| Applications | |
Tsunami in Japan
Lessons from the disaster
First of all, I have to say that there is nothing absolutely safe. Though many Japanese doubted the safeness of nuclear power plant, Japanese government and industry oriented people supported the construction of nuclear power plants as the safety was absolutely reliable. In spite of allergy against atomic matters as Japan was only nation who experienced atomic bombs, majority of local people accepted the construction of nuclear power plants through voting procedure. Electric power companies and consultants always said that the power cost should be cheapest in the case of nuclear power. But now we Japanese realized that the cost was tremendously high, and in addition, the accident is robbing of the life and land more than 250 km wide (Tokyo 250 km apart from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant is now under danger of drinking water due to the atomic radiation). We are learning how difficult, complicate and time taking to prevent the accident of nuclear plants.
Many local people have made mistakes and misjudge though they were lessons from their ancestors how to evacuate from Tsunami. But some of people did not have enough knowledge about Tsunami behavior. For example, Asahi City, Chiba Prefecture located at sea coast was attacked by the first Tsunami at 3:45 pm, one hour after the earthquake when local people succeeded to evacuate on a hill. After Tsunami withdrew, some people went down to their houses or the coast, even some people tried to fill their cars with gasoline. But the second Tsunami came at 4:20pm, 35 minutes after the first Tsunami when such people were swept away and died. After the withdrawal of the second Tsunami, survived people wanted to search for those victims in the city area near the coast as they did not think that Tsunami came again. Unfortunately the third Tsunami, even highest one attacked at 5:26 pm, an hour after the second Tsunami which killed the rest people. One of the survivors said that there would not be any more Tsunami after the second one. The attacking time of Tsunami and repetition were different place by place. The earliest Tsunami was 15 minutes after the earthquake while most Tsunami came 30 minutes after. But we Japanese did know that some time it took long time until Tsunami came. For example big Tsunami of 6 m high attacked Sanriku Area 22 hours after the Great Earthquake occurred in Chile in 1960, which killed 142 people. NHK TV immediately announces whether we have to prepare the attack by Tsunami or not every after big earthquake. At this time many people evacuated second floor or third floor of concrete buildings. It would or should be safe. But the height of Tsunami came up to fifth floor and its roof the was only safe place.
In Japan, any local governments must produce hazard risk map which shows the place of refuge or shelter and guiding roads. Some villagers followed the guide map which have helped them to save themselves but in some other cases they were not successful as the estimated Tsunami was smaller than the actual one. There was an interesting report in which Sumo Hama. Miyako District, Iwate Prefecture succeeded to evacuate 109 people out of 110 villagers on a safe hill even though the village had no water break against Tsunami. Those villagers used to exercise the rehearsal of evacuation from Tsunami every year including communication among villagers and evacuation routing. At a primary school called Funakoshi Primary School located in Yamada Town, Iwate Prefecture, the school itself was designated as a place of shelter as it is located at 13 m above the sea level. 176 school children were evacuated to this school at first, but Mr Shuzo Tashiro (55), a school helper judged the shelter was not enough when he saw the Tsunami wave at the coast. He urged all children and teachers to escape up to 40 m higher hill. Then Tsunami came and swallowed the school. Had he not guided them, all people would have died.
There was another successful story in the city of O-arai, Ibaraki Prefecture where 5 m Tsunami attacked. A young fire man of 19 years old continued to shout in front of disaster wireless microphone which warned people through 45 speakers, “Escape to higher hill immediately!” even though Tsunami came to his legs. He continued to shout after the Tsunami went away “stay there and don’t move” for two and half hours. It resulted in perfect safety of all local people including an old lady of 91 years old. The lesson was obvious that software, particularly communication system could work much better than hardware such as super high water breaks.
Who survived and who did not?
Besides the above mentioned stories, I would like to mention several fortunate and unfortunate stories:
? A 60 years old lady was swallowed in Tsunami when she was sinking up and down in water and tried to go up to the water surface. Luckily a “Tatami”, Japanese mat was flown in front of her and she jumped up the “Tatami” but she was in a whirl and vortex rotating with high speed. Again luckily a wooden house was flown and she jumped up on the roof. Finally, she was rescued by a helicopter.
