plants used in irrigation of rice fields are growing in popularity. But in reality major schemes such as terawatt hydroelectric damns (which produce significant greenhouse gasses through decay of foliage by the way) are years if not decades away. So the question is, do we continue to burn fossil fuels and risk the atmosphere, or do we switch the nuclear power back on and risk the land? Or alternatively do we switch off the lights and use less power?

Before the earthquake; Tokyo's lights are bright and vibrant

Tokyo after the quake. People switched off those lights to save power.

Europe at night. Does each light bulb have to be on?

Magnitude 9: A serialisation from Fifty-Six Days - An Earthquake in Japan

At 2.46pm on Friday, March 11, 2011 the office began to move. Earthquakes are common in Japan and usually begin with a jolt and then a few seconds of shaking before they subside again. I was in a meeting at the time with Paul and two others from McKinsey, a consultancy. Paul being relatively new to Japan was at first interested in the experience. He hadn’t been through a noticeable earthquake before having not felt the foreshock two days earlier.

Soon though, we all realized this was no ordinary earthquake. The heavy meeting table we were sitting at, and soon took shelter under, started to move violently around. Ceiling panels began to shake and we could hear them falling outside the door. Earthquake proof cabinets bolted to the walls sprang open and spilled their contents on the floor.

The earthquake had lasted for five minutes by the time the tremors started to subside. We looked out of the office and called if everyone was alright. We saw an entire floor of shocked staff, some in tears, everyone with the contents of their desks now on the floor around them. The standard wisdom immediately after an earthquake is to remain inside the building due to the danger injury from falling debris as you step outside. That is, unless you believe the building itself was no longer safe. With the ceiling caved in in places and cracks in concrete walls we took the decision to evacuate everyone as quickly as possible.

Clearing people from the far end of the floor, the fourth in a five-story building, we began to help staff towards the stairwells. One had recently broken his leg but refused all assistance and made his way with everyone else down the stairs. Another had left her mobile phone behind on her desk and was trying to work her way back against the tide to retrieve it. We convinced her to exit now and worry about her phone later. We cleared the third floor and then found chaos on the second where racking and samples of new apparel were now thrown around the room. We ensured everyone was out and moved on to the first floor where we found people had already left and were moving to the open parking areas outside the building.

Hurrying to the entrance we saw groups of people standing under the vast glass awning outside the building and virtually rugby tackled them as we moved them to safety. Better a little rain than several tons of glass falling on you. Then it struck us we’d forgotten to clear the top floor. Looking around at the number of people in the car park we reckoned they’d figure it out though and kept moving people away from the building.

Although we didn’t know it at the time, we had just experienced one of the largest earthquakes anywhere in history. This M9.0 had released ten times the power of all the earthquakes in Japan in the last hundred years. We looked around, many people were in shock, everyone trying their unresponsive phones. People were looking to us for guidance on what they should do next.

It was obvious we were going to have to close the office for the rest of the day and as it turned out we closed it for the following week too. We started to tell people to begin to make their way home as quickly as possible. If they lived too far to walk, find a hotel, we’d cover the cost; if they could find a taxi, we’d pay for that too. With the immediate closure of the rail and subway systems, many people realized they didn’t know how to get home. Living their lives on the subway system, they didn’t even know which way to walk.

Wham! At this point the first aftershock hit us, a 7.9, massive in its own right. Standing in the car park I watched as the fifth floor of the building swayed and was glad we’d made the decision to move outside.

At times like this the first thing you think about is family. The mobile phone system was already down, locked with millions of people trying to make calls to loved ones all at the same time. I tried to text Masami but this jammed too and I had no idea how my twelve-year old son, Kai, was. Thoughts of his school collapsing scream through my mind.

It was after nearly twenty minutes that I remembered he had his iPhone with him and that I could track it. The earthquake had struck ten minutes before the normal end of school. I searched for him and saw that he was on Meguro Dori, which meant he was on the school bus. If the school bus had survived that meant the school had survived and he was safe. It also meant that I knew to make my way home rather than to the school and that I could now focus on the several hundred people around me and not worry for a short while.

The relief with the knowledge that he was safe was immense and in the days that followed I sent a thank you message via a friend to Apple, it really had made a difference.

But I still couldn’t reach Masami. 

It was March and still cold with a light rain falling. Letting everyone back in briefly to pick up coats and jackets for their journey home I went back to my office on the fourth floor. My desk had moved thirty centimeters from the wall and had only been stopped from going further by a cabinet moving in the opposite direction. I had tried calling and texting from my iPhone but nothing was transmitting at this point and wouldn’t for the next few days.

