Is another massive tsunami imminent in Japan?

Fourteen years ago, Japan was devastated by one of the deadliest tsunamis in modern history. Now a prophetic manga is fueling anxiety of a repeat. Could such a calamity occur soon again?

On Friday, March 11, 2011, at 14:46 hrs, disaster struck Japan. One of the largest earthquakes—officially the Great East Japan Earthquake—on record (magnitude 9.0) occurred just off the northeast Pacific coast of the main island of Honshu. The shaking lasted for a full five minutes—a terrifyingly long time when one entirely loses orientation, may not be able to stand up, with everything falling around you, walls and houses crumbling, the rumble of the earth drowning all other sounds—triggering a massive tsunami. Because the epicenter was so close to the coast, there was hardly any warning or time to evacuate. The first waves reached the Sanriku coast in the Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures within ten minutes, completely overrunning the towns and ports leaving total destruction in their wake. Up to 18,500 people perished. The tsunami also caused the meltdown of the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Miyagi Prefecture, the worst nuclear accident ever to hit Japan and the worst in the world only after Chernobyl.

Now some people, are again fearful to visit Japan. This is because of a manga comic, published in 1999 and re-released in 2021, warns of a catastrophe hitting Japan in July 2025. The only reason why this comic might scare people off is that it originally predicted, correctly it turned out, a major disaster in Japan in March 2011. The Future I Saw, by the artist Ryo Tatsuki, imagines a massive tsunami caused by a rupture in the undersea fault line between the Philippine and Eurasian plates. As a consequence, the number of tourists, especially from China and Hong Kong, has dropped significantly and some people have decided to postpone their trips to Japan. Tatsuki herself says that she is no prophet.

The scenario itself is not entirely unrealistic. Tsunamis are triggered by undersea events, most often large earthquakes at fault zones, but sometimes by volcanic eruptions or massive landslides deep in the ocean. The Pacific Rim where Japan is located is seismically highly active. The Sanriku Tsunami was the fifth most deadly in the past two centuries or so. The deadliest of all was the Indian Ocean Tsunami on Boxing Day of 2004 when an estimated 230,000-280,000 people perished in half a dozen countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. This was the second time the Sanriku coast was devastated by a tsunami: on June 15, 1896, another tsunami killed some 22,000 people in the same area with waves reaching the height of 30 meters.

Tsunamis are so deadly because of the massive amounts of water and the speed at which they travel. In deep water, the waves remain low but they spread fast in all directions from the epicenter. Tsunami waves have been measured to move at 800 km/h. As they approach shallower coastal waters they slow down, condense, and rise to frightening heights.

This is what destroyed so much of the Sanriku coast. Kesennuma, a port in Miyagi, was gone. I have visited the town both before and after the disaster. First the tsunami swept across the entire low-lying valley. When it receded, fires that ensued as gas pipelines were destroyed finished the job burning down the entire old wooden town. Kesennuma port had been the center of the Pacific shark fisheries just because of the shape of its natural harbor. Now this same geographic advantage had provided the tsunami with a perfect entrance to the harbor bowl allowing the water to rise unhindered into the town.

Tohoku’s largest city, Sendai, situated on higher ground and away from the sea was largely spared from major damage. The city airport closer to the coast was not so lucky. Cameras showed the massive wave sweeping slowly across the runways. Large jet planes floated away like toy models. Aerial shots from the close by mountain areas showed huge liquefaction of the soil, again in slow motion, wiping away entire villages, houses crumbling and washing down the slopes into the sea. 

So what are the chances that such a disaster repeats itself in the near future, if not later this month? It is impossible to give a precise answer to that question. Statistically, major tsunamis globally take place about twice in a decade. The likelihood of one striking a specific major urban is low but it is plausible that one of the major cities around the Pacific Ring of Fire will be struck by a large tsunami in the coming few decades.

The cities most at risk include the Tokyo-Yokohama conurbation, the largest city complex in the world with over 40 million inhabitants. This is also Japan’s economic heart, so a major disaster there would be highly destructive for the country and would disrupt the entire world economy.

Other likely targets include Manila and Jakarta on the Asian side, and Lima and Santiago de Chile in South America, as well as Los Angeles and San Francisco in California. Honolulu in the middle of the Ring of Fire is also vulnerable. In fact, all of these cities have in the past experienced disruptive earthquakes and tsunamis.

Indonesia and its capital Jakarta are particularly at risk from a repeat of an event like the 2004 earthquake and tsunami. Another risk is posed by the active volcano, Krakatoa. Its violent eruption caused a massive tsunami on August 27, 1883. It destroyed two-thirds of the island and killed some 36,000 people, making it the second deadliest event in recorded history.

Hawai’i due to its location has experienced three tsunamis claiming lives in the past eight decades. The worst one was on April 1, 1946, when a 8.6 magnitude earthquake in the Aleutian Islands sent a tsunami racing across the ocean. It destroyed most of Hilo on the Big Island, killing 159 people. As the earthquake that instigated the tsunami took place in Alaska thousands of kilometers northeast of Hawai’I, no one was prepared when the huge waves washed into the islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

When the 9.5 magnitude—the strongest ever recorded—earthquake hit Chile on May 23, 1960, Hilo, 10,000 km away from the epicenter, was again collateral damage and 63 people died there (the range of the casualties overall varies significantly, from 1,000 to 6,000). On November 29, 1979, a local 7.7 magnitude earthquake shook the Big Island causing two deaths. Such a locally generated tsunami gives hardly any warning time for people to escape.

All of the cities exposed to high tsunami risk are constantly monitoring the situation. Japan, with its multi-hazard risk and frequent earthquakes (in fact, a 5.5 magnitude earthquake shook the southwestern Kagoshima Prefecture while I am writing this on the 3rd of July), is arguably the best prepared country in the world. In this, it is helped by its advanced technologies and well-educated, self-disciplined population. Japan employs a national earthquake and tsunami early warning system operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency. It informs people of impending danger through sirens and phone alerts. It has recently deployed drones on the sea in front of popular beaches for tsunami detection. Detailed evacuation maps are maintained by local governments down to the neighborhood level.

