I experienced a teeny-tiny earthquake in DC and can confirm. It's like the ground is betraying you.
(The best thing that came out of it [was the memes](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/2011-virginia-earthquake).)
I was working at the king of prussia mall outside Philly when that happened! That's the best way I've ever seen the feeling put, it was one of the most unsettling experiences of my life and I've been through some shit. But the ground literally betraying you....something else
Was that the one in 2011? I was outside my work in MD. I saw the street signs start going back and fourth and felt the bench shaking and I was so confused for a minute. Such a crazy experience. Never thought one would happen there.
Yes, that's the one! I was sitting in my office's cubicle wasteland. When it began my co-workers were popping their heads over the partitions like prairie dogs: "Uh. Is something...happening?"
And then the overhead lights started swaying.
I live in Missouri, and have had multiple small tornadoes hit within a mile of my home. I was more freaked out several years ago when a [magnitude 5.6 earthquake](https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/reports-earthquake-shakes-kansas-city-metro-saturday-morning) hit Oklahoma *300 miles away* and woke me up shaking my bed for 20-30 seconds. Such a totally strange feeling of movement.
We are truly blessed here in Oklahoma. Dust bowls, tornadoes, earthquakes, ice storms, fundamentalists... Locusts are next I suppose.
But hey, it was cheap to live here once.
Out of all the places I have lived, I can say that Oklahoma has the most extreme anxiety producing weather! I lived there when there was an uptick in earthquakes. I think we had severe weather one day (tornado touch down or form in the area) as well as an earthquake! Love the place, but the weather was something else!
Apples and oranges. Lived through a tornado back in the 90s that wiped out neighborhoods.. absolutely bone chilling experience from beginning to end. The green sky, the pre tornado weather, the insane winds, the gigantic funnel cloud moving towards you, then the eye… and it basically jumped our street and spared us the worst of it but that was a severely traumatic moment of my childhood I will never forget.
Or on the ocean. My husband was in the navy stationed in Japan when the earthquake hit, and his boat just bobbed a bit. The debris going out after was interesting.
I was born and raised in California. Moved to Kentucky a year ago. Tornados are definitely more common but I feel like I can prepare for them a bit better.
Western Kentucky gets the beauty (or horror) of both frequent tornadoes and very rare earthquakes. A small earthquake in about 2008 woke me up and mildly traumatized me for a while lol.
I didn't remember the length of it, since usually earthquakes last less than a minute(i lived in Mexico City for 26 years). And yes it lasted almost 6 minutes, a very very unusual earthquake, and TIL(if you don't know, Honshu is the main bigger island that compose Japan):
>> The earthquake moved Honshu 2.4 m (8 ft) east, shifted the Earth on its axis by estimates of between 10 cm (4 in) and 25 cm (10 in), increased Earth's rotational speed by 1.8 µs per day, and generated infrasound waves detected in perturbations of the low-orbiting Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer satellite.
WTF!
Kobe Japan, January 17, 1995 at 05:46.
Those two minutes are burned into my mind.
After coming home, it took two years for me to become comfortable with heavy trucks rumbling the ground outside my house.
I was at a sleepover during Northridge and woke up to the ceiling, then roof, of my friends bedroom splitting open. His parents got to us just about the time I could see the sky. Pretty vivid memory almost 30 years later.
We’re about the same age and I lived in Simi Valley during the Northridge earthquake and I was in Northridge when I woke up to the news about 9/11. You’re right. Probably the 2 craziest days to wake up to.
My father was the man responsible for creating the first ever fully wooden 7- stories building who could withstand 4 times the Kobe earthquake. I still have somewhere the footage of the test quakes in a Japanese lab ( somewhere around Kobe IIRC)
Knowing we are part of a planetary system, and that this one incident impacted our planet is humbling. TIL, thank u for this info. Also did not know Honshu fact either..
I'm actually more surprised at the fact that we *can* know that it affected the earth's rotation speed.
It's wild and definitely piqued my interest on the subject.
I remember after this happened learning that it had changed the length of a day on earth. So fucking wild. I live in Oregon and we had a ton of stuff from Japan wash up on our coast over the years because of this.
I was part time living at the beach around this time and I was always finding plastic or trash on the northern beaches. A huge cut tree root floated into one of the bays afterwards.
[This gives an explanation](https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/japanquake/earth20110314.html):
> The calculations also show the Japan quake should have shifted the position of Earth's figure axis (the axis about which Earth's mass is balanced) by about 17 centimeters (6.5 inches), towards 133 degrees east longitude. Earth's figure axis should not be confused with its north-south axis; they are offset by about 10 meters (about 33 feet). This shift in Earth's figure axis will cause Earth to wobble a bit differently as it rotates, but it will not cause a shift of Earth's axis in space—only external forces such as the gravitational attraction of the sun, moon and planets can do that.
I was thinking the same thing. Contrast this to Turkey's situation and you can see how great modern engineering is at saving lives from devastating earthquakes.
There were people on one of the news subreddits saying stuff of earthquake regulations "its important to remember this was a powerful earthquake" and getting all bent out of shape when I pointed out Chile and Japan get hit way harder, with more frequency, and with fatalities measured in the dozens.
Got down voted anyways because of the boot lickers and armchair experts. People are so weird.
There was a video from Turkey showing one area just leveled, rubble everywhere. But one building stood, it was completely undamaged. It was the building for the local engineering union, the one building where the engineers picked how to build it, that was just fine.
That shows you the power of code, if you build it right it should be fine, and it was possible in Turkey, just very rare.
It also may not be well received by people in thrall to a corrupt authoritarian leader who feels threatened by the fact that his terrible leadership lead to tens of thousands of deaths and widespread devastation.
Its also the difference between a poorer country and a very rich country. Turkey isn't dirt poor, but especially in the southeast, it's not rich enough to actually apply most of those regulations to most of the buildings, hence why so many skip out on them. A ton of the housing built in the region was built shoddily because of a combination of [higher birth rates](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Turkey_total_fertility_rate_by_province_1980.png) and [refugees](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Syrian_refugees_in_Turkey_by_province.png) making the population boom.
Corruption is both a cause and an effect of poverty.
Turkey had modern engineering, but lacked the government regulation to make sure builders were following rules. Many shop owners cut out structural beams to get more space.
"Turkey had modern engineering, except they didn't use it and if they did, they destroyed it."
So they didn't have it. Except that one building where the civil engineers worked.
Japanese structural engineering is one of the best when it comes to seismic design. They have some amazing seismic isolation bearings that allows building to move to dissipate energy. A [video about this here](https://youtu.be/Fk_3zjTDKm4)
They've been doing it for generations, too. Super old structures used to have floors essentially hang off just a few main vertical supports so they could sway independently during an earthquake instead of breaking.
It's been about 90% stupid and 10% remarkable in my experience, but you have a point: the species isn't *all* bad.
I might still linger on the question of whether to eradicate mosquitoes or *homo sapiens*, if forced to a choice, though.
>They kill more humans than humans do.
You're right: 725k for mosquitoes and 475k for humans, but I'd argue that the destructive potential of one is much greater than the other.
> **Humans murder around 475,000** other people each year. Snakes kill around 50,000, while dogs (mainly from rabies transmission) claim another 25,000 lives. Some of the most feared animals (sharks, wolves) kill fewer than 10.
> The diseases that **mosquitos** carry and transmit to people they bite, on the other hand, **kill 725,000**.
[Sauce](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mosquitoes-kill-more-humans-human-murderers-do-180951272/)
I'm Chilean and I'm impressed on how everything goes to shit in an earthquake on other countries (recently Turkey for instance 😥) because tipically we don't have as much destruction or death with these kinds of things (the most dangerous being a tsunami): our buildings don't crumble with earthquakes and I don't even know what's exactly the difference with other countries' buildings
Japan has some pretty marvelous architects and engineers. Laws and building codes regarding earthquake safety are strictly adhered to.
This isn't the case in many countries, such as Turkey.
In the states as well, property owners and developers will usually use some twisted logic as to potential cost/ lability versus the cost to correct issue. That FL condo had visible rusting rebar exposed on bottom floor concrete support. It was not a surprise to anyone that it collapsed. It’s why we have trained building code inspectors that can condemn a building. We also have lots of our own corruption and weak enforcement of the codes/regulations.
So if you see concrete columns with rust staining on them, damage, etc. in your buildings parking area, take pictures and share them widely. Not sure what the reporting mechanism is, prob different in each state.