The corporate email was still working and I sent a message to our head office in Germany to let them know we’d suffered a major earthquake and were evacuating the office. For some reason, as we’d initially cleared the building, I had started to video the events as they unfurled. This short video was later distributed quickly around the world so that the Group could see the devastation for themselves.

I’d been in Japan for the Kobe disaster, a M6.8 that had razed the city in 1995. I’d had friends who had been through it and had later talked to me about the experience. I knew the phones wouldn’t be working any time soon and that the rail and subways would stay closed until they could be thoroughly checked.

I also knew that the highways across Tokyo would be immediately closed for emergency inspection, if they were still standing at all. This meant the roads were going to very soon hit gridlock and using a car was going to be a liability. At this point we didn’t know if the highway system had survived inside the capital but we could see dark clouds of smoke rising from the direction of the port and the main oil terminals.

We urged staff to start the walk home as quickly as possible. Over the next few days we received many emails from people who had taken the advice, left immediately and been able to return safely to their homes by evening or had found hotel rooms to stay. We also received many messages from people saying they wished they’d taken our advice and that by waiting to begin their journeys they had been stranded for the night. We were just glad they were safe.

Hotels in Tokyo started to fill quickly and many responded by offering options to double up in rooms or provided blankets to people sheltering in lobbies. The scale of what was happening around us was beginning to become clear and we realized things wouldn’t be normal for a while.

Once the car parks had been emptied of everyone who wanted to leave, I started to walk home with MDR, a friend from the office who lived in the same direction. It was only eight kilometers and I walked it regularly simply for the exercise.

The good news was that we were seeing relatively little structural damage. Later though we found out that liquefaction had caused major destruction across northern Tokyo. Liquefaction is a deadly side effect of earthquakes where ground water is forced to the surface by the shaking, turning the earth to a viscous liquid. Buildings sink into the ground and collapse and storm drains float to the surface being pipes filled with nothing more than air.

I had walked the ground in Kobe and seen ten story buildings lying in the streets. We seemed to have been saved that fate. At this point, where we were in central Tokyo, the infrastructure was relatively unscathed. In fact, the closest I came to harm as we walked back was when a construction truck reversed quickly into the road and nearly took out a group of pedestrians, including myself.

Halfway home, as we past the National Stadium, I remembered I had Skype on my phone and that Kai, if home by now, was very likely to have his Skype open on his computer. I tried to contact him and to my great relief, connected and heard his voice. Everything changes in a crisis and the first thing I heard him say was the dogs are safe. I smiled and asked if he was OK and where was his mother.

After confirming he was OK, and that Masami was also home and fine, I continued the journey in a much more positive frame of mind. However, these feelings were soon dampened as we walked along and saw crowds standing outside shop windows. The stores had turned television screens around to follow the news coverage and let people see what was happening as the first images of the tsunami were broadcast by helicopter. We watched in stunned silence as the black wave chased tiny cars along roads and slowly swallowed each up in its path. We knew we were watching people die and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Walking on through Shibuya, the central district of Tokyo near my home, we were met with waves of thousands of people, stranded and trying to make their own way home. Each day over two million people pass through Shibuya Station and it was now closed to all rail traffic. Most people simply had no choice and they began the very long queue for a bus which itself was going to be caught in the city gridlock soon if it could move at all.

Millions were now walking. Shibuya is not just crowded but full. There is no space between the thousands waiting in line for the buses. None will be coming and none will be leaving any time soon. Train lines are closed and road is their only way home. I watch from a footbridge for a few minutes and wonder how long they’ll have to wait.

Many have already decided it’s time to move. As the crowd leaves en masse they reach a crossing and everyone stops for the red light. No pushing. It turns green and the wave of people slowly moves off together. I wonder how many times that would be repeated this night.

I was fortunate living only an hour and a half walk from the office. I heard many stories later of friends walking twenty hours in business shoes or heels and the buses from the outer lying schools not being able to return children to their homes until the next morning. Yokohama International School enacted its emergency plan and placed children with local families for the night. One outlying international school started the long trek back into Tokyo only to be caught in the gridlock until morning.

The house survived without serious damage. Kai had moved the dog cages under the table so they’ll be safe and he’s found our cycling helmets, the best protection we have. Although it sounds a cliché from a disaster movie, Masami had actually been halfway through a hair appointment and came running out of the building only to see the cranes on top of the half constructed Hikarie building bending to the point of collapse.