? A young mother with two children tried to escape to a place of refuge by her car, but she could not move because of traffic jam. She decided to go back but she could not make U-turn. She went to the opposite lane and put the car in reverse gear. Finally, she could escape from the Tsunami but many cars in front of her were flown away.
? Another young mother tried to evacuate to a refuge place on a hill by car together with her mother and children. She listened to a voice of a policeman shouting “Tsunami is coming!” She decided to get out of the car and took her mother with her children to hilly forests nearby. Only a few seconds, Tsunami came and swept away her car together with other cars in front. Five days after she discovered her cars turned over and crashed.
? Town mayor of Otsuchi Town, Iwate Prefecture organized a rescue party immediately after the earthquake with other staff outside of the town office. The deputy town mayor realized Tsunami coming and shouted to escape to the top of the fifth floor building of the town office. When the deputy town mayor reached the roof of the building, the town mayor was on the way and swept away by Tsunami. It was not more than 30 seconds different between safe and death. Similarly in Onagawa Town, a gentleman ran up to the fifth floor (15 m high) and saved himself but he said no one could believe that Tsunami would come up to such a height (see Fig. 5).
? One of a journalists of Iwate Tohoku Newspaper tried to drive his car to collect information about the damages. He brought his personal computer from the second floor office into his car. His wife also helped him but she recognized Tsunami coming soon. She shouted her husband to escape to the second floor immediately, but it was too late for her husband though his wife could escape. She did see the face of her husband in the wave of Tsunami.
? A woman escaped to the second floor of her house when Tsunami came up to almost the ceiling of the room. There was only little space, say 20 cm for her face to breeze. She grasped a curtain rail to prevent being swept away for more than 30 minutes until the Tsunami went down. She was lucky to be rescued in the next morning but she had to spend a very cold night in wet under below zero degree.
? A grandmother aged 80 years old and a grandson aged 16 years old were rescued 9 days after the earthquake. Their house was swept away about 100 m from the origin place in the direction of the coast, Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture. Luckily the house was collapsed but the kitchen was floated on the water and they were forced to be inside of the room for several days as she could not move and the grandson could not go out too. As the grandson could move in the lean kitchen, he found water, cakes and yogurt in the refrigerator which were provided to his grandmother. Finally, the grandson succeeded to go out after nine days and called for rescue which was discovered by rescue patrol. It should be a very rare case.
? At a hospital located in Rikuzen Takada City, Iwate Prefecture, Secretary General of the hospital tried to bring a satellite communication device placed at the ground floor up to the fifth floor. He handed it over one of his staffs and tried to climb up to the fifth floor, but it was too late. The staff could escape to the roof of the hospital with the satellite communication device and survived. Tsunami came up to the fourth floor and killed all patients who stayed at third and fourth floor, even fifth floor. The speed of Tsunami used to be 800 km per hour in the ocean and 60 km per hour at coast and land areas. It was much faster than expected.
? Mr Ohtomo, Wakabayashi District, Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture had the earthquake recognized long before that it was not appropriate for Sendai City to have designated a primary school as a shelter against Tsunami and requested Sendai City in September 2010 to change the hazard risk map to another place. When Tsunami attacked the district Mr. Ohtomo did not go to the school but a higher road from where he looked down the school saw that it was swallowed by Tsunami at the level of the second floor. The road he selected was safe, which was a just border of Tsunami and safe area. 300 people could survive at the road. But many other people who followed the hazard risk map died at the school.
Prediction of earthquakes
No one has succeeded so far the prediction of earthquakes. It will be one of the most difficult sciences and technologies in the world. Japanese seismic scientists and engineers have not yet succeeded too. I tried to make prediction using GPS fixed stations located all over Japan which are constructed by Geo-spatial Information Authority (GSI). Dr Harumi and I have developed a method for the prediction checking whether those triangle areas of GPS Stations exceed a threshold or not. I have already submitted a paper on “Prediction of Earthquakes with GPS Data” to GIM, Coordinates and Journal of Digital Earth. Unfortunately I and Dr Araki are retired persons who had no assistants and fund of research. We could confirm that all earthquakes in the past showed pre-signals before the earthquakes but we could not predict on which exact day the earthquake occur. Longest would be two months and shortest case was only one day before the earthquake. Sadly not many people showed interest in our research and the method has been neglected even though we succeeded to register the method as a Japanese patent in 2006.