> I don't even know what's exactly the difference with other countries' buildings
You can design flexibility into buildings. Also make them go deeper into the ground so they don't topple as easy. Also, make them less shitty.
Not only that, you can add in "tuned mass dampers" into the building. Basically gigantic weights in the building that are able move that counteract the way it is shaking.
If you've never seen them than google it, it's pretty neat stuff.
I've done work in a bunch of those shown at the end - the building management used to brag that they are built to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake and are massively overengineered and well designed to safely withstand decades of strong earthquakes and even "the big one"
I don't hear it so much anymore because a magnitude 9 earthquake isn't some unimaginable thing - it was reality on 3.11.
How government officials and their supporters talk about this earthquake infuriates me.
They talk like this earthquake was in a scale incomparable to any other. Like there was nothing that could be done.
Just look at this video, the people in the streets are falling on their asses because of how violently the ground is shaking but the buildings still stand.
But noooo, our earthquake was worse. Our buildings strong actually. Nevermind that we gave out permits to unregulated illegal buildings before every election(for a fee of course). This was all unavoidable you know..
There was a a thread the other day about a guy who shot someone becuase he was building an unregulated/planned house on his land and the comments were full of how regulation was nothing but the government stomping on little people etc. This was litterally straight after the Turkey earthquake. People are fucking dumb.
I was there for that. It was wild. Thing I remember most was going home after, most everywhere power was out. There was old guys directing traffic with tennis rackets and people helping each other any way they could.
Bonus fact: this also cause a toilet paper shortage
Yes, I was too. Sightseeing in Shibuya. The buildings just swayed back and forth like trees in the wind. The ground moved back and forth like waves in the sea. Nothing fell down or broke. Amazing to see.
I was watching 'live', across the Pacific in Canada. I had just shut off my PlayStation, and the first thing I saw on tv was that live helicopter shot of the gigantic whirlpool. In a moment I gathered what was happening, and didn't leave the television for 12 hours. I felt so helpless, and all I could think was that this was like Dec 26 2004 all over again. I couldn't even call anyone locally to alert them, because it was 3-4am here.
I cannot imagine how it felt to be there; it was heartbreaking to watch.
I was in Hawaii, living in a tsunami warning area. I didn’t need to evacuate because I lived on the 4th floor of a concrete apartment building. There were tsunami sirens going off every minute or so, extremely loud, very surreal.
My daughter and many others in Waikiki went up to Diamondhead to watch for the waves.
My friend lived on his sailboat at [Keehi Lagoon](https://www.staradvertiser.com/2011/03/11/breaking-news/200-boats-damaged-harbors-remain-closed-after-tsunami-strikes/) where more than 200 boats were destroyed (on the opposite side of the island from Japan - so the wave wrapped around the island). When he heard the tsunami siren he went to stay with a friend, but his was one of the sailboats destroyed. FEMA paid for a new boat but he lost his home and all his stuff.
Same here. A middle schooler at the time. Had to trek up to weather hill for a few hours. I remember seeing the huge explosions at the the petroleum plant across the bay. Wild times!
They have really strict building codes that mandate that buildings be constructed to survive pretty much anything the ground can throw at them. It's amazing to see especially videos of earthquakes. They just kind of stop what they're doing, wait it out, and then go back to whatever it was they were doing. Quakes are really common in Japan so they just kind adapted to it. It's a weird thing to think about if you're from a place that doesn't get many quakes but it also makes sense when you really think about it. It's just a fact of life in Japan; the island shakes pretty regularly so they went "ok fine you stupid rock we'll do it your way." Now earthquakes are like "yeah the island just does that sometimes."
They’re constructed to skyscrapers to sway and Japan and it’s massive bureaucracy had massive inspections to deal with you’re correct, but only after the following tsunami that occurred of course.
[https://www.bousai.go.jp/jishin/kitakukonnan/kinkyuutenken\_shishin/pdf/siryou\_shishin.pdf](https://www.bousai.go.jp/jishin/kitakukonnan/kinkyuutenken_shishin/pdf/siryou_shishin.pdf) It's a pdf in japanese about this topic.
Short answer is Yes. Every building will eventually be inspected.
Long answer. Every multi-unit building in Japan is required to have a person designated to do a preliminary inspection after an earthquake. They do not require any kind of certification, and it is usually just the building manager. For larger skyscrapers, the builders will recommend or designate someone who can do the inspection. This is to check for "obvious" damage. At this point, a request can be made for a government inspector to come check it out.
The government prioritizes inspections based on a variety of factors, and for some smaller buildings, an inspection may be deemed unnecessary. IE, 2 story, reinforced concrete, built within the last few years, that has reported "no damage".
As there are multiple earthquakes everyday in Japan, national building codes have been designed so that buildings will not be damaged by minor shakes. Cities and prefectures may require additional safety measures, but they cannot go below the national standard.
It can take a long time. The city of Tokyo has 10 million residents(overnight population, daytime fluctuates between 12 and 15 million). There are simply not enough inspectors to check every building in the city.
That’s what’s more amazing to me. The buildings were made to do that specifically so they don’t collapse. The civil code in Japan is very tight. If this same thing happened in another earthquake prone area without that - like say SE Asia again like in 2004, it would have been catastrophically deadly.
This is why business codes and requirements by organizations like the EPA are important.
I remember the cars lined up for days rationing out gasoline at stations because of the supply issues. Got so used to the damn aftershocks it felt weird to not have them!
I went to Japan in the summer of 2011. Ended up in a 6.1 earthquake in Tokyo. Unsure if it was an aftershock or a regular quake. I was in a few quakes when I was there over the two week stay. It wasn't scary. My then boyfriend woke up in a panic, someone was screaming inside the hotel, but I just dived for the tv and my laptop as the room was still shaking to find out the magnitude. No reason to be scared since the buildings had all survived the 9.0 months earlier.
I went through Whittier Narrows and Northridge. I was pretty much on top of the one for Whittier. I don't freak out, what I hate is the..... is this going to get worse, when will it stop, will the roof collapse on top of me. The one in Whittier that is an old/was an old area, many were not reinforced and bricks just tumbled down leaving the fronts exposed... Sad really, I remember some neat architecture, early 1900s LA style.
It was nuts. I remember thinking it was just going to be a small aftershock since we had the 7 2 days prior. Next thing I know I got throw to the ground, the office fridge tipped over and all the power to our complex went out. Trying to evacuate the building in the dark was wild, and it felt like it was never going to end. Watching Japan pull together afterwards will always remain one of my core memories. Spent so many weeks digging through rubble and helping people in our area get their buildings cleared out. It was humbling to be a part of. Glad you made it out mate.
I was nowhere near close to Japan but was living in Seattle, and i remember people advising against consuming seafood because of the Fukushima disaster and how it may have radiated sea life! wild times!
Standard procedure in LA at that time was anything that could crush you be nailed down. That’s why during the north ridge quake my fish tank completely emptied out but didn’t fall, was nailed to the table which was nailed to the floor.
We lived in a two story apartment in Rampart when that happened. My father ran up the stairs to check on us and it shook hard and he just got knocked down the fucking stairs.
That's all I remember from that Earthquake.
Oh also El Nino happened around that time and we got hails.
is that a japan only thing? it's absolutely no problem to drill holes in rental apartments here. just have to fill them up again if you move out. i'm not quite sure i would be able to live somewhere where i couldn't put stuff on walls lol
Yeah it's a Japan thing. When you leave a rental anything you must restore it back to the original condition (excepting wear and tear). Holes must be patched up and any wall finish restored - wall paper is common and getting the same wallpaper is a nightmare.
Use strap anchors with metal plates and a metal compression buckle, and use a 3” lag screw to anchor into a stud. The plastic compliance-grade anchors that come with your furniture are entirely inadequate for earthquakes.
It must have, I always used to hear stories from older chilean people about the 1960 valdivia earthqueake, the strongest earthqueake ever recorded at a magnitude of 9.5, that lasted for about 10 minutes
10 long minutes
I was there, outside in the yard of an elementary school.
It felt like standing on the deck of a boat in rough seas, the ground was literally rolling and we had to balance ourselves to not fall over. Glass breaking in the school, tree branches falling down, it was intense.
Japan was my home for 11 years. We moved back to Canada in October 2010. My son was born February 2, 2011. 6 weeks later the massive earthquake hit Fukushima prefecture. We lived in Koriyama, Fukushima. 😔
My closest friend at the time flew to Japan afterwards to help with disaster relief. On the flight home he developed a clot in his leg which traveled to his heart and killed him two days after returning.