Furthermore, millions of people in the country participates in drills and education sessions. September 1st is the National Disaster Prevention Day, with the date commemorating the Great Kantō Earthquake that destroyed Tokyo in 1923.

Scientists in Japan give an 80 percent chance for a mega-quake taking place along the Nankai Trough in the coming 30 years. This revised assessment has led the authorities to require municipalities and businesses to enhance their preparedness plans, to strengthen building earthquake resistance, stockpile food and other necessities, and to update evacuation plans.

Earthquakes and tsunamis cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty. A major event is certain to cause significant damage to infrastructure and the economy. The death of thousands of people in such eventuality is unavoidable. The best we can do is to be aware of the risks and be well prepared. That is our best chance of saving lives.

[Originally published on https://juhauitto.substack.com on July 4, 2025.]

Summer of Hazards: Pandemic, hurricanes and other dangeers

We’re in for a wild ride this summer if the early indications are to be believed. The COVID-19 pandemic is not showing any signs of waning, irrespective of how tired people are getting to shelter in space and despite wishful thinking by politicians. Unlike in Asia and Europe where the numbers of infections are actually going down rapidly, the US pandemic is still growing. Just in one day, May 21^st, there were more than 24,000 new cases reported in the United States. Only the geographical patterns are shifting.

On top of the pandemic we are seeing other threats creeping up on us, many of them also related to the global environment. I say also, as it is a scientific fact that the root causes of this pandemic—like the ones before it and others to come after we have cleared this one—lie in how we interact with and abuse the natural environment. The virus causing COVID-19 is zoonotic, meaning it originated in animals and jumped over to humans. Such spillovers have gotten more frequent as our contacts with both domesticated and wild animals have intensified and as our activities have spread deeper into previously undisturbed environments through urban sprawl, agricultural expansion, road building, logging, mining and other disruptive actions.

While weather is notoriously hard to predict even with the highly sophisticated computer simulations using big data that today are used for the purpose, virtually all major organizations engaged in such predictions agree that the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season will be way more active than in an average year.

NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, released its annual forecast on Thursday, May 21, predicting there will be 13-19 named storms in the season from June 1 to November 30, as opposed to an average of 12 such storms. Out of these, NOAA predicts 6-10 may become hurricanes, compared with an average year’s 6 hurricanes. Three to six out of these could further develop into major hurricanes—or category 3-5 storms—with wind speeds of more than 111 miles per hour (178 km/h). Of course, we do not know how many of these will actually hit continental USA, but even one major hurricane can do terrible damage.

Tropical cyclones—types of storms that include hurricanes in the Atlantic and typhoons in the Pacific—are named in order to easily distinguish between them as in busy times more than one may be active. Names are usually given to storms that reach sustained wind speeds of at least 40 miles per hour (65 km/h). Although the season only officially starts on June 1 there already was one—Arthur—that formed as early as May 16 off the Florida coast. While Arthur veered off to the open sea having brought only moderate rain and wind to the southeastern coast, its early appearance can be seen as a harbinger of things to come.

The increased hurricane activity is inevitably linked to climate change. It is statistically impossible to link any particular hurricane or storm to climate change. However, at a larger scale and over longer timeframes scientists are able to model how the warming trends increase the likelihood of hurricanes in terms of their frequency and intensity. One of the key drivers of stronger hurricane activity is the warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the tropical parts of the Atlantic and the Caribbean. The primary reason for this is the warming of global temperatures caused first and foremost by the burning of fossil fuels for energy and transportation. Cutting down forests to make way for agriculture and human settlements, as well as methane emissions from cattle ranching are other huge culprits.

A warming climate gives a double whammy to coastal communities. It brings more frequent and larger storms, and it causes sea levels to rise as the warming water expands. Places like the Outer Banks off the North Carolina coast will bear the brunt of these changes, but in the medium term the entire Eastern Seaboard and its large cities from Miami to New York are vulnerable.

Further inland, this past week we saw two catastrophic dam failures in the Tittabawassee River basin in central Michigan, forcing the evacuation of 10,000 residents from their homes in the midst of the pandemic. This is another climate-related disaster. The dams were breached because of excessive rainfall upstream. The engineers described this as a once in a 500 years event. However, such standards are rapidly becoming obsolete with rainfall and other weather patterns changing as a result of global warming, bringing increased rains to some places and droughts to others.

A natural hazard only becomes a disaster when it meets frail infrastructure. The broken dams failed because they were in poor shape. CBS News reported on Thursday (May 21, 2020) that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, had in 2018 revoked the license from Boyce Hydro Power, the company that operated one of the failed dams, the Edenville Dam, citing the company’s “long history of non-compliance” related to the dam’s ability to cope with a major flood.

This is by no means a unique situation amongst America’s 91,000 dams. As reported by the Guardian (May 23, 2020), the federal government’s National Inventory of Dams identifies over 15,000 dams in the country that would likely result in deaths should they fail. According to the inventory, at least 2,300 of them are in poor shape. The average age of the US dams is 57 years (the Edenville Dam was built in 1924) and many are hardly maintained. Seventy percent of the nation’s dams are under the jurisdiction of state governments and another 5 percent watched over by the federal government, but one quarter have no governmental oversight at all. Even in cases where regulatory agencies point out to deficiencies, the operators often fail to follow up because of high costs associated with repairs and upgrades.

The dams, of course, are but one aspect of America’s infrastructure that has been rendered vulnerable due to decades of lacking investment in maintenance. Powerlines, bridges and other transportation infrastructure will be equally susceptible to damage and disruption from floods, storms, landslides, erosion and other events that are likely to increase as the climate changes and we continue cutting down forests and building in unsafe places.