I and Dr Araki are not interested in business but in contribution to help people. I hope someone can follow our method of the prediction in future.
Role of remote sensing and GIS for the disaster management
RS and GIS are useful to damage assessment to compare between before and after the earthquake and Tsunami. There are two remarkable issues at this juncture that need attention. One was high resolution satellite images which show clearly those damages and accidents of Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants. Air survey was not available because of high atomic radiation in air as well as the destruction of local airports. Satellite images showed the conditions of the power station buildings destroyed by hydrogen gas explosion, which was useful for recovery planning. Another issue was damage assessment to be compared between before and after the Earthquake and Tsunami. As the damaged area was so huge, helicopter is not enough. Satellite images of high resolution and also SAR were very useful to realize the damage scale (see Fig.6). We thank Digital Globe, Google, JAXA, RESTEC and many other organizations to release those satellite images on comparison bases on Internet. I also thank YouTube to publicize video images of Tsunami and other scenes. Many Japanese took video and pictures about the damage of the earthquake and Tsunami using Japanese digital cameras and video which would be very good reference in future to establish the countermeasure how to prevent, reduce or mitigate the disaster.
Concluding remarks
Although my family and my house in Tokyo are safe without any damage, I could not stand for watching TV scenes as the real situation was too miserable. I sympathize with affected people but as an old man living in Tokyo cannot help directly those people except with a certain amount of donations. However, I can inform my friends and colleagues in the world about the real situation and stories. It would be somehow useful for our society to save human life.
In conclusion, Japan committed a big mistake to have listed nuclear power plant as a sustainable development which proved to be of no more sustainable happiness.
I would be pleased to know if you become wiser after reading my article. Finally I extend my condolence to the victims and their families lost by the Tohoku Kanto Great Earthquake 311. I thank many friends from foreign countries and regions to have sent me kind words to encourage me as well as Japanese people.
UN-SPIDER SpaceAid resource pageThe UN-SPIDER team contacted its international partners immediately upon receiving the news about the earthquake and established a SpaceAid resource page in support of relief efforts within a few hours after the disaster. The UN-SPIDER global network includes the established UN-SPIDER Regional Support Offices and the nominated National Focal Points in the Pacific region, as well as the leading providers of space-based information and social media resources. Based on the support of this network, UN-SPIDER compiled available space-based information that could represent a significant source for the disaster relief efforts. This also includes information on products made available by value-adding institutions such as the Crisis Information Center of the German Aerospace Center (DLR/ZKI), the Regional Service of Image Treatment and Remote Sensing (SERTIT), through mechanisms such as the International Charter Space and Major Disasters and Sentinel Asia, as well as other governmental and non-governmental sources. For selected sensors, pre- and post-disaster primary imagery was shared with the response community through the UN-SPIDER Knowledge Portal (http://www.un-spider.org). A number of relief and response websites identified the UN-SPIDER resource page as a major information- and data source, as the Programme continued to work with data providers and value-adders to ensure the flow of information. In addition to the exchange with its international network and partners, UN-SPIDER coordinated with other United Nations agencies, including cooperation with staff of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by means of exchanging data and sharing information. In this particular context, UN-SPIDER supported monitoring activities related to the threat of a nuclear fall-out in Japan and its possible effects for neighbouring countries in the Pacific region as well. For further information: http://www.un-spider.org/japan-pacific
|
My Coordinates |
EDITORIAL |
|
Survey Camp |
Agrim Gupta |
|
Mark your calendar |
APRIL 2011 TO AUGUST 2011 |
|
News |
INDUSTRY | LBS | GPS | GIS | REMOTE SENSING | GALILEO UPDATE |
Pages: 1 2
(14 votes, average: 3.57 out of 5)
Loading...
Leave your response!