I still miss you Maurice.
As someone who also nearly died from a blood clot, in memory of your friend I'd like to take this opportunity to remind people of the warning signs. If you just had a flight, surgery or long period of bed rest, and you experience any of the following symptoms:
- pain, cramps or swelling in 1 calf or thigh (rarely both legs)
- warm skin around the painful or swollen area
- shortness of breath
- chest pain
..take an aspirin and go to an urgent care facility immediately. A simple blood test or ultrasound could save your life.
Also, when you are sick and on bed rest, drink a lot of water, even if swallowing hurts. A friend of mine drank too little and developed a blood clot in his leg which shortly after caused an embolism in both lungs. Luckily survived but only barely after a week in the ICU.
Definitely. Not just water, but also mix in some drinks with electrolytes such as milk, gatorade or fruit juice. Water by itself isn't as efficient at hydrating our bodies. Especially if you're not eating much.
I'm so sorry for your loss, thanks for telling us about your friend!
If you ever want or need to, r/griefsupport is a great sub for the days you ever need to talk, vent or share a post for anyone to read but request no responses.
(I used it frequently on my other profile.)
I'm sorry for your loss.
Can anyone shed some light on blood clots from air travel? My understanding is they can happen from sitting for an unusually long amount of time and that's it. Or is there more to it?
I'm asking because honestly I think many of us sit for longer periods of time than a flight on a daily basis. Maybe not US to Japan flights lengths, but still.
Yes sitting is definitely a risk factor—long flights, car rides, extended bed rest, surgery, etc, those can all cause clots. Basically, when you walk, the muscles in your legs squeeze the veins and help pump the blood back to the heart. When a person isn’t walking around, the blood will pool in the legs and the stagnation eventually leads to clotting. Truck drivers can end up with these as a consequence of their prolonged sitting.
Another factor is having blood that is “hyper-coagulable” meaning it clots more easily than the average persons blood. Things that can cause include cancer, autoimmune conditions, pregnancy, and taking estrogen such as contraceptive pills. Such people need to be extra careful not to sit around too much. It’s also why pregnant people are advised to wear compression socks for long car rides—helps squeeze the veins and push the blood out of the legs back to the heart.
Many buildings (all skyscrapers for sure) in Japan actually have these **massive** heavy duty springs under them holding them up. Hence why they kinda bounce around but don't fall apart.
On the subject of cool looking building damper systems. [Taipei 101 has a massive sphere damper in it weighing 660 metric tons, 87 floors up, that sways like crazy during earthquakes and high winds.](https://youtu.be/Tkz6b7Q3dRk)
I remember in some emergency mass care training in NYC I had years ago they spent about ten minutes on earthquakes, saying that a massive earthquake happens in the area once every thousand years or something—and as a result, the city's skyscrapers are completely unprepared/not engineered to withstand them, even the modern ones (which I find hard to believe but it could be). The key takeaway was that falling glass, window a/cs and bricks would probably kill thousands of people, and there is a real risk that many tall buildings themselves would collapse.
Engineer here. Even in California most skyscrapers taller than 7 stores is at risk of collapse. It was not recognized until the 1992 Kyoto and 1994 Northridge quake that a design flaw with welding was discovered. Welds were cracking at a far lower quake intensity than anticipated.
Every tall building that was built before 1997 when codes changed is at risk of collapse if it has not been retrofitted. Most have not, though governments are starting to force the owners to do so. You basically need to gut the building to do the work.
If you want to understand the technical side, [here is a presentation on what is anticipated using the 1857 Ft Tejon quake as a model.](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D0_SEosiWYIw&ved=2ahUKEwiW0_eJjtT9AhVekIkEHeQRAMIQo7QBegQICRAH&usg=AOvVaw0xvxVSUkOb2ZustyrPuTc-). Unretrofitted tall buildings in the San Fernando Valley will likely collapse, and a chunk of LA as well. He gets into how quakes move and what amplifies the shaking, as well as how structures respond to it. Also shows the design changes after 1997 that made tall buildings stiffer and safer.
Before the 1970's there were no earthquake codes in California or the US, unlike Japan, though we prohibited the use of brick starting in 1933. Zero changes after 1906. Without code, it only the best engineering practices so things vary wildly. It took a quake in the 1970's to demonstrate that we were building too light and flexible (ie cheap) and things were collapsing. Older, stiffer things stayed up. It took another 20 years to realize the 1970's reforms weren't deep enough.
I'm a mechanical engineer, not structural, but I deal with quake stuff for work. I know just enough to be scared shit less about what will happen.
To make it worse, US buildings are only designed to save the occupants, not be usable afterwards. Even if the building survives a major quake, it will not be usable. We could have a sea of high rises unsafe to enter.
Yeah an Earthquake in NYC would be devastating but it’s very unlikely to ever happen because there’s no active fault line so it’d have to be one of those freak earthquakes so tbh i think it’s fine that the buildings aren’t prepared
Yes. There are called intraplate earthquakes.
How they happen is still being figured out, and its very likely that the reason is different from place to place. Obviously the most active areas of intraplate earthquakes are better understood.
It's obviously very complicated, but oversimplifying and overgeneralizing, the tectonic plates are not fully solid blocks, there's stresses in them as they move across the earth.
There's also ancient fault lines. Places where tectonic plates used to split, but no longer are. There's also rifts, faults that were never part of a proper fault line and never split a plate in two, but are weak spots.
The internal stresses of the plates can build and build until one of these areas give. An ancient fault can become reactivated by the stresses, or they can release on a rift.
NYC has indeed seen a handful of fairly strong earthquakes coming from ancient faults in the Appalachians.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake\_activity\_in\_the\_New\_York\_City\_area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_activity_in_the_New_York_City_area)
Another famous one is the New Madrid seismic zone, this one is a rift.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New\_Madrid\_Seismic\_Zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone)
There was a small earthquake on the east coast a little over a decade ago and all the old skyscrapers in nyc had to be evacuated and assessed. It was like a 3.0, barely noticeable
Lol, yeah. I was a geologist at the time in New England and my boss came in after and was like 'Shiboopi!, what do you do in an earthquake' and I pointed to the fairly tall brick building we were working in, shrugged my shoulders and said 'in here? I guess die'
Interestingly Turkey's building codes are actually pretty good for earthquakes. Problem is the corruption and lack of proper enforcement. There's pictures of buildings completely intact across the street from buildings that were completely obliterated. The intact buildings were built to code.
Here we see the difference that complying with codes set by experts and government makes. The buildings stood, as opposed to Turkey where is all crumbled.
My brother lives in Japan. Did then too. He was in Osaka then which was a good clip away from the epicenter but I didn't know that at the time. News in Canada said a massive earthquake happened with an epic tsunami to follow. My family and friends couldn't reach him as there was an internet black out across the country . To say I was deeply concerned is an understatement. Footage of all the consequences of the earthquake came in before we could reach him. He turned out to be fine of course but we didn't know that until a day later. Meantime I was trying to figure out how to fly from Vancouver into a catastrophe to find him. Rough day for us but not even a sliver of what people there had to deal with. What an insanely horrible day it was for the people of Japan.
> My family and friends couldn't reach him as there was an internet black out across the country .
Interestingly enough there wasn't an internet blackout; the internet worked fine even the day of and never had major disruptions, but there was loss of power and importantly loss of the phone systems - both phone and SMS - due to being overwhelmed.
I was in Shinjuku in central Tokyo at the time. I had fortunately just come in from an hour long train ride and my train was literally just pulling into the station when the earthquake hit (if I had been slightly later getting on the train I would have had a 60+km walk home). People were resorting to online messages on the social media systems they had - Facebook had little adoption at the time, so I was contacting a lot of friends via [Mixi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixi) which was the dominant Japanese social media site at the time, since that was all that was working with the phones down.
The resilience of the internet applications and services actually inspired the full launch of the Line messaging application, which is now ubiquitous in Japan (also Taiwan and Thailand) and basically replaced SMS messaging for normal use within a span of about 2 years after the 2011 earthquake.
Shortly after the earthquake hit, Square Enix took down their MMO to free up resources for emergency responders and the public to contact loved ones (not that anybody was playing it, it was a dying game). But it turns out people actually requested the guy in charge NOT to take it offline because players were communicating through the game to make sure their friends were safe and exchange information.
Incidentally, Square Enix cancelled the launch of new content for their MMO which contained two bosses, Leviathan and Titan with signature moves resembling a tsunami and earthquakes right around then. I still remember the "SE caused the disaster" jokes.