In the highly politically polarized environment of the USA today, there is a certain irony in how these multiple hazards manifest themselves geographically. One of the reasons why it has been easy for protesters to dismiss the pandemic thus far is that it has mostly ravaged big cities like New York and San Francisco. These cities are also liberal bastions and epitomize the degenerate coastal elites in the minds of many in the heartland. This has allowed people to believe in conspiracy theories that the pandemic is really just an invention of those who want to foil President Trump’s re-election bid or force vaccinations upon people or just generally destroy the American way of life. This is now changing as the pandemic spreads to smaller cities and rural areas, when states are prematurely opening up their economies. Amongst the states with the highest increases in infection rates are now Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, North Carolina and Michigan.

Some of these are the same places that are going to suffer from the other hazards, as is indeed the case of Michigan where the dam breaches and flooding disaster added to the pandemic woes. The hurricanes, naturally, are mostly going to pound the states on the Atlantic shore. The hardest hit will be those in the south, from Florida to North Carolina—including its barrier islands—places where beach vacationing plays a central part in lifestyle and economy.

Unfortunately, too, as we’ve seen in the past, the first ones to be hit by hurricanes are the Caribbean islands whose economies are so totally dependent on tourism. In September 2017, Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria whose effects are still acutely felt on the island. The storm caused as much as $95 billion in damages, wiped out 80 percent of the island’s agricultural crop, and has since caused more than 130,000 residents to leave the island. It has taken months to restore reliable power and water to households. This spring, the pandemic has halted tourism to Puerto Rico as well as other islands placing a further strain on the recovery and people’s lives.

It is of course not only the islands and coastal areas that are exposed to such multiple hazards. Dams and other vulnerable infrastructure exist everywhere in the country. Like always, the people who suffer most are the ones who have the least resources to fall back on when they lose their property, livelihoods or health. They also tend to be the ones living in locations most exposed to both natural and manmade hazards. COVID-19 has demonstrated clearly the inequalities at play, and many of them have a geographical dimension. But that is a story for another piece.

Now, as many states are reopening and so many people can’t wait to get their lives back, it is not an easy message to deliver that the summer that is so full of hope may end up being full of hazards instead. Medical experts and epidemiologists all seem to agree that getting back to normal, enjoying the parties, the barbecues, the beaches that go with a good summer, will almost inevitably result in second waves of the pandemic in places where it now has started to wane—and to full blooms in places that have yet to be hit by it. When at the same time we get hit by hurricanes and other natural calamities, coping only gets that much harder. We can of course get through it, if we decide to behave responsible and to support each other. We also need competent public services that can help people and communities in distress. In the longer term, we must get used to the idea that this may be the new normal.

It still isn’t too late to improve our relationship with nature, to become more mindful of how we use natural resources, where and how we build, and how we pollute the atmosphere, land and oceans. We must find ways of more sustainable development that shares the benefits more equally. These are solutions that are absolutely needed but will only start making a difference many years from now. For the immediate future, we need to find effective ways of adapting to climate change and building a society that is more resilient towards shocks, be they pandemics, storms, floods or something that we cannot even imagine at this time. It can be done, but it requires trust: in institutions, in expertise, in science and, not least, in each other.

https://medium.com/@JuhaUitto/summer-of-hazard-pandemic-hurricanes-and-other-dangers-9fc9cb6d4cf8

Kyushu floods: Sign of things to come?

While Europe and the Middle East swelter under record temperatures, the southern island of Kyushu in Japan has been devastated by floods caused by extreme rainfall. Evacuation orders or advisories have been issued targeting close to 2 million people in Kagoshima, Miyazaki and Kumamoto prefectures. More than 1,000 mm of rain has fallen on Kyushu in the past week. The average annual rainfall in Kagoshima is about 2,300 mm – it is a wet place even normally – which means the southernmost prefecture of the island has seen almost one half of its annual precipitation fall within just one week. The weekly amount is more than double the monthly average for July.

JMA weather analysis map 6 July 201

The rains have brought on heavy floods and overflowing rivers in the mountainous region. Landslides have already caused at least two casualties, as two women had their homes overtaken by mudflows in two separate incidences on Monday and Thursday. News broadcasts on the national Japanese NHK channel show mountain sides slipping away bringing along big trees and entire forest patches to the valleys. Cars and houses have been inundated by mud. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) says that a highly moist and warm seasonal front hovering above Kyushu is causing heavy rainclouds to form above the island and affecting areas in western and central Japan.

In 1993, Kyushu experienced the most devastating rainfall caused disasters in history. That cool summer, the rainy season was exceptionally long and the peak of torrential rains took place in early-August. Then, too, parts of Kyushu experienced rainfall of more than 1,000 mm. A veteran Asahi Shimbun correspondent who was then based in the paper’s Kagoshima office recalls the devastation, with cars piled up by the flowing water, even a twisted train. Debris flows caused large damage: there were 22 major ones, especially in the coastal areas where the mountains run into the sea, and where the major roads and railways are located. Some 2,500 people were trapped in cars, buses and trains, and had to be evacuated by boat.

Although this is officially tsuyu, or the rainy season, the amount of rain received in Kyushu is exceptional – except that the same happened a year ago. On 28^th of June 2018, a non-tropical low front became stationary over Japan. Then, too, several areas received more than 1,000 mm of rain in a short period of time. That time the worst hit areas were in western parts of the main island of Honshu, from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Kyoto, with Tottori and other areas on the Sea of Japan getting their share. At least 225 people were confirmed dead in the related mudslides and landslides and having their vehicles swept away by floods. In worst affected areas, the flood waters rose to 5 meters. The rains finally eased during the second week of July when also the temperatures soared. More than 11,000 households were left without electricity and, thus, without air conditioning and clean water.

The previous year, in 2017, torrential rainfall and floods left 155 people dead and forced the evacuation of two million people, mostly in Kyushu. At that time, it was the most devastating rain-related event in Japan in nearly three decades.

