In Japan citizens routinely prepare for earthquakes, accepting them as a fact of life in the populous island nation, says Yuka Rawlings.
Small tremors may be felt on average once a month and in the event of a quake residents are taught to turn off fuel sources, open windows and doors, secure themselves under a desk or table, cover their heads with a fry pan and have a ready supply of water and canned food and emergency supplies on hand.
“It’s no panic, no nothing,” says Rawlings of quakes. “We just wait and say, ‘Oh, again’.”
That’s a common response to the small quakes (magnitude 3.0) that frequently shake the nation.
Last week’s was different, however. The 9.0 quake and tsunami were the result of one of the Earth’s tectonic plates sliding beneath the other, resulting in a major uplift of the sea floor.
Rawlings, now a permanent Canadian resident who lives in Williams Lake, grew up in Japan and came to Canada in 2005.
Given the earthquake/tsunami tragedy that has been compounded by meltdown concerns at a nuclear facility in Sendai, she’s worried for her homeland and for many of her family and friends who live in Tokyo and Minami so-ma City, south of Sendai — where the Fukushima Dai-chi nuclear power plant appears to have been crippled by the March 11 disaster.
Rawlings says after much effort and many e-mails she has made contact with her parents, siblings and friends and they report being OK. The worry now, aside from survival in broken cities with little or no utility services and infrastructure, is exposure to radiation.
“Yes, they need help,” she says of the survivors. “Many survivors are in shelters right now with one blanket for seven people and it’s –1 or –2 degrees Celsius at night. They have no heater, no nothing and it’s so cold.”
The Japanese government’s official message on the state of the nuclear plant is evolving with the latest directive being for those living within 20 kilometres of the plant to leave the area and those within 30 kilomeres to remain indoors.
Rawlings says her father lives within the 20-kilometre danger zone and has relocated to Tokyo where her sister and mother live.
However, radiation levels have been detected in the capital and that’s not all; on Tuesday, the city experienced a 6.1 quake.
Rawlings says her grandfather, who lives in a seniors’ home, and grandmother, who’s in hospital, are both all right but due to radiation fears — both facilities are located within the 20-kilometre evacuation radius — she’s unsure if and where they may have been moved.
“I cannot help them. I want to help but I’m too far away from Japan,” Rawlings says. “I’m hoping everybody is OK. I’m just hoping.”
A March 15 report estimated the number of dead in the quake at more than 3,000 with 15,000 people or more unaccounted for.
Rawlings is grateful for any support offered by the community to survivors in the quake zone.