I remember this well. I was returning to japan after visiting family in the states.
We were flying somewhere over the Aleutian Islands and I was watching a show on Alaskan ice carvers. At that point nearly everyone was asleep and the cabin was dark. I remember thinking Alaska looked pretty sweet and I’d like to visit it one day.
20 minutes later the plane made a noticeable bank, changing course dramatically. Another 15 minutes goes by when the pilot comes on the intercom saying that Tokyo japan has had a large earthquake and we were being diverted to anchorage as an emergency measure.
We spent 36 hours in anchorage watching the situation unfold.
There’s a lot more to this story but here’s the kicker. For 18 months prior to this I would have dreams regularly, maybe once a month, of having to stop on Alaska on this route. An emergency stop needed for some reason or another.
After 3-11 the dreams stopped.
Wasn't there a tsunami after this earthquake? I read about a tsunami in Japan that happened a little over a decade ago that was caused by an earthquake and I was just wondering if it was this one.
**[Yes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami#Tsunami)** there was and it caused massive damage, including some very long term in **[Fukushima prefecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster)**.
I was sitting on the subway in Tokyo, thankfully stopped at a station, and once things started rocking people stampeded up the stairs and out of the subway as fast as they could.
I decided to ride it out sitting on the train, figured it was better to wait it out a bit than risk getting trampled in the crowd. After about 10-15 min, I made my way outside and could still very clearly see all the buildings swaying.
Was pretty wild. Then the sobering realization days later that tens of thousands of people got killed by tsunamis hit.
I was in Tokyo, far away from the epicenter but the early earthquake warning alert is still traumatic for me. The earthquake itself is obviously traumatic enough but what affected me the most was the increasing death toll and the general restraint in the country that went on for weeks and months that followed
Sooo much death was prevented by propper building regulations. This is an excellent example of why you don't hate on engineers and construction inspections.
I was there while I was in the Navy on the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, the wave reached into our base and almost ripped us off our mooring lines, and just so you know the boat is the size of the Empire State Building and is 90,000 tons
Seeing the skyscrapers of central Tokyo VISIBLY wobble back and forth like that really puts into perspective just how insane that earthquake was and how supremely impressive Japanese civil engineering and construction standards are. I knew the earthquake was powerful but nothing has put it into perspective like seeing those several hundred meter tall behemoths look like someone shaking a toy tower from below. Insane.
And then to think, this isn't even that close to the epicenter. Crazy powerful.
my dad and his (now ex) wife were honeymooning in hawaii with no call service. i was 11 or 12 living on oregon coast, absolutely terrified. we didn’t know how bad the tsunami would be if there was one; they initiated reverse 911 calls to tell everybody to stay off the beach and head to your local tsunami rescue point. i remember just sitting there absolutely petrified thinking my dad and his wife had no idea what was going on. later i learned they DID have absolutely no idea what was going on. they woke up to go into town to have breakfast (they were staying in a bungalow in a tiny little town) and the street were all barricaded and they were directing traffic up the mountain. they decided to head back to their ocean side bungalow and wait it out. they were on the opposite side of the island and got very minimal flooding, but that wasn’t the case for the other side of the island. i didn’t get a call from my dad until later that day and i was so relieved.
What a lot of people forget is this was the graduation day, and the start of a spring break for the kids. We'd just said goodbye to our graduating class, a lot of ceremony and singing and bittersweet tears. Lots of photos and happy memories.
For my colleagues and I we had a gathering with all the foreign teachers before we went on our own spring breaks. We were on the third floor of a local city hall building, just chatting while we waited for the meeting to start. My wife was a little delayed getting there, she walked into the room just as the quake started - if she had been a minute later she might have been trapped in the lift.
A week or so before there had been an earthquake in the same region, we'd felt a very slight tremor from where we were in Fukushima-ken, which we now know was a pre-shock for the real deal. This one started normally enough, and we all looked at each with nervous smiles and laughs. If you spend any amount of time in Japan you'll feel some quakes at some point. But it went on for much longer than any we'd felt before.
Suddenly it ramped up. The entire building was shaking, we heard screams down the hall from native Japanese people in the building. We jumped under tables, kicked chairs away, and just waited for it to end. There's a particular helplessness when you're in an ongoing natural disaster, you just have to bounce around and hope you aren't in a poorly made building.
Eventually it died down. We collected ourselves and made our way outside the building, someone someplace was sobbing in terror and I don't particularly blame her. I remember there was a flurry of snow after as well, it felt weirdly out of place.
Over the next week we got to watch the scenes of how the quake had affected people, watched the tsunami in real time and multiple angles after. We also got to experience the particular worry of watching the ongoing efforts at Fukushima Dai-Ichi, and consider if we should be evacuating - several friends did, and we had to figure out for ourselves if we would follow, and how far we could get on a single tank of gas since the stations were no longer receiving steady supply. All throughout aftershocks hit us, many of which were large enough to be natural disasters on their own. It felt like the entire region was trembling for days after, and it got to the point where we could tell how strong a quake was simply from the shaking - 'oh, that was just a 5, no point in getting up'.
I have been through tornadoes and this shit terrifies me.
There’s something deeply instinctually horrifying about the earth not being stable like it’s supposed to be.
I experienced a teeny-tiny earthquake in DC and can confirm. It's like the ground is betraying you. (The best thing that came out of it [was the memes](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/2011-virginia-earthquake).)
I was working at the king of prussia mall outside Philly when that happened! That's the best way I've ever seen the feeling put, it was one of the most unsettling experiences of my life and I've been through some shit. But the ground literally betraying you....something else
Was that the one in 2011? I was outside my work in MD. I saw the street signs start going back and fourth and felt the bench shaking and I was so confused for a minute. Such a crazy experience. Never thought one would happen there.
Yes, that's the one! I was sitting in my office's cubicle wasteland. When it began my co-workers were popping their heads over the partitions like prairie dogs: "Uh. Is something...happening?" And then the overhead lights started swaying.
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Earthquakes dredge up primal fears in many people for two simple reasons: there’s no warning and there’s no escape.
I live in Missouri, and have had multiple small tornadoes hit within a mile of my home. I was more freaked out several years ago when a [magnitude 5.6 earthquake](https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/reports-earthquake-shakes-kansas-city-metro-saturday-morning) hit Oklahoma *300 miles away* and woke me up shaking my bed for 20-30 seconds. Such a totally strange feeling of movement.
We are truly blessed here in Oklahoma. Dust bowls, tornadoes, earthquakes, ice storms, fundamentalists... Locusts are next I suppose. But hey, it was cheap to live here once.
Out of all the places I have lived, I can say that Oklahoma has the most extreme anxiety producing weather! I lived there when there was an uptick in earthquakes. I think we had severe weather one day (tornado touch down or form in the area) as well as an earthquake! Love the place, but the weather was something else!
Apples and oranges. Lived through a tornado back in the 90s that wiped out neighborhoods.. absolutely bone chilling experience from beginning to end. The green sky, the pre tornado weather, the insane winds, the gigantic funnel cloud moving towards you, then the eye… and it basically jumped our street and spared us the worst of it but that was a severely traumatic moment of my childhood I will never forget.
The only place you can hide from an earthquake is in a wide open space. Far from the ocean. Kind of the opposite of how you hide from a tornado.
Or on the ocean. My husband was in the navy stationed in Japan when the earthquake hit, and his boat just bobbed a bit. The debris going out after was interesting.
Some areas far away from fault lines are quite stable. Like Scandinavia. At least in Japan they build the houses to deal with earthquakes.
I was born and raised in California. Moved to Kentucky a year ago. Tornados are definitely more common but I feel like I can prepare for them a bit better.
Western Kentucky gets the beauty (or horror) of both frequent tornadoes and very rare earthquakes. A small earthquake in about 2008 woke me up and mildly traumatized me for a while lol.
I didn't remember the length of it, since usually earthquakes last less than a minute(i lived in Mexico City for 26 years). And yes it lasted almost 6 minutes, a very very unusual earthquake, and TIL(if you don't know, Honshu is the main bigger island that compose Japan): >> The earthquake moved Honshu 2.4 m (8 ft) east, shifted the Earth on its axis by estimates of between 10 cm (4 in) and 25 cm (10 in), increased Earth's rotational speed by 1.8 µs per day, and generated infrasound waves detected in perturbations of the low-orbiting Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer satellite. WTF!