As I write this, rainfall is continuing in the south. Where I sit, in Iwate prefecture in the north of Honshu, the rain is a light drizzle interspersed with sunshine. The temperature is mercifully cool. The question on my mind is whether these exceptional weather anomalies are linked to climate change. There is some evidence that this would be the case, as warming sea surface in areas of the East China Sea pushes the seasonal rain front and warm air northward to Japan even when the rainy season is officially over. The JMA’s annual climate change monitoring report published in October 2018 recorded unusual weather conditions on the Pacific side of Japan, while mean temperatures were significantly higher than normal in the Okinawa-Amami islands. In a press release on the primary factors contributing to the heavy rains in July 2018, the same Agency concluded that:

“The long-term trend of increased intensity in observed extreme precipitation events in Japan and the clear upward trend in amounts of airborne water vapor also suggest that the Heavy Rain Event may be linked to global warming. Global warming and ongoing higher-than-normal zonally averaged tropospheric air temperatures associated with the northward shift of the subtropical jet stream are also considered responsible for the extreme heatwave.”

According to WWF, the impacts of climate change are already being felt in Japan, i.a. in terms of increased frequency and intensity of heavy rains and other extreme weather events.

Japan is a country that is likely the best prepared in the world to cope with natural hazards and disasters. Still, climate change will provide – and is already doing so – challenges that will be costly to the government and the private sector, as well as every person inhabiting these islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Reports referred to in this blog include:

Primary Factors behind the Heavy Rain Event of July 2018 and the Subsequent Heatwave in Japan from mid-July Onward. Japan Meteorological Agency (22 Auguste 2018)

Climate Change Monitoring Report 2017. Japan Meteorological Agency (October 2018)

Nippon Changes. WWF (no date)

In addition, I’ve used news reporting by NHK, Mainichi Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, The Japan Times, BBC and NPR.

Rikuzentakata July 2015 - Reconstruction from the Tsunami

The earthworks are simply mind blowing. 24-7, the conveyor belts bring earth from the nearby mountains and pile it on the coastal zone to raise the level of the low-lying land by at least 10 meters. It’s more than four years since the tsunami leveled the Sanriku coast and killed more than 15,000 people and made 230,000 homeless on Japan’s Pacific coast. This rehabilitation work that shows virtually no end is a demonstration of Japanese spirit and tenacity.

I traveled back to the Sanriku coast together with Abetake-sensei to see the progress in reconstruction. We did our first jointtrip here in March 2012, just a year after the great east Japan earthquake and tsunami had laid waste to the most unexpecting part of Japan. Abetake-sensei is my wife’s high school geography teacher in Mizusawa, in Iwate Prefecture.

Mizusawa is luckily some 60 km inland and higher up in elevation from the coast. Although the earthquake affected my family’s area, the tsunami did not reach even close.

Abetake-sensei picked me up in Mizusawa this rainy morning and we crossed the coastal mountain range to reach the Sanriku coast. The rather high limestone mountains have all their steep slopes covered in thick forest. In odd flat locations one can suddenly see perfectly maintained rice paddies on terraces where the terrain has allowed adequate space. At this time of the year, their green is so bright as to shine amongst the dark hills. The rainy season – tsuyu – is supposed to be over but the rain has been heavy since last night.

We stopped at Daitoo, a town about half way to the coast for a rest stop and a cigarette for my host. Daitoo is in a beautiful spot in a valley protected from all sides by mountains. We continued onwards driving through the village of Ohara, a small agricultural congregation by the Satetsugawa river, a tributary to the Kitagamigawa river that flows from the north to the south traversing Mizusawa. We were still on the western side of the watershed, meaning that the river flows inland towards the more major Kitagamikawa river.

Having soon crossed the next range – through some distinctly impressive bridges and tunnels above and through mountains – we started descending to the coastal plain. At this stage the road followed Kesengawa, a charming if not a major river known for its Ayu fisheries (ayu or sweetfish caught in rivers and often grilled or fried is one of the delicacies of the Tohoku region). The Kesengawa drains into the Pacific Ocean and when the tsunami struck, its flow was reversed bringing the devastating flood waters as far as 7 km inland.

Descending onto the coastal plain past the sea terraces, the landscape had changed so much that it was difficult to get one’s bearings. On both sides of the road there were huge mounds of earth leveled by bulldozers while enormous conveyer belts transported more earth to the piles from the nearby mountains. It seemed that the goal was to raise the level of the entire coastal plain by 10 meters. For what purpose, was not imminently clear. Hundreds of men and machines were at work now more than four years after the tragedy.

Access to the coastline was blocked from the main area of the former town. We drove south towards Kesennuma and found a road that led to the fishing port. Even there men were at work establishing seawalls. Still, I was able to get to the waterfront to observe the bay where boats were again active.

The legendary lone pine – Ippon Matsu – that became the symbol of resilience after the tsunami is long gone. It was one in many tall pines that lined the coast and miraculously survived the tidal wave – but despite the efforts of the city officials, scientists and the public, it died because of the salinization of the soil and groundwater after the intrusion of the sea. It lives on in numerous flags and posters and a monument is being established for it, I was told although it was impossible to reach the location. Many Japanese people – including school groups – were strolling around the area with their cameras.

The work will continue for years. It begs the question, though, what for? This is not the first time the Sanriku coast has been hit by a tsunami and it won’t be the last either.  This time the destruction and death toll were huge, mostly because of the coastal development and population concentrations on the waterfront. So why spend all the trillions of yen and years of civil works only so that the coast could be rebuilt and people could reestablish themselves in the hazard zone? Unfortunately, this seems to be an expression of the Japanese attitude, a downside of the tenacity: Engineering and civil works to tame the nature – and at the same time do irrevocable damage to the surrounding mountain environments. Here this seems even more futile because the coast has already been depopulated and virtually all people left for the cities and towns further inland, many with no intent on returning. Some of the old folks may want to return to their home areas but even they would likely not want to live right on the coast where their old neighborhoods were destroyed and friends died.  Most likely, the official approach will be to provide homogenous housing, which will be convenient but not appealing.

