It's truly impossible to anticipate such an event, even with todays technology you can see it coming but fail to prepare for exactly what is about to take place. Yesterday morning, March 11th 2011, at around 11.30 GMT, I awoke as usual only to go online and find that a 7.7 Earthquake had struck Japan just off its coast, 'Jesus!' I thought, just over a month or so after the Christchurch decibel in New Zealand we've got another disaster on our hands, but that was before I began reading the article that the headline protruded from.
In my mind, there was absolutely no doubt of the devastation caused by this terrible incident, I quickly began to think back to the Haiti Earthquake last year that registered magnitude 7.0 and flattened an array of buildings taking over 316,000 lives. I knew for a fact this event may be bigger in magnitude, but with Japanese building regulations in a country prone to Earthquakes, it wouldn't be anywhere near the death toll of the Haiti Incident. So far most media outlets have been claiming the Death Toll may be around 1,300, the only problem now is that the town of Minamisanriku, a small town sitting on the coast, has 9,500 people that are unaccounted for. Seeing the pictures doesn't give me too much hope.
As I ventured down the page to read updates from the last 5 hours, the thing that hit me hardest was that it was now saying the quake was 8.8, possibly even 9.0, and the aftershocks were in the 7's and 6's. With the amount of time I've wasted reading up on Natural disasters, I knew straight away this was bigger than I'd ever seen before, nothing this big had happened in recent years.
What followed was hours of searching sources trying to find out exactly what was happening to the country, I watched waves crash across the landscape, washing away buildings like they were made from paper, engulfing rivers and overflowing out of them in seconds, only to continue on, marching forward, ripping apart everything ahead of it. The most shocking images came from watching the helicopter footage, witnessing cars trying to escape the coming assault, a black mass washing over everything filled with debris, debris that was in flames whilst the water carried it. To imagine what it must have been to see that mass coming towards you I'll never know, and despite my lack of any religious sentiment, God help them, because anyone there was out for their own live at that point, and it saddens me to think that they probably did get away with it this time.
Seeing the pictures of Japan this morning was equally as devastating as what the World witnessed yesterday. Some of the water had receded, leaving shards of houses, trees, cars and even boats pushed across the landscape in places you'd never find them in almost any other situation. The clean up effort will be gargantuan, and I wish I could be there helping, it would certainly make a difference to sitting here whilst witnessing and wishing that I could be there.
All we can wish for now is that the Fukushima Nuclear Plant does not add to this situation with a meltdown. Despite the building surrounding the Reactor exploding this morning, the reactor itself is yet to worsen as far as I've heard today, I can only hope for their sake it stays that way.
My wishes, condolences and hope go out to every single person in Japan right now. Good luck to all of you, you will pull through.
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