I had a beer with MDR and we manage to Skype a message to his wife that he’s safe and will be home soon. He helps me right the television and then takes his leave.

An email arrives from my parents. They’ve heard about the earthquake and wonder if we’re OK as I haven’t contacted them. Normally if there is a report of an earthquake in Japan I’d call and let them know we’re all safe. This time there was still no telephone. I Skype and get through, telling them not to go to video mode. The networks will never take it.

That evening Skype became the lifeline. Whilst the phone systems were down, we found later than anything based on Internet communication still worked. Even Skype on my phone worked as this transmitted through the data networks rather than the voice ones. It allowed us not just to contact family outside Japan and reassure them we were still alive but also to start the process of coordinating our response to the unfolding crisis.

The first messages start to arrive asking if we’re ok. Offers of help but what can anyone do. Hugs from Vancouver, concern from the UK. Friends from school and university reach out, we’re in their thoughts.

That first night we sit watching the television with our shoes lined up at the front door for a quick exit if necessary. My earthquake bags are ready, one inside the house and another one outside in case the building collapses. We watch giant whirlpools forming off the coast and ocean freighters sitting on buildings where they’d been casually dropped, their final resting place until they would be cut up with acetylene torches months later. 

Fire was spreading across cities, something that seemed to go against the concept of the wall of water we were seeing. The first reports of deaths start to appear in the news broadcasts. A body here, two more there. Then a jump, the fire service in Minami-Sanriku reports hundreds of bodies lying in the streets. We knew that this would just be the beginning. And we still hadn’t heard of power station called Fukushima. We sleep fully dressed, the hallway lights on. Wham!

Clearing the building

 

When an earthquake strikes

Nine tenths of all the energy released in earthquakes in the last one hundred years in Japan was released at 2.46PM on March 11, 2011. Everyone knows what happened next as a massive black wave of water enveloped the coastline of Tohoku, north east Japan. In some areas the shape of the bays and inlets forced the water higher and higher to over one hundred and thirty feet; in others the flat coastal areas allowed it to sweep ever further inland devouring houses, farms, cars, trucks, people in its path.

The earthquake led to the tsunami and the tsunami led to the destruction of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. As it failed so did the power to northern Japan and people started to turn the lights out. Gasoline was rationed from the following morning and remaining stocks would be exhausted within three days. Bottled water disappeared as rumours spread that the mains supply was contaminated with radiation and store shelves emptied as panic buying led to people hoarding, not knowing what to expect next.

In the following weeks Japan came close to collapse and Tokyo became all but a ghost town. The roads north were closed and the escape route west was shadowed by Fuji. If it erupted Japan would be cut in half. Confusing and contradictory messages from the government heightened the feeling of crisis and images appeared on line in the world's first digital disaster. It was fifty six days from the initial foreshock to the first day we didn't suffer a major aftershock. And if you want to read the story, here it is. 

Tokyo before the earthquake. The city lights are bright.

Two months after the earthquake. Life has become dark and silent. 

The children of Rikuzentakata - a thank you letter

I received an email last week. It was a thank you message to adidas, forwarded to me by my old company. In 2012 I'd arranged for the mayor of the town of Rikuzentakata to come and talk to us about his vision for the future. We didn't want him to talk about the tsunami but that was inevitably part of the story. He wanted to change his town so it would be somewhere families would want to live and children would want to stay. Before the wave it was already declining and the events of that day just accelerated the trend.

Coming out of this talk was the beginning of a relationship between the town and the company. People volunteered their time to visit the schools and events were arranged for the children to enjoy. One of the senior team even took the idea to a global level and this resulted in the home town of adidas becoming twinned with Rikuzentaka itself.

Another act was to provide a new baseball uniform for the children, and this brings me back to the letter. It wasn't simply a note of thanks but it explained the importance to them I'm sure no one had realised in advance. The letter explained that before the tsunami there had been three schools but afterwards these were merged into one. The loss of life, facilities and subsequent relocation of families had meant three schools were no longer viable.

The letter explained that at first the children had difficulty coming together. There were rivalries between the different groups and this extended even to the sports field where they found it hard to work together. The letter goes as far as saying they didn't think they would ever see themselves as being one team. And then adidas provided them with a new uniform. It had brought everyone together. Now they were all the same. They felt completely different and much more positive. Now they were one team. 

Fifty Six Days - The story of an earthquake in Japan

It was fifty-six days from the moment the earth sent its first warning of the catastrophe to come until the day it took a brief pause for breath. Fifty-six days that saw one of history's most violent earthquakes and tsunami followed ultimately by the nuclear disaster that threatened Tokyo itself. 

