More Earthquake Stuff

So I found this paper on reconstruction. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-smillie-sendai-earthquake-20110412,0,7242281.story

There is a problem when writing about the after effects of the Sendai quake. When one is writing they have to balance three sides of the story, without sounding overly biased towards any one.

Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. When talking about Fukushima anything goes, the actual earthquake might as well have not happened. Whats important now is that the plant is damaged and what those effects are. Its really a second dasaster in itself and its being covered as one.

However when talking about the actual quake, discussing the loss of life and the rebuilding there is a really delicate balancing act. I personally can't wrap my head around the fact that 30,000 people are still dead or missing. That number doesn't really click for me, especially when Tokyo looks perfectly fine. Hearing about amount of land area that was damaged still doesn't click, I know that its all stuff near the water, but I don't know how near. Its really hard for me to conceptually understand the scale of destruction (I would say grasp, but that implies I understand that its to large for me to imagine I really just don't understand what scale we are talking about here).

Anyhow the stories I can understand are the stories about Japan putting itself back together again, quickly. This is something I can identify with, people going about their lives and restoring things back to normal. I think those types of stories are under reported right now. No one really wants to hear about a first world country getting back on its feet after damage. It doesn't make for very good headlines. But I get the impression that that is exactly what is happening up north. As always time will tell.

As a side note, the aftershocks around Tokyo and Fukushima still continue. They are as strong as ever, but less frequent, yurekuru my iPhone app that warns me of impending earthquakes keeps me updated. I really don't care unless its a shindo 5 or higher these days.

For those of you not in Japan reading this Shindo is the Japanese system of measuring earthquake power. It goes from a 1-7 scale, one being basically nothing and 7 being complete destruction. Its is based on the damage caused. Once you've lived with earthquakes for a while it makes a lot more sense to talk about what Shindo something is rather than its Magnitude.