Naturally, Rikuzentakata is not the only community on the Sanriku coast that is struggling with recovery. The central government is paying for the efforts but it is the local governments that decide on how the money should be spent. In fact, the central government has been criticized for not spending enough of the allocated funds, so massive civil works like those here are welcome, so that large amounts of funds can be disbursed. The local governments have a wish to make the communities livable again. The trouble is that nobody knows who and how many people would eventually return.

The tsunami disaster had a profound impact on the coastal communities, not only in a physical sense. The very fabric of the communities was torn apart. As my friend, Prof. Mikiyasu Nakayama of Tokyo University, has found in his research, many younger people who used to live with the grandparents in three generation households – especially young women dominated by the mothers-in-law – have found it liberating to move away and establish a new life on their own in the urban areas. Even others have realized that modern life in the city with all its amenities is convenient. There is no going back.

Sandy farewell

Monday, 29 October 2012

On Monday morning New York City is closed down. I’m staying at home as my office, like most others, has been forced shut. Without transportation it would anyway be impossible to get to Manhattan. It doesn’t look too bad outside, though. It’s grey and the rain is falling, but it all looks rather calm. The wind comes in gusts that violently shake the trees outside. Some leaves have already turned yellow and are flying off like wet rags.

By noon the situation is starting to look more serious. According to the reports, the storm has been moving faster than anticipated and therefore has arrived earlier than expected. Its power has intensified. There’s by now no doubt this’ll be the worst storm to hit New York since the 1938 hurricane. The TV shows images from Atlantic City, NJ. The famous boardwalk and the casinos are being pounded by heavy winds and the waves from the open ocean are splashing forcefully onto the shore. I remember my brother has a vacation property on the Brigantine Island not far from Atlantic City. I also remember it faces the ocean. There’s only the sandy beach and a narrow street between the building and the Atlantic. In good weather, the location is lovely.

I correspond with my colleague Chona who lives in New Jersey. She is lamenting the pictures of her beloved Jersey Shore being eaten up by the waves. The TV meteorologist explains how New York City is squeezed in between New Jersey and Long Island, which means that in an Atlantic storm situation like today, the water has only one way to go: inland towards the city via the inlets. Therefore, the storm surge forecast for New York harbour is grim.

The most threatening situation starts unfolding in mid-afternoon on the west side of Manhattan. A crane on a high-rise construction site on the 7^th Avenue at 57^th Street has collapsed and is hanging upside-down at the height of the 90^th floor above the city. There is no way to stabilize it, so it’ll be pure luck if it stays up and doesn’t fly smashing into neighbouring buildings and onto the street.

Around 4 pm Governor Andrew Cuomo holds another press conference flanked by NYFD and other emergency personnel. A troop of National Guardsmen dressed in camouflage uniforms stands guard behind them. There is a life-threatening situation on Fire Island, a thin barrier island off Long Island. Fourteen people who refused to obey the mandatory evacuation order last night had to be rescued today. Having spent some good summer vacation time on the island, I can’t even imagine anyone wanting to face a hurricane on that thin sliver of sand in the Atlantic. In the process a rescue vehicle has been lost. Luckily there were no personnel losses. Cuomo quotes Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who accused people who refused to leave of being selfish, putting others at peril. The emergency chief tells in no uncertain terms that the window to evacuate is rapidly closing. Sandy is now expected to make landfall around 18:00, which will coincide with the peak of the tide coming in. When that happens, it won’t be possible to get out of the islands that surround New York City.

I also correspond with my other colleague Indran who lives high up in one of the high-rises on the East River waterfront in Manhattan. It is Zone A, but the building complex is very solid and the water would anyway never reach that high up, so he had chosen not to evacuate. He and his family moved here from South Africa only earlier this year. They are awed by the storm which they can observe through rattling windows from a vantage point tens of stories above sea level.

Our building is faring well, too. We stay in our warm apartment and enjoy the food we stocked up on before the storm: steaks and asparagus for lunch, followed by coffee ice cream; grilled chicken and salad for dinner. Do we normally eat this well? Nowa sleeps through much of her first hurricane. I go down to the basement, which looks dry—so far. 

Around the time of the landfall, I venture out briefly to snap these photographs. From the balcony the southwestern sky looks menacing. On the street side, the large trees are bending with the gale force winds. Luckily, the rain remains surprisingly moderate.

In early evening, the communications start to falter. The cable network on which our building depends on for the Internet, TV and telephone landline goes dark. The elevator also becomes unsafe to use. We’re cut off from information and communications. Well almost, as Yoko’s iPhone can still send and receive messages (my older model went blank). Some neighbours in the building report water leaking from their a/c vents. Apparently, water is also starting to gather in the basement.

Around 21:30, Yoko reads on the iPhone that Sandy is no longer a hurricane. The National Hurricane Centre has reclassified it because it “has continued to lose tropical characteristics”—no wonder at these latitudes. It doesn’t mean that its power is waning. Sustained winds of more than 120 km per hour remain. The wind and rain continue late into the night.

Tuesday, 30 October

We survived the storm with minor personal inconvenience. In the morning the winds are still high and there are heavy showers. At the JFK airport, top wind speeds recorded were 127 kph. Our cable service is restored and we never experienced a power outage. Not everyone was equally lucky. The storm left some 7 million people in 11 states and the District of Columbia without power. In New York, power outages are widespread and currently 1.8 million people are without power. In the New York University Langone Medical Centre even the back-up generator system failed. Some 260 patients, including four newborn babies, had to be evacuated.

ConEdison, the power utility, made a statement that this is the biggest storm-related problem in the company’s history. A representative couldn’t give a timetable for fixing the problems but suggested it may take a week to fully restore the service. It's going to be a cold and dark week for those affected. 

