Japan Earthquake & Tsunami: Follow Up

[battousai_ryuu]

I find that alot of U.S. news channels don't do a proper follow up to most international stories.

Anywho, I discovered this story about the clean up efforts and rebuilding after Japan's 9.8 earthquake/tsunami. It has been since months since one of the most powerful earthquakes hit Japan and rocked the world.

In the link below are pictures just after the Tsunami hit and what the area now looks like today.

I think there is alot we can all learn from this.

http://blogs.sacbee.com/photos/2011/...since-ear.html

Ganbatte!

[Anoleis]

I find that alot of U.S. news channels don't do a proper follow up to most international stories.

I'm sure the Americans were expecting the Japanese to just migrate to their floating islands. Clean up and restore? Pssht, like any country would do that.

[Manhattan_Project_2000]

I'm sure the Americans were expecting the Japanese to just migrate to their floating islands. Clean up and restore? Pssht, like any country would do that.

http://www.epa.gov/superfund/index.htm

[Datenshi]

I've actually been to the exact place in the photo in the 4th, 5th, and 6th row (Natori, Miyagi Prefecture), both the week after the earthquake and more recently. It was months later, and the electricity was still out, as I presume was other living necessities (the streetlights were still not operating and a man from the self-defense force was directing the traffic).

The most obvious solution actually is to leave the area. There is a pretty good chance that something like this has happened before and will happen again within the next hundred years. A woman I talked to told be that her grandmother had spoke of a similar thing happening in her lifetime, and how good rice didn't grow in the area because of the salt left over from the seawater in the fields; a sign found in the hills erected by people a hundred years ago reads; do not build houses below this line.

But of course, humans are always fallible; most of the people living in these areas are fishermen, and unfortunately the convenience of the daily commute trumps the one in a million possibility that another earthquake like this would happen in their lifetime any day.

And then again, "rebuilding and restoring" isn't as straightforward as it sounds. One thing I noticed having been there is that yes, the debris has been cleared, but so has everything else; there's essentially nothing but bare fields for long stretches. The affected areas are essentially rural areas, with an aging population living off fishing and farming, which were economically weak and underdeveloped compared to big cities like Tokyo in the first place. With the soil ruined for agriculture by salt water and the infrastructure gone, there may be little to be gained from returning; and you have to wonder whether it's worthwhile to pump in taxpayer's money (they've already decided to raise taxes considerably with a "Restoration Tax Increase") to "restore" it back to what it was.