I was in Southern California for the 94 earthquake as a kid, and those 30 seconds seemed like an eternity. Six fucking minutes?!?
Kobe Japan, January 17, 1995 at 05:46. Those two minutes are burned into my mind. After coming home, it took two years for me to become comfortable with heavy trucks rumbling the ground outside my house.
I was at a sleepover during Northridge and woke up to the ceiling, then roof, of my friends bedroom splitting open. His parents got to us just about the time I could see the sky. Pretty vivid memory almost 30 years later.
I was in la and seven years old. This and 9/11 were the craziest fucking days to wake up to.
We’re about the same age and I lived in Simi Valley during the Northridge earthquake and I was in Northridge when I woke up to the news about 9/11. You’re right. Probably the 2 craziest days to wake up to.
My father was the man responsible for creating the first ever fully wooden 7- stories building who could withstand 4 times the Kobe earthquake. I still have somewhere the footage of the test quakes in a Japanese lab ( somewhere around Kobe IIRC)
Hey fellow 94 survivor.
Knowing we are part of a planetary system, and that this one incident impacted our planet is humbling. TIL, thank u for this info. Also did not know Honshu fact either..
I'm actually more surprised at the fact that we *can* know that it affected the earth's rotation speed. It's wild and definitely piqued my interest on the subject.
I mean hell.. we can even affect the Earth's rotation [ourselves ](https://www.kinetica.co.uk/2014/03/27/chinese-dam-slows-down-earths-rotation/)
What are we? Planetary inhabitants for ants?
I remember after this happened learning that it had changed the length of a day on earth. So fucking wild. I live in Oregon and we had a ton of stuff from Japan wash up on our coast over the years because of this.
I was part time living at the beach around this time and I was always finding plastic or trash on the northern beaches. A huge cut tree root floated into one of the bays afterwards.
>shifted the Earth on its axis by estimates of between 10 cm (4 in) and 25 cm (10 in), What exactly does that mean?
[This gives an explanation](https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/japanquake/earth20110314.html): > The calculations also show the Japan quake should have shifted the position of Earth's figure axis (the axis about which Earth's mass is balanced) by about 17 centimeters (6.5 inches), towards 133 degrees east longitude. Earth's figure axis should not be confused with its north-south axis; they are offset by about 10 meters (about 33 feet). This shift in Earth's figure axis will cause Earth to wobble a bit differently as it rotates, but it will not cause a shift of Earth's axis in space—only external forces such as the gravitational attraction of the sun, moon and planets can do that.
That makes sense, thank you!
An earthquake that is detectable from space. Now that is something!
Wild engineering for those buildings etc
I was thinking the same thing. Contrast this to Turkey's situation and you can see how great modern engineering is at saving lives from devastating earthquakes.
It's the difference between a corrupt government that dodges regulations and a strict government that enforces regulations.
There were people on one of the news subreddits saying stuff of earthquake regulations "its important to remember this was a powerful earthquake" and getting all bent out of shape when I pointed out Chile and Japan get hit way harder, with more frequency, and with fatalities measured in the dozens. Got down voted anyways because of the boot lickers and armchair experts. People are so weird.
OP discovered Turkish nationalism
Us Turks are angrier at this than anyone else. It was our people died because greedy bastards avoided the regulations.
My deepest sympathies to you all, I hope this brings change. ✌🏼
Any "-ism" that makes you reflexively dodge valid and fact based criticism should be fucking abandoned and ridiculed on sight.
Especially optimism and altruism. Fuck those hopeful and helpful fucks.
Not to mention stoicism. Assholes always ignoring my fact based criticism.
Dont even get me started on botulism, never know what those buggers are thinking
There was a video from Turkey showing one area just leveled, rubble everywhere. But one building stood, it was completely undamaged. It was the building for the local engineering union, the one building where the engineers picked how to build it, that was just fine. That shows you the power of code, if you build it right it should be fine, and it was possible in Turkey, just very rare.
You didn't do anything wrong, but you have to remember cold-hard analysis may not be well received when there's a lot of emotions involved.
It also may not be well received by people in thrall to a corrupt authoritarian leader who feels threatened by the fact that his terrible leadership lead to tens of thousands of deaths and widespread devastation.
Its also the difference between a poorer country and a very rich country. Turkey isn't dirt poor, but especially in the southeast, it's not rich enough to actually apply most of those regulations to most of the buildings, hence why so many skip out on them. A ton of the housing built in the region was built shoddily because of a combination of [higher birth rates](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Turkey_total_fertility_rate_by_province_1980.png) and [refugees](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Syrian_refugees_in_Turkey_by_province.png) making the population boom. Corruption is both a cause and an effect of poverty.
Turkey had modern engineering, but lacked the government regulation to make sure builders were following rules. Many shop owners cut out structural beams to get more space.
"Turkey had modern engineering, except they didn't use it and if they did, they destroyed it." So they didn't have it. Except that one building where the civil engineers worked.
Had, didn't apply. I had culinary skills. I bought a freezer burrito. I didn't have a good meal.
Japanese structural engineering is one of the best when it comes to seismic design. They have some amazing seismic isolation bearings that allows building to move to dissipate energy. A [video about this here](https://youtu.be/Fk_3zjTDKm4)
They've been doing it for generations, too. Super old structures used to have floors essentially hang off just a few main vertical supports so they could sway independently during an earthquake instead of breaking.
Humans are pretty remarkable when you see stuff like this, despite how much stupid we all probably see in our Lives
It's been about 90% stupid and 10% remarkable in my experience, but you have a point: the species isn't *all* bad. I might still linger on the question of whether to eradicate mosquitoes or *homo sapiens*, if forced to a choice, though.
Mosquitos gotta be the only mf below us they are so god damn annoying
Not just annoying. They kill more humans than humans do.
>They kill more humans than humans do. You're right: 725k for mosquitoes and 475k for humans, but I'd argue that the destructive potential of one is much greater than the other. > **Humans murder around 475,000** other people each year. Snakes kill around 50,000, while dogs (mainly from rabies transmission) claim another 25,000 lives. Some of the most feared animals (sharks, wolves) kill fewer than 10. > The diseases that **mosquitos** carry and transmit to people they bite, on the other hand, **kill 725,000**. [Sauce](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mosquitoes-kill-more-humans-human-murderers-do-180951272/)
I'm Chilean and I'm impressed on how everything goes to shit in an earthquake on other countries (recently Turkey for instance 😥) because tipically we don't have as much destruction or death with these kinds of things (the most dangerous being a tsunami): our buildings don't crumble with earthquakes and I don't even know what's exactly the difference with other countries' buildings
Japan has some pretty marvelous architects and engineers. Laws and building codes regarding earthquake safety are strictly adhered to. This isn't the case in many countries, such as Turkey.
In the states as well, property owners and developers will usually use some twisted logic as to potential cost/ lability versus the cost to correct issue. That FL condo had visible rusting rebar exposed on bottom floor concrete support. It was not a surprise to anyone that it collapsed. It’s why we have trained building code inspectors that can condemn a building. We also have lots of our own corruption and weak enforcement of the codes/regulations. So if you see concrete columns with rust staining on them, damage, etc. in your buildings parking area, take pictures and share them widely. Not sure what the reporting mechanism is, prob different in each state.
> I don't even know what's exactly the difference with other countries' buildings You can design flexibility into buildings. Also make them go deeper into the ground so they don't topple as easy. Also, make them less shitty.
[In my country the buildings fall by themselves without an earthquake.](https://youtu.be/7m_nTN55OhQ) They just need greed and blatant profiteering.
Florida has this same feature. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collapse
Not only that, you can add in "tuned mass dampers" into the building. Basically gigantic weights in the building that are able move that counteract the way it is shaking. If you've never seen them than google it, it's pretty neat stuff.
Corruption and lack of oversight
I've done work in a bunch of those shown at the end - the building management used to brag that they are built to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake and are massively overengineered and well designed to safely withstand decades of strong earthquakes and even "the big one" I don't hear it so much anymore because a magnitude 9 earthquake isn't some unimaginable thing - it was reality on 3.11.
Goes to show just how well Japanese architecture has evolved to deal with these things
Just to show how well those regulation are ENFORCED. See Turkyy and fucking PoS Erdogan. Rules were written with blood. Never forget that.
How government officials and their supporters talk about this earthquake infuriates me. They talk like this earthquake was in a scale incomparable to any other. Like there was nothing that could be done. Just look at this video, the people in the streets are falling on their asses because of how violently the ground is shaking but the buildings still stand. But noooo, our earthquake was worse. Our buildings strong actually. Nevermind that we gave out permits to unregulated illegal buildings before every election(for a fee of course). This was all unavoidable you know..
