Yakoob on 24/3/2011 at 07:06
did you even bother reading like the ten posts before yours?
Koki on 24/3/2011 at 07:29
Quote Posted by catbarf
Are you saying twenty minutes is enough time to get the word out to everyone in a coastal city and then evacuate it? Seriously?
Are you saying the country which spends millions of dollars on earthquake training of its citizens didn't teach them that an earthquake in a middle of the ocean will cause a tsunami?
Hindsight is always 20/20, but then again I don't live in a coastal area prone to earthquakes so I didn't really think about it till recently. Yet I managed to reach the following conclusion:
After a quake when you're not dead you can assume two things:
1) it's a local, weak(otherwise you'd probably be dead) quake.
2) it's a strong quake that happened far away.
And you can do one of two things:
a) nothing
b) assume the quake might have been in the middle of an ocean and drive and will cause a horrid tsunami wave so drive, bike, jog or even walk(you can cover well over one klick in twenty minutes) inland or towards nearest high ground or towards nearest building that isn't made out of cardboard and wait there for an hour just to be sure
Your choices are 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b. Want me to draw it for you?
But thanks for all the replies anyway guys. Gives me a bit of an insight how the death toll reached 20k.
hopper on 24/3/2011 at 08:28
Quote Posted by Koki
But thanks for all the replies anyway guys. Gives me a bit of an insight how the death toll reached 20k.
Give it up, Koki. What you said was just fucking stupid.
heywood on 24/3/2011 at 08:48
We know about 10k dead so far and 10k missing, but out of how many who were potentially at risk? If 2 million, then 99% made it to safety.
The area around and to the North of Sendai is a coastal plain without much high ground. Good luck running away from there. The tsunami penetrated up to 10km inland in some spots.
I used to travel to Japan and from what I remember the major population centers are protected by breakwaters and seawalls, and throughout the coastal areas there are various kinds of tsunami shelters which range from water tight buildings to platforms on concrete pillars to parking garages. I don't think they were supposed to evacuate because it's futile for whole towns to empty that quickly.
I'm sure some people were clueless and didn't do what they were supposed to, and I'm sure some were disabled, elderly, etc. and couldn't go anywhere, and I'm sure some were just complacent. But probably the biggest thing is that they weren't prepared for a tsunami this big. The town of Otsuchi had a tsunami wall and you can see in the video that the water level was already above the wall before the main part of the tsunami even hit. Fukushima had breakwaters or seawalls in front, but they're also useless against something this big. I'll bet quite a few tsunami shelters were taken out too.
Kolya on 24/3/2011 at 13:49
You need a hug Koki, that's all.
Martin Karne on 24/3/2011 at 19:54
Quote Posted by Yakoob
did you even bother reading like the ten posts before yours?
But of course my friend, I just wanted to underline it once again.
I'm so stubborn.
:nono:
SubJeff on 24/3/2011 at 21:39
The entire nation got an earthquake warning instantly. It even popped up all over national tv interrupting shows and a parliamentary broadcast. The earthquake in Tokyo, which is relatively far away from the epicenter, went on for 5 whole minutes. 5. They don't usually last anywhere near that long and who knows what the people in the north experienced.
That's 5 minutes to crap yourself, a few minutes to collect yourself, and then a mad rush if you realise that a tsunami is coming. I'm sure a tsunami warning went out pretty much instantly too but unless you're just running for yourself and not trying to help anyone, get in touch with people you care about and so on you're not going to just up and run like mad. I suppose it makes sense for Koki though since, you know.
Yakoob on 25/3/2011 at 01:26
Also, majority of the Japanese population is on the elderly side (which is actually a big concern in Japan), not exactly the types to just get up and run...
Martin Karne on 25/3/2011 at 10:01
5 minutes to crap yourself if you didn't fell by the earthquake shake that is (this was one of those quakes where you cannot stand on your feet and fall, maybe badly and hitting something along the way, or some furniture falls on you and you might have to struggle for a while to get out, if you can do the physical effort, or else you're screwed).
:nono:
Kolya on 25/3/2011 at 11:56
Glad we established now that thousands of Japanese didn't die because they were too stupid to run away. Not that anyone without Koki's sense of self-importance actually believed that. Now we can discuss how they could be so stupid to build reactors at the shore line. Mmmaybe because they need a lot of water to cool them? Well damn. But why didn't they build them in an earthquake free region?
...
This could go on and on. The motivation behind such smartassery is transparent: If you can show they were just being stupid Japs, that makes you smart and proves a disaster like that could never happen to you. Nevermind that you probably have at least a dozen hightech products of these stupid people in your house. Or that you're harking back to racist cynicism while they die. As long as you don't have to change your own comfortable position it's all good.
