A meizanologist's diary (52)

4 January (continued): walking back to the Sensei’s car from the museum, we find ourselves wondering whether the many long cracks in the tarmac are recent or not. But only briefly. When we light upon a drain shaft that appears to have been thrust bodily out of the ground, the matter is settled.

To find out more, I walk back to the museum’s office. Yes, confirms the curator, all this happened during the initial earthquake shock on New Year’s Day – the museum building, being constructed to the latest standards, rode out the shock undamaged, but the grounds around it liquified – water gushed out of the ground – cracking pavements and breaking up the carpark.

The curator invites me on a quick tour. Liquefaction was responsible for the damage to the stone staircase, which is why we had to enter the museum through the ground-level door. It also caused a mudslide that blocked a stream flowing into the nearby lagoon – it was mainly the waterlogged soil within a narrow zone close to the lagoon that was prone to liquefaction. A backhoe digger had to brought in to clear the channel before the stream overflowed its banks.

Thanking the curator, I walk back to the car. Its navigation system would reckon that Kaga City, the museum’s location, is about 160 kilometres or 100 miles south of the earthquake’s epicentre.

The energies let loose under the Noto Peninsula three days ago are unimaginable – they heaved up coastlines metres above their former level, so that small ports turned into sandy beaches. And perhaps, with earthquakes like this one summing over millennia, they may have shifted the whole top of the peninsula sideways. As for the human cost …

(Source: Wikipedia)

Echoing through my mind are the words of Terada Torahiko, founder of Tokyo University’s earthquake research institute: “Shouldn’t you be amazed by this?”