阪神・大震災
Today marks the twelth anniversary of the 1995 Kobe earthquake that killed 6 434 people. You can watch videos of it on YouTube. It lasted just 20 seconds. It struck when people were still sleeping. An entire building was uprooted and fell into the streets. I was nine years old at the time. Thirty six hours later, I was ten.I remember that it happened; I have a very specific memory of a particular picture of rippled train tracks that I have come to realize in no way actually captured the, the scale of the event. Kobe burned. It fell down.
If you go to Kobe, I'm only about 20 minutes away from downtown, you can find a park by the water where they've preserved a section of street just as it was after the disaster. The sidewalk is underwater. The lamposts are crooked. You should go see it.
My family, my Japanese family, was fine; they were in Nagoya at the time. I haven't asked if they lost anybody. I don't really know what else to say.
Labels: Japan
posted by Matt @ 8:57 PM
2 Comments:
Hi Matt,
I don't know if you remember, but when we were in Costa Rica, which is susceptible to earthquakes, there were regular tremors that were quite noticeable. We were told to stand under a door frame (supposedly the strongest part of a structure) until the tremor passed, which usually took only a few seconds.
Do you get tremors where you are now, or was the 1995 earthquake an isolated event?
Haha, I do remember that about Costa Rica. I'm told there have been tremors here, but I tend to sleep through most of them. They're not very strong, but they do happen every now and again.
Apparently one of the major concerns in Japan right now is eartquakes out at sea causing a tsunami. The government has sensors set up so that if a tsunami starts the population can be warned in under a minute, it's pretty amazing. Though the word is that if a tsunami were to come, it would only take 8 minutes to reach the shore, so it's not like I would have a lot of time to run up Kabutoyama or whatever.
We actually had a tsunami a few days back, but it was only a few feet.
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