This will be my last post for this reconnaissance trip. I had a smooth return trip – all flights on time! On my last day in Tokyo, I met with Professor Tsuji of the University of Tokyo. Tsuji-sensei is well-known in tsunami science – having participated in or lead post-tsunami field investigations all over the world.
Blog
May 9, 2011
We start out today with a short meeting with members of the International Tsunami Survey Team (ITST). This group is focused on tsunami deposits and tsunami geology. The challenge has been to find good transects that have been undisturbed by cleanup activity.
May 9, 2011
A 5.7 to start the day and a 4.6 to go to bed by. They get one’s attention and are a frequent reminder that this event isn’t over yet. A few final tasks today in Iwate Prefecture before heading back to Sendai. We needed to track down the location of the shelters for people from Kessenuma and Minami Sanriku so we could get a comparison to the stories and experiences of the Sendai area.
May 7, 2011
How does one describe scenes of devastation day after day in a way that is not numbing? Today was Kessenuma near the northern edge of Miyagi Prefecture and Rikuzen-Takata in southern Iwate. Both of these cities were hit very hard with water heights over 5 stories high. As one approaches Kessenuma from inland, it looks very normal.
May 6, 2011
Disclaimer and Acknowledgements – I should have mentioned this earlier, but better late than never. All the comments in this blog are preliminary and the opinions my own. The purpose of reconnaissance trips is to get a quick overview of the issues in an event and the process begins with small slices of what happened based on what we see, read, and who we talk to.
May 5, 2011
Today is Children’s Day – the final National Holiday that closes Golden Week. The day is marked by flying large gaily painted koi representing family members from poles or wires. First stop today was the evacuation shelter in Iwanuma City– the next city south of Yuriage in Natori City. Several koi were flying on the flag pole outside of the shelter – at half mast.
May 4, 2011
Best night so far – a futon on a tatami mat. Good preparation for the day. We visited the elementary school in Yuriage where several of the evacuees we talked to yesterday had waited out the tsunami. It looked almost as if it had been designed with tsunami evacuation in mind – a sturdy three-story reinforced concrete structure with multiple exterior staircases and a large accessible roof.
May 3, 2011
The day began nearly as yesterday ended – with a low rumble followed 9 seconds later by slightly sharper swaying. Another aftershock. The day was focused on the people caught up in the tsunami and the decisions they made that contributed to their surviving. We started back at the Sendai Airport, this time going inside to talk with the people who had been there on March 11.
May 2, 2011
I met up with my Japanese host and colleague Megumi Sugimoto – a postdoctoral scholar at Tokyo University. She was working in Indonesia in 2004 and joined one of the first teams to visit Aceh. She has been working on a tsunami mitigation project in Padang for the last several years and was with the first group to visit the Mentawai Islands after last October’s tsunami.