The initial reports by the police talk about seven Sandy-related deaths in the city, but there is no information about how these happened. The national death toll from Sandy is currently put at 16. According to news reports, more than 80 homes have burned down to the ground in a fire in Breezy Point, Queens, due to electric fires. One can imagine insurance companies studying the hurricane causes in the policies for loopholes to avoid payment to the home owners. A building in Chelsea collapsed partially because of the wind. The crane in Midtown West is still hanging there, but the situation remains dangerous and the police have evacuated buildings in the neighbourhood.

There is massive flooding around the city. The National Hurricane Centre recorded storm surges of up to 3.8 metres in Kings Point. The storm surge in southern Manhattan’s Battery at 4.3 metres, was the highest ever on record, beating that caused by Hurricane Dana in 1960. In the South Street Seaport waves with a height of 9 metres were measured. Residents on Staten Island report that they have never seen anything like this. Coney Island waterfront is still inaccessible even to eager reporters. Streets look like rivers with cars floating on them. Cars have been crushed under felled trees. One car spontaneously combusted in a fireball, possibly caused by salt water getting into its battery. A huge tanker has washed ashore on Staten Island.

Reports are coming in and are being updated as more information becomes available. The economic impact has not yet been assessed.

The system-wide shutdown of mass transit—both local and long distance trains, subways, buses, ferries—continues. Seven subway tunnels are severely flooded. One can only imagine the hordes of rats sprinting across the debris in the deluge. Apparently MTA had managed to get all subway cars on higher ground in anticipation of the storm, so the trains have been spared damage. MTA calculates it’ll take four days to pump out the water from the tunnels. The rain continues to fall.

It seems that we’ll spend some more time indoors.

Waiting for Sandy

Sunday evening, October 28^th

Sandy is again a hurricane. Having already once been downgraded into a tropical storm, Sandy is back as Category 1 hurricane—and it’s heading north along the Atlantic coast. The storm system is slow-moving and massive, ranging some 1,200 km across. The eye is still far out on the Atlantic off the Carolina coast some 800 km from New York, but despite the distance, the winds are picking up even here in Brooklyn. The rain is starting to fall and the Rockaway shore is already getting soaked. The hurricane is calculated to make landfall well south of New York tomorrow night and is expected to pass the metropolitan area south-southwest from here across the garden state of New Jersey.

Although New York will likely not be hit directly, the expectation is that the city will receive its share of rain and wind. In fact, the biggest threats would appear to stem from wind and the associated storm surge. The rainfall on Monday-Tuesday is expected to be just 50-120 mm—enough to give us a good washing, but not huge in historical terms. However, by noon tomorrow, the winds are expected to blow at 80 km per hour, with gusts going up to 112 km per hour. That’s strong enough to fell trees and power lines and to throw leisure boats off the East River on the banks.

This afternoon we walked down from our house to Bedford Avenue and the main shopping area of Williamsburg to get supplies so that our daughter Nowa would be able to ride out her first hurricane in comfort. It should have been no surprise, but we were still taken aback at seeing how many others had had the same idea. There were crowds of people in all shops and at least three dozen people were queuing on the pavement outside our favourite supermarket. Two bouncers were admitting people in an orderly manner, so that inside the store things didn’t get too chaotic. After a brief wait we were able to stock up with enough of bottled water and cooking ingredients should we be unable to shop for a few days.  It is interesting to note the types of items that people buy in these kinds of situations. Apart from bottled water, the first things to go seem to include canned tuna. This I noticed 14 months ago when we were bracing for Hurricane Irene, and could reconfirm today. As we headed back home, we could feel the humidity condensing in the cool wind.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been visible in the media today assuring people of the state of preparedness. All public transportation—subway, local trains, buses, ferries—will be shutting down tonight. The area airports—JFK, La Guardia and Newark—have also instructed flights to be directed elsewhere and  Amtrak trains will be avoiding New York’s Penn Station. The bridges and tunnels connecting the five Boroughs may be closed up to avoid accidents caused by heavy winds or flooding. New York will be cut off from the world.

The decisive Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered mandatory evacuation of all vulnerable low-lying areas on the coastline by 7 pm tonight. Zone A—which includes most of the shores of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island—may be facing huge storm surges. The forecast at this time is mostly 1-2 m above normal—high in its own right—but some areas around East and Hudson Rivers—and especially Long Island Sound—may face a storm surge of up to 1.8-3.3 metres. It’s almost full moon, which worsens the effects as the tides are naturally high at this time.

While the city hurricane shelters are slowly filling up, many citizens are also planning on challenging the evacuation orders and riding out the storm. The local TV station NY1 sometime ago broadcast a report from the Rockaways where some of the 130,000 people living there were gathering for hurricane parties. A somewhat wobbly gentleman declared firmly through a nearly toothless grin that he would not leave his home of 35 years: “The captain must go down with his ship!” True to his style, Mayor Bloomberg justifies the mandatory evacuations, not because of his concern for the stubborn residents, but because their intransigence may eventually put rescue personnel at risk if they need to go out to salvage foolhardy partyers from storm hit areas. He also made a decision to shut down elevators and hot water in public housing—many tall high-rises—to prevent people from getting stuck in elevators and other mishaps if and when there are power failures.

This is not the first time New York City will experience a hurricane, although they certainly are not regular events. By definition, hurricanes are tropical storms, and New York is far from tropical, as anyone having spent a winter here would attest. However, just last year, in August 2011, the city was hit by another hurricane, Irene. It was the first since Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The one before that had been Agnes in 1972. Whether this repeat just a year later would be any indication of intensified storm activity linked with climate change is of course impossible to tell. Two events in a row don’t provide any statistically significant trend. The most destructive hurricane that New York has had to deal with in modern times took place in 1938 when the eye of a Category 3 storm passed straight through Long Island killing ten people. Damage from Irene last year stayed quite limited, although much of Lower Manhattan—the Financial District and the Battery—were severely flooded. Even then, the Far Rockaways took the brunt of the storm that damaged the piers and boardwalks there. Here in Williamsburg, the visible damage was limited to some flooded basements and a few felled trees (see the photos from the aftermath of Irene).