And this is the story of how it unfurled around me. 

Fifty-six days.

Orphan tsunami - an alert in Japan

The M8.2 earthquake experienced by Chile yesterday was massive. Few quakes in history have been larger and in fact there have been less than twenty of this scale anywhere in the world in the last 150 years. And earthquakes can produce tsunami. And these can be worse. Then following a M5.3 in Tohoku at 8.22 this morning a tsunami warning was briefly issued but quickly cancelled.

However, one characteristic of these huge waves is that they travel enormous distances relatively undiminished. The Chile quake created a two meter wall of water towards the immediate coastline but it also sent one in the opposite direction into the Pacific. These orphan tsunami are historically unpredictable but can be devastating when they come on shore as they arrive without tremor or warning. And now, after it has crossed the ocean, we're under tsunami warning again in Japan. Twice in one day.

A little good that came from a wave of destruction

Today is earthquake day. The story is being retold in minute detail on every channel and in every newspaper. It was a tragedy of immense proportions that still haunts the nation of Japan some three years later. But here is a short story of something good that came from the events that day.

In 2012 we organised a company offsite for all employees. Something we had done every two or three years and chose the town of Urabandai in Fukushima Prefecture as the venue. We chose this area partly to assist the local economy by bringing nearly five hundred people for three days and partly to address the demons many were still looking for and facing up to the fear of the dark. It was not a popular choice but when we explained that the radiation levels were lower than Rome people began to understand.

The theme of the event was to "Change the Game", the usual corporate rhetoric. However I'd seen a documentary about one man from Tohoku who was also trying to change the game in his own way. He was the Mayor of Rikuzentakata a town virtually removed from the landscape by the wave, leaving a single tree where there used to be a forest. Toba-san had been mayor for a little over a month when the earthquake struck and that day lost his wife to the tsunami. But in the weeks and months to come he'd helped his community recover, first demanding aid from the government and later taking to YouTube when the promised support didn't arrive.

He had known his town was on borrowed time from before the catastrophe. The population was both ageing and declining. He'd known he had to change the game. He wanted to make his community one where families wanted to live again and one that could be a showcase for Japanese technology. And as he talked on the programme I realised he would be the perfect speaker to come and talk to the staff. Not about the tsunami but about changing attitudes and taking opportunities where you can. His speech, an hour long, was both inspiring and heartbreaking. Half the people were in tears and talk was of nothing but that presentation in the days to come.

A small group of people took it upon themselves to see where they could make a difference and quietly started to arrange activities in the town and volunteer their time. There were no sports teachers any more, either having been taken by the water or having to look after their own families and situations first. So they organised football, games and other activities. They gave the children something to do. And finally they persuaded the town in Germany where the corporate head office is to twin with Rikuzentakata and develop a long term program. And last summer nine children from the town were flown to Herzo for a football camp. A little good in so much bad. Thinking of you guys today.

The day that changed Japan

March 11 will be here soon. Much changed that day for so many people around the world. It was, in effect, history's first digital disaster. Everyone had a smartphone and thousands of video clips were made and re-broadcast on Facebook and YouTube. The world saw the destruction of Tohoku in real time. I watched it staring silently through a shop window with crowds of others halfway home.

Many people tried to help over the next few weeks. One was twelve and he made a simple video. And it helped people start to cry. And by crying begin on the path to come to terms with their grief. Just begin. The Japanese in the picture means "I'll Fix You". It'll take three minutes and forty five seconds of your day.

Fix You

Foreshock

The earthquake was nearly three years ago. For the last week there has been non-stop coverage on TV of the disaster. Some, so desperate to have any form of message, have taken video directly from YouTube. Others are genuinely original and offer interesting insights into what has (and hasn't) happened since.

What most are forgetting though is the foreshock. The world changed for many hundreds of thousands of people on March 11, 2011 but we'd been given advance notice on March 9. Then an earthquake that would be considered massive in its own right hit the Tohoku region and was felt far afield in Tokyo. The foreshock was the beginning. 

Quote from the Mayor of Rikuzen Takata

I was once fortunate enough to meet the Mayor of Rikuzen Takata, a town in Tohoku wiped from the map by the tsunami of March 2011. I asked what our company could do to help and this was his answer:

“Our lives are filled everyday with the devastation brought by the tsunami, our town is gone and all we see is destruction. Think of us once in a while and come and visit when you get the chance. It would be nice to see something different for a change”.