The Tohoku Earthquake

While I am only beginning to understand the amount of destruction that has happened here in Japan, for me, luckily, the event was strangely anti-climactic.
When the whole country was shaken into a screeching halt, I was riding the Tsukuba Express train towards the office (you will ask what business had I going to the office mid-afternoon, and honestly, I have no idea, this was the first time I was on my way there at this time of day). While in a stretch of tunnel between the stations Minami-Nagareyama and Nagareyama Central Park, the emergency brakes suddenly engaged and the train came to a halt. Only then, everything began shaking violently. In some sense, we were lucky. A tunnel is one of the safest places to be in such a case. And in the train, nothing can even fall on your head. People remained very calm. The train was not crowded. Apart from some remarks like – huh, earthquake, no one spoke. After the shaking had passed automated messages informed us we had come to an emergency stop due to an earthquake. Remain in the train and wait. No one flinched an eye, and people went on either reading to sleeping. Nothing happened for another hour, except several reprises of shaking. We had no idea how bad the earthquake had actually been and what was going on. We knew, of course, that the safety of the train tracks had to be assured before we could go on. Then, the train’s power was shut down and we waited for another hour in the dark. Railway employees were passing on foot in the tunnel and some made announcements with megaphones.

Evacuating the Tsukuba Express

After 2 1/2 hours, they finally evacuated us from the train and made us walk to the next station, Nagareyama Central Park, which was maybe one kilometer or so away. Everything proceeded very calmly and orderly, ever since the beginning, no loud word had been heard and people were now walking in single file between the tracks.

Walking between the tracks to Nagareyama Central Park

At Nagareyama Central Park, we were at a loss for what to do. Since the first quake, 3 hours had passed. We were directed to go to the nearby city hall, since there was nothing else to do. At the city hall, they gave us hot tea and made us sit down. They had put up TVs, so people could follow the news coverage. We incredulously watched again and again the pictures of the huge Tsunami swallowing up the land, carrying with it houses and trucks.

Stranded people watching TV at the Nagareyama City Hall

There was no food, but we could get cup noodles from a nearby convenience store. In the meantime, the employees of the city hall were preparing bedding for the two trains full of people who had got stranded here. Severe problems had been found on the train line and it was clear that no train would leave before the next day. We were lucky to be stranded in a very small town and along with relatively few people. I guess many millions of people got stranded away from their homes in Greater Tokyo. In the mid-afternoon, most people must have been away from home. We saw pictures on TV of masses of people in Tokyo with nowhere to go. We on the other hand could sleep in the theater (!) of the city hall. The employees had put down carpets and brought out (yoga-type) rubber mats and blankets in disaster-proof packaging.

Disaster-proof blankets

Even emergency rations in the form of enriched crackers appeared and were passed around. I have to say that the disaster response of both the train company and the city hall was exemplary. All the routines and equipments were in place and proceeded smoothly. Of course also the extraordinary calm with which people took the course of events made everything much more agreeable.
So we tried to sleep in the theater. For some reason, the lights were left on all night, which made it hard to sleep. Nonetheless, there were some remarkably sound (and noisy!!) sleepers in our group. The aftershocks were so many that we had stopped counting long ago. Some were rather strong, which discouraged sleep further. There is some early warning system in place, which relays an alarm to mobile phones. But somehow it doesn’t work well. Whenever all the phones went off, only a barely perceptible tremor followed, while all the strong quakes were completely missed by the system. Nonetheless, these alarms were somewhat alarming. I once got up in the middle of the night and realized that about half of the people present had not gone to bed but kept sitting huddled in chairs, with blankets thrown over them. On TV, I saw a large industrial complex in flames.
After a few hours of sleep here and there, they woke us at 6 am, announcing that there was food, and that not the TX line we had come on, but the neighboring Joban Line was to take up service again. I don’t know where they had got the breakfast from, I actually assume that some of it was prepared by the employees at home and brought here for us. These people were really exemplary. They had stayed up all night to ensure our comfort.
In a group of five, thrown together by chance, we set out to walk to a neighboring train station. Two young Japanese men were with us who also spoke some English, and an Indian girl who was actually a visitor at our institute this week. The morning was deceptively beautiful and clear. At Nagareyama station, there was even a train leaving for Mabashi. But once in Mabashi, it had turned out that they had found a problem with the Joban line and the train could not resume service. We waited maybe for an hour. Then four of us who were headed towards Tokyo decided to set out on foot, in hopes of catching a Taxi cab, to cut across to the Keisei line, which was apparently working. We were able to flag down a cab fairly soon, but also the streets were extremely congested. Where we were, there were not many signs of damage. We’ve seen a large piece of facade having crashed down from a wall, some cracks in buildings, and a number of tiled roofs from which the row of central tiles had been shaken down. We finally reached Kanamachi station. Everywhere it was very crowded. But we managed to board a train in the right direction, and then change to a line towards Tokyo. It took forever to just leave the platform, it was this congested.

Oshiage station

But again, so shouting, no pushing, everything proceeded very orderly. From Oshiage, we decided to do the last piece on foot, which took maybe half an hour. On the whole, it has taken us a little more than 20 hours to return home.
In our building, the elevator presently doesn’t work, and at first only part of the lights came on. We presently also have no gas (i.e. no cooking and no hot water). Everything that had occasion of falling down somewhere has fallen down. The bookshelf has moved by 10 cm, and the aquarium has apparently spilled over quite a bit. By now, it’s mostly dry, I hope the floor didn’t get ruined. So there was no real damage here.
I would like to thank everyone who has voiced concern for our safety. So far, we have not been in any real danger at any point and have been taken care of very well. Still now as I am typing this, the earth shakes frequently and we are hoping no additional problems are on the way.

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