 

Sandy is different, though. It’s been termed ‘storm of a generation’ to reach this far up on the East Coast. Last week, it already killed at least 60 people and caused large-scale homelessness in the Caribbean. President Barack Obama has just signed an emergency declaration for New York State in anticipation of Sandy’s arrival.

For now, we are tucked in comfortably in our apartment in Williamsburg. We are close to East River, but just outside of Zone A by virtue of our building standing on a small knoll. It will not prevent the winds from rocking the windows here on the 4^th floor or preventing flooding in the basement storage areas. But all the plants have been moved inside from the balconies. We expect to stay safe and dry, although the thick clouds hide the full moon and the wind is increasingly throwing raindrops our way..

A year after the tsunami

 
Ishinomaki, Rikuzentakata, Ofunato, Kamaishi, Kesennuma, Fukushima… These places were suddenly placed on the map in the world consciousness on the 11^th of March 2011. Before that fateful Friday, few people abroad had heard of these towns. Small as they were, together they still were home to hundreds of thousands of people. Only the largest city in the area, Sendai, might have rung a bell amongst those with an interest in Japan or world affairs in general. Having been destroyed by severe bombing during the World War II, Sendai had risen from the ashes to become a very pleasant city of more than a million inhabitants and the capital of the Tohoku region.

The smaller towns on the Sanriku Kaigan facing the Pacific had lived off the ocean for hundreds of years. Generations of fishermen had eked out a living in the sea and the area was the world leader in mariculture of oysters and seaweed. Sanriku kombu, nori and others set the world standard in quality and taste. Sanriku Kaigan had acquired new economic activities, including some heavy industry and notably tourism due to its unparalleled beauty, but much had remained the same for generations. That was much of the attraction in these ocean faring communities. On that cold early spring Friday, the ocean struck with unimaginable force claiming the lives and livelihoods of entire towns and communities.

Much has been written about the tsunami and the massive magnitude 9 Tohoku earthquake that caused it. I wrote about it immediately based on reports from the media supplemented by scattered messages that were received from family and friends in Tohoku. There have been scientific analyses of what happened and why, as well as many reportages about the human cost, about people who lost everything, about survivors crowding into temporary shelters where they’d have to live for months to come. Officially, more than 15,000 people perished in the event, with more than 3,000 still missing.

What also received plenty of attention in national and international media was the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant after the earthquake and tsunami. This sad episode revealed some unexpected incompetence and a dark side in the cosy relationship between big industry and the governmental agencies that are supposed to regulate it. These tensions continue till today, as the nuclear lobby and its pawns in the government have restarted the pressure to rebuild the power, while 80% of the Japanese people now favour phasing it out. But that’s another long story that I am not in the best place to comment on.

Just recently, I had the chance take a tour of some of the worst affected coastal areas. It was 1 year and 9 days after the event. Our friend, Takehiko Abe, living in the Iwate prefecture of Tohoku region offered to take us on a day trip to the coast. Another geographer by training, he shares my interest in the natural and human processes that shape the earth. In fact, Abe Take Sensei, as he is known, was Yoko’s high school teacher years ago (the ‘sensei’ part refers to the respect given to teachers in Japan). He picked us up with his Toyota Belta at Mizusawa town hall and we headed straight east across the coastal mountains. It was late-March but new snow was falling and the mountains rising some 800 metres above sea level displayed a tricolour pattern with the dark green of the conifers and the brown of the leafless trees against a matt of white snow on the ground. On the higher reaches as the winding road edged up the hillsides, the tree branches looked dreamlike covered with thick pads of white snow. In between, in the valleys, rice paddies glistened wet.

 

After some 60 km, we descended to the coastal plain along the Kesengawa valley. The river valley had provided a natural conduit for the tsunami waters, which had here reached 8 km inland wiping out everything low enough on the riverbanks with its force.

We arrived in Rikuzentakata, the town where the tsunami damage had been the widest, although there were towns where more people had died. The determinants of the death toll were varied, depending obviously on the geographical setting of the coastline and the settlements, but also on other factors. Abe Take Sensei explained that in Iwate prefecture, the population had been educated to drop what they were doing and immediately head towards higher ground when they heard the tsunami warning, whereas in neighbouring Miyagi prefecture to the south such education had not been given. So when the tsunami warning came, school kids and others in the Iwate towns like Rikuzentakata started running, grabbing smaller ones with them, while students in Ishinomaki in Miyagi were told to stay put in the assumed safety of the school building only to be swallowed by the waves.

Still, it was hard to see how anyone could have survived the onslaught of the waters in Rikuzentakata. Most of the city was built on the wide floodplain that seemed to go for kilometres before the coastal terraces rose above it. Virtually all the individual houses that had stood on the plain had been entirely wiped away. Not even their foundations could be anymore detected, as the bulldozers had pushed the unfathomable amount of rubble that had covered the land into high mounds that now dotted the landscape. In one place, in the middle of the plain, I saw the two headstones that had marked the entrance to a large house sticking up from the flat open land. The family’s name was permanently carved in the stone, but nothing else of them or their house remained.

Some of the larger and sturdier buildings constructed with reinforced concrete still stood, but were mostly only frames with their innards gutted out. Some, like the Capital Hotel that had held the prime spot on the waterfront, were so strong that it still seemed conceivable that they could be repaired. We stopped by the local hospital, which was gutted up to the 3^rd and top floor. The flat rooftop luckily had been high enough to be out of the reach of the waves. Patients, doctors and nurses who had made it there had been rescued by helicopter. Close by, we saw an apartment building still standing. There the tsunami had reached up to the 4^th floor pushing straight through the building taking with it whatever and whoever was inside.

    

Abe Take Sensei told about his daughter’s friend who had just recently moved to Rikuzentakata from Sendai with her husband and two small children, one of whom was just a new-born baby. The entire family had perished in the tsunami.