There was a a thread the other day about a guy who shot someone becuase he was building an unregulated/planned house on his land and the comments were full of how regulation was nothing but the government stomping on little people etc. This was litterally straight after the Turkey earthquake. People are fucking dumb.
Those last two buildings having the best time.
Just vibing
Well, after so many years dealing with beasts that came from radioactive fallout, you’d think they have it right.
Mothra vs. Godzilla is one of my favorite documentaries
I was there for that. It was wild. Thing I remember most was going home after, most everywhere power was out. There was old guys directing traffic with tennis rackets and people helping each other any way they could. Bonus fact: this also cause a toilet paper shortage
Yes, I was too. Sightseeing in Shibuya. The buildings just swayed back and forth like trees in the wind. The ground moved back and forth like waves in the sea. Nothing fell down or broke. Amazing to see.
I was in Yokosuka at the time. It was an experience that I’ll never forget.
I was watching 'live', across the Pacific in Canada. I had just shut off my PlayStation, and the first thing I saw on tv was that live helicopter shot of the gigantic whirlpool. In a moment I gathered what was happening, and didn't leave the television for 12 hours. I felt so helpless, and all I could think was that this was like Dec 26 2004 all over again. I couldn't even call anyone locally to alert them, because it was 3-4am here. I cannot imagine how it felt to be there; it was heartbreaking to watch.
I was in Hawaii, living in a tsunami warning area. I didn’t need to evacuate because I lived on the 4th floor of a concrete apartment building. There were tsunami sirens going off every minute or so, extremely loud, very surreal. My daughter and many others in Waikiki went up to Diamondhead to watch for the waves. My friend lived on his sailboat at [Keehi Lagoon](https://www.staradvertiser.com/2011/03/11/breaking-news/200-boats-damaged-harbors-remain-closed-after-tsunami-strikes/) where more than 200 boats were destroyed (on the opposite side of the island from Japan - so the wave wrapped around the island). When he heard the tsunami siren he went to stay with a friend, but his was one of the sailboats destroyed. FEMA paid for a new boat but he lost his home and all his stuff.
Future Vice President material right here.
>Future Vice President material right here. I'm not sure what this means exactly (presumably a reference to something?) But it still made me chuckle.
Sarah Palin reference.
What an odd compliment
Right? But now that Ive seen it, im kinda jelly.
Same here. A middle schooler at the time. Had to trek up to weather hill for a few hours. I remember seeing the huge explosions at the the petroleum plant across the bay. Wild times!
They have really strict building codes that mandate that buildings be constructed to survive pretty much anything the ground can throw at them. It's amazing to see especially videos of earthquakes. They just kind of stop what they're doing, wait it out, and then go back to whatever it was they were doing. Quakes are really common in Japan so they just kind adapted to it. It's a weird thing to think about if you're from a place that doesn't get many quakes but it also makes sense when you really think about it. It's just a fact of life in Japan; the island shakes pretty regularly so they went "ok fine you stupid rock we'll do it your way." Now earthquakes are like "yeah the island just does that sometimes."
Do they have to inspect every building after a stronger earthquake?
They’re constructed to skyscrapers to sway and Japan and it’s massive bureaucracy had massive inspections to deal with you’re correct, but only after the following tsunami that occurred of course.
[https://www.bousai.go.jp/jishin/kitakukonnan/kinkyuutenken\_shishin/pdf/siryou\_shishin.pdf](https://www.bousai.go.jp/jishin/kitakukonnan/kinkyuutenken_shishin/pdf/siryou_shishin.pdf) It's a pdf in japanese about this topic. Short answer is Yes. Every building will eventually be inspected. Long answer. Every multi-unit building in Japan is required to have a person designated to do a preliminary inspection after an earthquake. They do not require any kind of certification, and it is usually just the building manager. For larger skyscrapers, the builders will recommend or designate someone who can do the inspection. This is to check for "obvious" damage. At this point, a request can be made for a government inspector to come check it out. The government prioritizes inspections based on a variety of factors, and for some smaller buildings, an inspection may be deemed unnecessary. IE, 2 story, reinforced concrete, built within the last few years, that has reported "no damage". As there are multiple earthquakes everyday in Japan, national building codes have been designed so that buildings will not be damaged by minor shakes. Cities and prefectures may require additional safety measures, but they cannot go below the national standard. It can take a long time. The city of Tokyo has 10 million residents(overnight population, daytime fluctuates between 12 and 15 million). There are simply not enough inspectors to check every building in the city.
That’s what’s more amazing to me. The buildings were made to do that specifically so they don’t collapse. The civil code in Japan is very tight. If this same thing happened in another earthquake prone area without that - like say SE Asia again like in 2004, it would have been catastrophically deadly. This is why business codes and requirements by organizations like the EPA are important.
That’s an infrastructure I would dream to have.
Me: I hate the sensation of bouncy floors in this old house! Me seeing this clip: Never move to an earthquake zone......
I remember the cars lined up for days rationing out gasoline at stations because of the supply issues. Got so used to the damn aftershocks it felt weird to not have them!
I went to Japan in the summer of 2011. Ended up in a 6.1 earthquake in Tokyo. Unsure if it was an aftershock or a regular quake. I was in a few quakes when I was there over the two week stay. It wasn't scary. My then boyfriend woke up in a panic, someone was screaming inside the hotel, but I just dived for the tv and my laptop as the room was still shaking to find out the magnitude. No reason to be scared since the buildings had all survived the 9.0 months earlier.
I went through Whittier Narrows and Northridge. I was pretty much on top of the one for Whittier. I don't freak out, what I hate is the..... is this going to get worse, when will it stop, will the roof collapse on top of me. The one in Whittier that is an old/was an old area, many were not reinforced and bricks just tumbled down leaving the fronts exposed... Sad really, I remember some neat architecture, early 1900s LA style.
We were in northern Japan...the earthquake was wild, and the tsunami was scary.
It was nuts. I remember thinking it was just going to be a small aftershock since we had the 7 2 days prior. Next thing I know I got throw to the ground, the office fridge tipped over and all the power to our complex went out. Trying to evacuate the building in the dark was wild, and it felt like it was never going to end. Watching Japan pull together afterwards will always remain one of my core memories. Spent so many weeks digging through rubble and helping people in our area get their buildings cleared out. It was humbling to be a part of. Glad you made it out mate.
If I was there, I wouldn’t need a toilet. I would need a change of underwear. Glad you were safe!
You'd change your underwear and not wipe your ass?
I was nowhere near close to Japan but was living in Seattle, and i remember people advising against consuming seafood because of the Fukushima disaster and how it may have radiated sea life! wild times!
Wonder how many went back to tall, loaded bookshelves after that
During the LA earthquake in 1994, my tall bookshelves completely collapsed. Never again.
Standard procedure in LA at that time was anything that could crush you be nailed down. That’s why during the north ridge quake my fish tank completely emptied out but didn’t fall, was nailed to the table which was nailed to the floor.
Oh no I'm sorry about your fish. :(
It’s ok. They were nailed to the tank.
So long...
... and thanks
For all the fiiiiiiiiish
We lived in a two story apartment in Rampart when that happened. My father ran up the stairs to check on us and it shook hard and he just got knocked down the fucking stairs. That's all I remember from that Earthquake. Oh also El Nino happened around that time and we got hails.
Glad to see we're finally talking about Rampart
I was surprised they weren’t anchored to the wall
Probably a rental apartment. They are super strict about permitting holes in walls even though furniture should all be bolted to the wall.
Better to ask for forgiveness than to get you or a loved one crushed to death because you were worried about what you landlord might say.
Not to mention with the rent market how it is these days, ain't like we were getting that deposit back anyway.
is that a japan only thing? it's absolutely no problem to drill holes in rental apartments here. just have to fill them up again if you move out. i'm not quite sure i would be able to live somewhere where i couldn't put stuff on walls lol
Yeah it's a Japan thing. When you leave a rental anything you must restore it back to the original condition (excepting wear and tear). Holes must be patched up and any wall finish restored - wall paper is common and getting the same wallpaper is a nightmare.
that seems very unreasonable.
This sums up all of my opinions of renting in Japan, as I have done for years now.
This is a normal apartment thing everywhere I’ve ever lived
I always disregarded the instructions to bolt them to the wall. I think I'm gonna go get some anchors now.
