Earthquakes all the time...

The above photos are two examples of earthquake damage in our house. Everything standing in this area has survived a 9.0 earthquake, so in that regard, I feel safe. However, earthquakes happen all the time here and the scary thing is, no one knows if the next one is going to be another big one.

In the past few months I have been woken up be several 6.4's and up. It's pretty frightening to wake up to your room and bed shaking and then wonder if you should run outside to safety or if it will all be over soon.

Since the 1960's, Japan has dedicated a team of scientists to predicting when the next major earthquake will strike near the Tokyo region. Supposedly there's an earthquake that happens along the Tokyo fault line once every several hundred years and the area has been due for the big one since the 1960's. Japan has been so engrossed in studying this particular fault line that everyone ignored the other fault lines and no one predicted the large 9.0 that occurred this March.

The trouble with earthquake prediction is that it's not an exact science. The methods the Japanese are using to try to predict the next big Tokyo earthquake are not completely proven on a large scale.

I bring all this up because it worries me. Earthquakes aren't like other natural disasters, there's no warning. The big one could strike on a completely sunny day causing a wave of other natural disasters (tsunamis, the eruption of Mt Fuji).

I don't know how people living here for so long deal with all of these earthquakes, granted many of them are aftershocks from the 9.0 in March, which scientists predict will continue for at least a year. It would be nice not to wake up in a complete state of panic. Going from dead asleep to panic is not pleasant.

PS - As I typed this we had a little tremor.

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