A visit to the city hall was heart breaking. The lobby, facing towards the sea but far from the water, was still full of rubble with cables and beams hanging from the ceiling. There was a crushed car, which the waves had washed in. On the floor, there was a pile of elementary school children’s rucksacks still full of books. A page from a photo album with faded snapshots of smiling children was lying amongst them. An impromptu altar had been erected at the entrance, with burning incense, fresh flowers and other offerings piled on it. Helplessly, I added my modest contributions to it. This was o-higan time during which, according to the Japanese Buddhist tradition, spirits return to the land. The flowers, drinks and food were placed there for them.

 

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We drove up to a terrace behind the floodplain. There a Buddhist temple stood amidst a small forest. As is the tradition, the temples are usually located on higher ground and thus this and others survived the tsunami. The graveyard next to it had many new graves (including for pets) and people were there to bring flowers, buckets of water to wash the tombstones, and incense.

 

The tsunami also caused huge damage to the natural environment, which has gone—perhaps understandably, given the immediate impacts on people’s lives—underreported. The best assessment I’ve read about the environmental damage comes from my friend Vicente Santiago-Fandiño, a scientist with many years in Japan. Such irreplaceable loss was evident in Rikuzentakata, its Matsubara beach destroyed. The beach had been recognized as one of Japan’s most beautiful natural sites since the Taisho period in the 1920s. The 2 km stretch of sandy beach was lined with some 70,000 pines. The tidal wave left only one of them, a 200 year old tough tree standing. It still stands there as a lone sentry guarding over its fallen comrades, but its future is not promising. Despite efforts to protect it—it is testimony to the spirit of the Japanese that they would dedicate any energy to the tree under these dire circumstances—its standing place has become waterlogged with sea water and its roots exposed to the saline water are dying.

As we left the town and headed north on the coast the snowfall intensified, the wind whipping it sideways turning the bleak landscape into monochrome. The road took us through several tunnels till we emerged on the other side of the mountains. Here there was less snow and the weather was turning sunny. Ofunato was built along a long and narrow bay stretching north and protected from the open ocean by a thin peninsula to the east. The town and its port still had not been safe from the tsunami. Yet, the atmosphere here was somehow more optimistic and I hope it wasn’t just my own mood improving with the sun coming out.

We stopped in Fukkoo Yataimura, an area where prefabricated housing for shelters had been erected. In the same area, we were delighted to find, many restaurants and izakaya drinking establishments—even some clubs with live music—had reopened after their original places in downtown Ofunato had been rendered unusable. It was time for lunch, so we decided to have some here. The choice was—unfortunately—left to me, as it was assumed (partly correctly, I’m sorry to say) that I had the most food limitations in company. I regret to say that I do have some prejudices towards seafood that is not readily identifiable as fish. And that, in essence, is what the Sanriku delicacies consist of. Our previous visit to Sanriku had been slightly embarrassing We had stopped in Kesennuma—no longer in existence—which then was a major fishing port and the main centre of Japan’s shark fishing industry (I am not fond of that: most sharks are endangered and the Chinese fancy for shark’s fin is driving the despicable trade, which is both wasteful and inhumane). Abe Take Sensei had designs for us to eat a long and fabulous seafood lunch at one of the local places. The restaurant was great: wooden tables with no tablecloths, entirely genuine with no tourists around—and you could get any creature from the ocean, cooked or uncooked. Abe Take Sensei was ordering various delicacies—from shark’s heart to sunfish, mambo, with an odd, flat face—when I shocked him by asking for a simple grilled samma, a pike mackerel, common in any non-specialist restaurant and amply available in supermarkets. Till this day, I have a reputation in Iwate for having ordered samma teishoku in a superb seafood restaurant.

Well, I’d take such embarrassment any time if that brought Kesennuma back. This time in Ofunato, however, we settled for a small Chinese restaurant and sat at the counter. The lady running the place was very friendly, even cheerful, despite the fact that a year ago her restaurant had been destroyed and she had had to relocate to temporary barracks. The food the cook—her husband labouring in a small space behind some curtains—produced was very tasty. This time the meal contained no seafood. The inside of the little restaurant was painted red. The top of the counter was decorated with artistic calligraphy in gold drawn by hand with a brush by a Chinese volunteer who had visited the restaurant. The proprietor explained how the sea connected coastal areas in Japan since ancient times. The local dialect here, which she masters, is closer to that in Kyoto far to the south and west, than to the dialect spoken further inland in Iwate.

Continuing north, we arrived at Kamaishi, with a tall white Buddha statue, Kamaishi Dai Kannon, overlooking the city from a high forested cliff. 

The town is located in a narrow valley at the end of a bay. Thus it had been badly hit. “In this town, most people died,” said Abe Take Sensei as we entered the city. Not quite, but the devastation was still visible. The main street, running up from the harbour, was lined with buildings that had been gutted until the 2^nd and 3^rd floors. 

Amazingly, shops had reopened in buildings that were still operational. “Oh my, that barber is open,” Yoko exclaimed as she noticed the classic red-blue-white spiral marking the small shop squeezed in between badly damaged buildings. Around town we saw many stores that were open again and tempting customers. The reconstruction has brought to the area large numbers of workers—mainly men without families. The barbershops and izakayas would likely be in demand.

 

 The double tragedy of the earthquake and tsunami was horrible. Luckily the nuclear disaster, bad as it was, took place far enough not to threaten this area. Still, so many lives ended and so many others were devastated. The economy of the region and the country suffered an incredible blow. Yet, people and towns are slowly being reconstructed and bouncing back. 

This is not the first time Sanriku has been badly hit: in 1896, the Meiji-Sanriku earthquake caused a major tsunami in the region killing at least 22,000 people; then again in March 1933, another earthquake sent in a destructive tidal wave. One can only admire the Japanese people whose stoic discipline, organization and respect for other people and community has done what in many other places would seem impossible: cleaning up, building back, re-establishing businesses, restarting lives in the face of incredible adversity. Where one would not even know where to start and the enormity of the task would seem insurmountable, after just a year they have brought new hope to Sanriku Kaigan.