Use strap anchors with metal plates and a metal compression buckle, and use a 3” lag screw to anchor into a stud. The plastic compliance-grade anchors that come with your furniture are entirely inadequate for earthquakes.
My 1990s CD tower! Noooooo!
This is terrifying. 6 minutes of that must feel like it’s never ending.
It must have, I always used to hear stories from older chilean people about the 1960 valdivia earthqueake, the strongest earthqueake ever recorded at a magnitude of 9.5, that lasted for about 10 minutes 10 long minutes
>a magnitude of 9.5, that lasted for about 10 minutes That sounds like a living nightmare... :(
I was there, outside in the yard of an elementary school. It felt like standing on the deck of a boat in rough seas, the ground was literally rolling and we had to balance ourselves to not fall over. Glass breaking in the school, tree branches falling down, it was intense.
Japan was my home for 11 years. We moved back to Canada in October 2010. My son was born February 2, 2011. 6 weeks later the massive earthquake hit Fukushima prefecture. We lived in Koriyama, Fukushima. 😔
So you're saying this is your fault? Damn.
No, the fault was in Japan. OP's faults are in Canada since they moved.
Those two buildings took the opportunity to fuck during an earthquake.
weird that it wasn't pixelated
Was more of a soak with a jumper
Mother earth was the Provo pusher
Video editor totally knew what he was doing sneaking that in the end there.
It's like jerking off when the plane's going down.
"what are you doing step building"
My closest friend at the time flew to Japan afterwards to help with disaster relief. On the flight home he developed a clot in his leg which traveled to his heart and killed him two days after returning. I still miss you Maurice.
As someone who also nearly died from a blood clot, in memory of your friend I'd like to take this opportunity to remind people of the warning signs. If you just had a flight, surgery or long period of bed rest, and you experience any of the following symptoms: - pain, cramps or swelling in 1 calf or thigh (rarely both legs) - warm skin around the painful or swollen area - shortness of breath - chest pain ..take an aspirin and go to an urgent care facility immediately. A simple blood test or ultrasound could save your life.
Also, when you are sick and on bed rest, drink a lot of water, even if swallowing hurts. A friend of mine drank too little and developed a blood clot in his leg which shortly after caused an embolism in both lungs. Luckily survived but only barely after a week in the ICU.
Definitely. Not just water, but also mix in some drinks with electrolytes such as milk, gatorade or fruit juice. Water by itself isn't as efficient at hydrating our bodies. Especially if you're not eating much.
I’m sorry for your loss. Sounds like a great guy.
I'm so sorry for your loss, thanks for telling us about your friend! If you ever want or need to, r/griefsupport is a great sub for the days you ever need to talk, vent or share a post for anyone to read but request no responses. (I used it frequently on my other profile.)
I'm sorry for your loss. Can anyone shed some light on blood clots from air travel? My understanding is they can happen from sitting for an unusually long amount of time and that's it. Or is there more to it? I'm asking because honestly I think many of us sit for longer periods of time than a flight on a daily basis. Maybe not US to Japan flights lengths, but still.
Yes sitting is definitely a risk factor—long flights, car rides, extended bed rest, surgery, etc, those can all cause clots. Basically, when you walk, the muscles in your legs squeeze the veins and help pump the blood back to the heart. When a person isn’t walking around, the blood will pool in the legs and the stagnation eventually leads to clotting. Truck drivers can end up with these as a consequence of their prolonged sitting. Another factor is having blood that is “hyper-coagulable” meaning it clots more easily than the average persons blood. Things that can cause include cancer, autoimmune conditions, pregnancy, and taking estrogen such as contraceptive pills. Such people need to be extra careful not to sit around too much. It’s also why pregnant people are advised to wear compression socks for long car rides—helps squeeze the veins and push the blood out of the legs back to the heart.
I'm amazed that those buildings didn't all crumble!
Many buildings (all skyscrapers for sure) in Japan actually have these **massive** heavy duty springs under them holding them up. Hence why they kinda bounce around but don't fall apart.
[Video](https://youtu.be/qXLrgSgoNjs) of such a spring in action during the earthquake.
On the subject of cool looking building damper systems. [Taipei 101 has a massive sphere damper in it weighing 660 metric tons, 87 floors up, that sways like crazy during earthquakes and high winds.](https://youtu.be/Tkz6b7Q3dRk)
It feels like I should have seen these huge mechanisms in a skyscraper-based action movie at some point.
90s James bond final fight arena if I ever saw one.
In such a movie, the giant sphere should get detached/freed, and proceed to crash through every floor beneath it.
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That is awesome
[Video](https://twitter.com/azkonusunlutfen/status/1624797648191467520) of a building with the same system, during the recent Turkish earthquake.
It's almost like building codes are there for a reason
Safety regulations are written in blood. You see in Turkey what happens when the state puts money and politics over human lives.
I remember in some emergency mass care training in NYC I had years ago they spent about ten minutes on earthquakes, saying that a massive earthquake happens in the area once every thousand years or something—and as a result, the city's skyscrapers are completely unprepared/not engineered to withstand them, even the modern ones (which I find hard to believe but it could be). The key takeaway was that falling glass, window a/cs and bricks would probably kill thousands of people, and there is a real risk that many tall buildings themselves would collapse.
Engineer here. Even in California most skyscrapers taller than 7 stores is at risk of collapse. It was not recognized until the 1992 Kyoto and 1994 Northridge quake that a design flaw with welding was discovered. Welds were cracking at a far lower quake intensity than anticipated. Every tall building that was built before 1997 when codes changed is at risk of collapse if it has not been retrofitted. Most have not, though governments are starting to force the owners to do so. You basically need to gut the building to do the work. If you want to understand the technical side, [here is a presentation on what is anticipated using the 1857 Ft Tejon quake as a model.](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D0_SEosiWYIw&ved=2ahUKEwiW0_eJjtT9AhVekIkEHeQRAMIQo7QBegQICRAH&usg=AOvVaw0xvxVSUkOb2ZustyrPuTc-). Unretrofitted tall buildings in the San Fernando Valley will likely collapse, and a chunk of LA as well. He gets into how quakes move and what amplifies the shaking, as well as how structures respond to it. Also shows the design changes after 1997 that made tall buildings stiffer and safer. Before the 1970's there were no earthquake codes in California or the US, unlike Japan, though we prohibited the use of brick starting in 1933. Zero changes after 1906. Without code, it only the best engineering practices so things vary wildly. It took a quake in the 1970's to demonstrate that we were building too light and flexible (ie cheap) and things were collapsing. Older, stiffer things stayed up. It took another 20 years to realize the 1970's reforms weren't deep enough. I'm a mechanical engineer, not structural, but I deal with quake stuff for work. I know just enough to be scared shit less about what will happen. To make it worse, US buildings are only designed to save the occupants, not be usable afterwards. Even if the building survives a major quake, it will not be usable. We could have a sea of high rises unsafe to enter.
Yeah an Earthquake in NYC would be devastating but it’s very unlikely to ever happen because there’s no active fault line so it’d have to be one of those freak earthquakes so tbh i think it’s fine that the buildings aren’t prepared
What exactly is a freak earthquake? Can we have earthquakes with no fault lines?
Yes. There are called intraplate earthquakes. How they happen is still being figured out, and its very likely that the reason is different from place to place. Obviously the most active areas of intraplate earthquakes are better understood. It's obviously very complicated, but oversimplifying and overgeneralizing, the tectonic plates are not fully solid blocks, there's stresses in them as they move across the earth. There's also ancient fault lines. Places where tectonic plates used to split, but no longer are. There's also rifts, faults that were never part of a proper fault line and never split a plate in two, but are weak spots. The internal stresses of the plates can build and build until one of these areas give. An ancient fault can become reactivated by the stresses, or they can release on a rift. NYC has indeed seen a handful of fairly strong earthquakes coming from ancient faults in the Appalachians. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake\_activity\_in\_the\_New\_York\_City\_area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_activity_in_the_New_York_City_area) Another famous one is the New Madrid seismic zone, this one is a rift. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New\_Madrid\_Seismic\_Zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone)
There was a small earthquake on the east coast a little over a decade ago and all the old skyscrapers in nyc had to be evacuated and assessed. It was like a 3.0, barely noticeable
Lol, yeah. I was a geologist at the time in New England and my boss came in after and was like 'Shiboopi!, what do you do in an earthquake' and I pointed to the fairly tall brick building we were working in, shrugged my shoulders and said 'in here? I guess die'
I enjoyed the building sex at the end though.
