The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011: the aftermath at three months.

It's been nearly 3 months to the day that the North Eastern coast of Japan was rocked by the 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami of 2011.  The stretch of time when the earth quake reached our region in Nagoya nearly 700 km away is seared into my memory.  I had just sat in the dentist chair for a check up, and several of the hygienists started squeaking, and chattering amongst themselves.  At first I didn't know what was happening, and then I noticed the blinds on the window started swaying like the pendulum on a grandfather clock.  Their intensity waxed until they had reached a full 40 degrees, by which time there was an intense genuine fear in the eyes of the staff as they probed the room, the rest of their fear hidden behind the alabaster sterile masks.  Having only experienced 1 earth quake personally, I was relatively calm until I was struck by those fearful eyes.  At once, everyone looked toward the front of the office, the closest exit, but the blinds were already starting to wane as the tremors subsided.

The aftermath was devastation in the North.  More than 15,000 deaths, 125,000 buildings destroyed, 4.4 million households without electricity, and an estimated 300 billion dollars worth of damage, this is the most deadly natural disaster Japan has ever experienced.  Fukushima, Sendai, Myagi, & Iwate were all struck with intense waves, some measuring an unbelievable 79 feet in height!

Locally, civilian aid has been solicited as professional rescue workers have secured the safety of most of these regions.  I joined an aid group of 39 civilians from Nagoya and traveled by bus to Iwate to help with the efforts.

First, I will show you some video taken from the bus while driving through Iwate port.  The video is a little bumpy, sorry in advance, but this was done as a discretionary measure as some people are moving back into these areas, and out of respect for their privacy I've taken no video openly walking down the street or any video of people living in the area.  Please understand, and thank you.


For some reason Google wants to make my videos fuzzy.  I'm looking into it.
  

  

">

Each morning our group would perform a few calisthenics together before going to work.  I'm afraid I only caught the last few bits of it, but it gives you an idea of what it was like.  The mood of my coworkers was hopeful, and each had a can-do attitude that was admirable given the circumstances.

At 3 months the most pervasive part of disaster is the odor.  The ruble is a formidable site indeed, but imagine a garbage dump miles in every direction, and then add the acrid smell of rotting sea life that was left by the tsunami, and then cook that at about 90 degrees Fahrenheit.  The breeze, when it comes, doesn't remove this odor, but only changes it's gradient.  The first day we were split into groups of ten.  My group was set to work in a house that was to be refurbished and lived in again.



There is a line on the wall where the waves lapped and left soil and debris, it's nearly 6 feet in the house, and more than that from the ground outside.  Everything was just as it had been occupied.  Food was rotting in the refrigerator, a wedding certificate was hanging high in a doorway, and clothes still hung in the closet.  We removed all articles, furniture, appliances, and 5 inches of mud from the floors.  The sunlight shimmered in the salt left by the sea in the dirt as it was hoisted into the back of the dump truck to be hauled away.

">

Mostly, the work was removing the wretched smelling, fetid soil.  Here we set up a temporary wash system to clean and replace rocks from around a home.  The area was too narrow for automated machinery, and the rocks had to be dug up by hand, washed, and then replaced.  A couple of inches of soil was removed with it.



Here in the back ground is the port of Iwate from the South side.  The enormous green cranes are the most conspicuous objects in this photo, and in the far corner, the enormous ship sitting upright on the dock can be made out.  Most of the video shot by the television crews was taken from this spot.  In fact a story was being shot by a crew when I took this picture.  They were doing a story on new homes being built by trees logged from nearby forests, and then towed into the bay to the city.  They were filming the logs coming into the bay.



Still enormous amounts of debris, but the streets are cleared, and many sections of debris have been sectioned off for recycling by composition.



The best close-up I could get of the stranded ship.  It's amazing that the dock can support this monstrous ship.



Lunch breaks were informal, the crew would find any shady spot, and take a rest from the hot sun.  This home was also flooded.  If you look to the top right of the image, the wall has a line left by the sea where the house was under 5 feet of water.  Amazingly, this couple was in their 80's, and had moved back in within two months.  They were extremely grateful and generous to us, bringing us tea (pictured) and cookies every couple of hours.



Trash and debris more than 4 feet high, and 6 feet wide was piled along roads for miles.  The bags are full of soil and sand left by the sea in the houses.  Shobo dan, as everyone called him, was kind of self-appointed leader in our group.  We had a group leader that sometimes worked with us, but Shobo dan (fireman in Japanese) was often a usurper.  Rightly so, he was senior and as a fireman had years of indispensable knowledge, plus an agreeable disposition, it just worked well, and he out-worked most of us.

The last day we cleaned a drainage tunnel that was 4X4 feet height and width, and about 100 feet in length.  The drain went under a major underpass, and drained water from the mountains into the sea.  The tunnel was completely clogged in four places.  The first two were clogs were made up of medium sized tractors probably 30hp that had been sucked into the tunnel's by the strong currents.  We removed debris and two tractors, digging them out by hand as there was no way to get machinery into the tunnel.  The other two clogs were made up of dirt sticks, and oddly enough fishing nets.  Imagine a 4X4 foot mound of dirt that's 8 feet deep in some places, and that is about the size of these clogs.  In addition the floor of this tunnel was 8 inches deep in mud and debris for 100 feet.  All of our group worked this tunnel, plus two men from the Japanese self defense force for more than 8 hours, but in the end it was spotless.

When we finished a tiny hunched over very elderly Japanese woman came down and called a few of us to follow her.  We climbed up the hills crossed the road where she and three other women of her age were tending several make shift greenhouses.  She paraded us down through the greenhouses muttering almost inaudible, "this is cucumber, this over here is eggplant" and on she went.  The plants were impeccably tended, amid all this rubble, it was a magical moment.  She took us to a large orange tub that was collecting water from the mountain, and she motioned for us to wash ourselves up a bit.  The water was clean and refreshing, we thanked her, and they all got up from what they were working on and bowed to thank us as best as their tired backs would allow.  Later I found out that without that drain the old women would lose their makeshift greenhouses during the rains.



Daibu is peering out over the sea.  The great Buddha weathered the quake, and watched the tsunami take  everything away from the locals even many lives, perched high on her mountaintop about 1 mile away.**


">



Daibu's expression is still, calm, and centered.




These bells are often rung after prayer to Daibu.

Usually the first question I get in Japan is "where are you from"?  I thought it would be more efficient if I just displayed it on my hard hat.  To show my support I displayed the Japanese flag to the right.  Now I checked beforehand what the proper flag etiquette is for displaying the US flag with another flag, and what I found was that it should always appear on the right of the displayer, which is the left of the viewer.  I'm sure someone will tell me if I'm wrong, in either case, it wasn't haphazardly done.

**All measurements are in English Units so Marc won't whine.