Sunday, October 16, 2005

Yet more earthquake news!

There was another big earthquake here today......5.1 on the Richter scale. I was at home listening to Pete Seeger's song "Garbage" when the thing started. A few months back I experienced an even bigger earthquake while doing some household chores while listening to the radio program "Car Talk". A real coincidence occured about 4 years ago.....In the morning I was having my first cup of coffee and reading a history book about the Great Tokyo Earthquake of 1923.........when all of a sudden there was this big earthquake......I spilled my coffee. Since 1792 there have been 3 really big earthquakes here in Tokyo. The one in 1792 killed an estimated 15,000 people. The one in 1844 killed an estimated 12,000 people. The earthquake and resulting fire that occured on September 1, 1923 killed at least 150,000 people. This one was recorded as being 7.9 on the Richter scale and it lasted for 4 minutes according to the government and at least 10 minutes according to many survivors. There were over 200 aftershocks. The fire that started in Yokohama( the earthquake started at 11:59 am when many people were using there gas or wood burning stoves to cook lunch.......) raged on for 2 days. False rumors about Koreans looting, poisoning drinking water wells, and committing arson led to the formation of civilian militias. These militias slaughtered hundreds or possibly thousands of Koreans.The government , claiming that the left was using the disaster in order to overthrow the established authority, killed many left wing opponents including such famous socialist and anarchist figures as Keishichi Hirasawa and Noe Ito. It was truly a bad time...........
Whenever an earthquake occurs and I am at home I always visit the website of the French newspaper "Le Monde". Minutes after a big earthquake happens here they always have a news flash about it. The first part of the news flash has info about the recent quake. The second part is always the same. It goes as follows....."Le Japon est a la jonction........Japan is at the junction of 4 plates. 20% of the most violent earthquakes in the world occur in Japan. A very large earthquake"the big one" could occur at Tokyo at anytime." Great! This really makes my day!

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