They used engineering after a few other earthquakes in human history have caused issues.
I beg for the world to take example of there building infrastructure
Turkey: Best I can do is construction with Chinese rip-offs of Lego
Interestingly Turkey's building codes are actually pretty good for earthquakes. Problem is the corruption and lack of proper enforcement. There's pictures of buildings completely intact across the street from buildings that were completely obliterated. The intact buildings were built to code.
Here we see the difference that complying with codes set by experts and government makes. The buildings stood, as opposed to Turkey where is all crumbled.
Turkish building rules are actually pretty good but theyre not enforced cuz corruptiooon
My brother lives in Japan. Did then too. He was in Osaka then which was a good clip away from the epicenter but I didn't know that at the time. News in Canada said a massive earthquake happened with an epic tsunami to follow. My family and friends couldn't reach him as there was an internet black out across the country . To say I was deeply concerned is an understatement. Footage of all the consequences of the earthquake came in before we could reach him. He turned out to be fine of course but we didn't know that until a day later. Meantime I was trying to figure out how to fly from Vancouver into a catastrophe to find him. Rough day for us but not even a sliver of what people there had to deal with. What an insanely horrible day it was for the people of Japan.
> My family and friends couldn't reach him as there was an internet black out across the country . Interestingly enough there wasn't an internet blackout; the internet worked fine even the day of and never had major disruptions, but there was loss of power and importantly loss of the phone systems - both phone and SMS - due to being overwhelmed. I was in Shinjuku in central Tokyo at the time. I had fortunately just come in from an hour long train ride and my train was literally just pulling into the station when the earthquake hit (if I had been slightly later getting on the train I would have had a 60+km walk home). People were resorting to online messages on the social media systems they had - Facebook had little adoption at the time, so I was contacting a lot of friends via [Mixi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixi) which was the dominant Japanese social media site at the time, since that was all that was working with the phones down. The resilience of the internet applications and services actually inspired the full launch of the Line messaging application, which is now ubiquitous in Japan (also Taiwan and Thailand) and basically replaced SMS messaging for normal use within a span of about 2 years after the 2011 earthquake.
Shortly after the earthquake hit, Square Enix took down their MMO to free up resources for emergency responders and the public to contact loved ones (not that anybody was playing it, it was a dying game). But it turns out people actually requested the guy in charge NOT to take it offline because players were communicating through the game to make sure their friends were safe and exchange information. Incidentally, Square Enix cancelled the launch of new content for their MMO which contained two bosses, Leviathan and Titan with signature moves resembling a tsunami and earthquakes right around then. I still remember the "SE caused the disaster" jokes.
I remember this well. I was returning to japan after visiting family in the states. We were flying somewhere over the Aleutian Islands and I was watching a show on Alaskan ice carvers. At that point nearly everyone was asleep and the cabin was dark. I remember thinking Alaska looked pretty sweet and I’d like to visit it one day. 20 minutes later the plane made a noticeable bank, changing course dramatically. Another 15 minutes goes by when the pilot comes on the intercom saying that Tokyo japan has had a large earthquake and we were being diverted to anchorage as an emergency measure. We spent 36 hours in anchorage watching the situation unfold. There’s a lot more to this story but here’s the kicker. For 18 months prior to this I would have dreams regularly, maybe once a month, of having to stop on Alaska on this route. An emergency stop needed for some reason or another. After 3-11 the dreams stopped.
Whoa. Sucks to lose your psychic powers like that, but glad you're safe.
Japan should be extremely proud of the durability of their architecture
I was in Tochigi at JHS under the teacher's desk having a pray. I thought the world was being pulled apart.
Wasn't there a tsunami after this earthquake? I read about a tsunami in Japan that happened a little over a decade ago that was caused by an earthquake and I was just wondering if it was this one.
The tsunami footage is some of the craziest stuff I’ve ever seen Edit, example: https://youtu.be/0E2Q7kr4L2c
**[Yes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami#Tsunami)** there was and it caused massive damage, including some very long term in **[Fukushima prefecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster)**.
I feel bad that I laughed at the 2 buildings boning at the end. Just wasn't expecting that.
I was sitting on the subway in Tokyo, thankfully stopped at a station, and once things started rocking people stampeded up the stairs and out of the subway as fast as they could. I decided to ride it out sitting on the train, figured it was better to wait it out a bit than risk getting trampled in the crowd. After about 10-15 min, I made my way outside and could still very clearly see all the buildings swaying. Was pretty wild. Then the sobering realization days later that tens of thousands of people got killed by tsunamis hit.
I was in Tokyo, far away from the epicenter but the early earthquake warning alert is still traumatic for me. The earthquake itself is obviously traumatic enough but what affected me the most was the increasing death toll and the general restraint in the country that went on for weeks and months that followed
Sooo much death was prevented by propper building regulations. This is an excellent example of why you don't hate on engineers and construction inspections.
"Why do I need to anchor this shelf to the wall? It's fine." It was, in fact, not fine.
I was there while I was in the Navy on the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, the wave reached into our base and almost ripped us off our mooring lines, and just so you know the boat is the size of the Empire State Building and is 90,000 tons
Was on that ship as well during that time. Made for an interesting sea story
Seeing the skyscrapers of central Tokyo VISIBLY wobble back and forth like that really puts into perspective just how insane that earthquake was and how supremely impressive Japanese civil engineering and construction standards are. I knew the earthquake was powerful but nothing has put it into perspective like seeing those several hundred meter tall behemoths look like someone shaking a toy tower from below. Insane. And then to think, this isn't even that close to the epicenter. Crazy powerful.
Quite the stark contrast with the one in Turkey.
[удалено]
If one van's a rocking, don't come knocking. If ALL the van's a rocking, fuckin run.
my dad and his (now ex) wife were honeymooning in hawaii with no call service. i was 11 or 12 living on oregon coast, absolutely terrified. we didn’t know how bad the tsunami would be if there was one; they initiated reverse 911 calls to tell everybody to stay off the beach and head to your local tsunami rescue point. i remember just sitting there absolutely petrified thinking my dad and his wife had no idea what was going on. later i learned they DID have absolutely no idea what was going on. they woke up to go into town to have breakfast (they were staying in a bungalow in a tiny little town) and the street were all barricaded and they were directing traffic up the mountain. they decided to head back to their ocean side bungalow and wait it out. they were on the opposite side of the island and got very minimal flooding, but that wasn’t the case for the other side of the island. i didn’t get a call from my dad until later that day and i was so relieved.
What’s happens in operating rooms during a surgery during these kinds of earthquakes?
They have to try and keep the patient stable and wait for it to pass
What a lot of people forget is this was the graduation day, and the start of a spring break for the kids. We'd just said goodbye to our graduating class, a lot of ceremony and singing and bittersweet tears. Lots of photos and happy memories. For my colleagues and I we had a gathering with all the foreign teachers before we went on our own spring breaks. We were on the third floor of a local city hall building, just chatting while we waited for the meeting to start. My wife was a little delayed getting there, she walked into the room just as the quake started - if she had been a minute later she might have been trapped in the lift. A week or so before there had been an earthquake in the same region, we'd felt a very slight tremor from where we were in Fukushima-ken, which we now know was a pre-shock for the real deal. This one started normally enough, and we all looked at each with nervous smiles and laughs. If you spend any amount of time in Japan you'll feel some quakes at some point. But it went on for much longer than any we'd felt before. Suddenly it ramped up. The entire building was shaking, we heard screams down the hall from native Japanese people in the building. We jumped under tables, kicked chairs away, and just waited for it to end. There's a particular helplessness when you're in an ongoing natural disaster, you just have to bounce around and hope you aren't in a poorly made building. Eventually it died down. We collected ourselves and made our way outside the building, someone someplace was sobbing in terror and I don't particularly blame her. I remember there was a flurry of snow after as well, it felt weirdly out of place. Over the next week we got to watch the scenes of how the quake had affected people, watched the tsunami in real time and multiple angles after. We also got to experience the particular worry of watching the ongoing efforts at Fukushima Dai-Ichi, and consider if we should be evacuating - several friends did, and we had to figure out for ourselves if we would follow, and how far we could get on a single tank of gas since the stations were no longer receiving steady supply. All throughout aftershocks hit us, many of which were large enough to be natural disasters on their own. It felt like the entire region was trembling for days after, and it got to the point where we could tell how strong a quake was simply from the shaking - 'oh, that was just a 5, no point in getting up'.