Why Japan, 2011 wasn't Haiti, 2010
Just 14 months ago, several hundred thousand Haitians were killed in a massive earthquake perhaps as much as 3% of Haiti's population. Between 10% and 20% of the nation was rendered homeless. The earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on Friday will produce a death toll that likely will be an order of magnitude lower. Thanks to the wealth, technological sophistication and foresight of post-war Japanese society, tens of thousands of lives have been saved.
Japan's emergency-response system kicked into action the second that shock waves originated off the coast of the Oshika peninsula on Friday: An earthquake early-warning system, connected to hundreds of seismometers around the country, broadcast bulletins on the country's television stations. In the minute or so it took the seismic waves to travel to the country's major population centres, millions of Japanese already were executing their well-rehearsed earthquakeresponse procedures.
The fact that the majority of buildings withstood the earthquake, even in the worst-affected areas, is tribute to the advanced building codes and materials the country has adopted. Unlike in Haiti (2010), Pakistan (2005) or Sichuan (2008), the casualty toll was not bolstered by acres of ramshackle tenements that collapsed immediately upon their occupants.
Even the country's nuclear installations may come out of the earthquake without generating any large-scale radiation calamity. An explosion at the Fukushima I facility blew away the installation's outer structure -yet the reactor itself, though having suffered a partial meltdown, apparently remains intact, for now. Thanks to safeguards and worldleading nuclear technicians and scientists, a Chernobyl scenario likely will be avoided.
Technology cannot save everyone: Thousands of Japanese citizens were swept away in the waves that hit shore in and around Sendai -a tragedy that no electronic network or construction technique can fully prevent. Yet the fact that Japan, 2011 is a far cry from Haiti, 2010 shows that the toll wrought by nature's most horrible tragedies can be massively reduced when societies amass the wealth and political will to prepare for the worst.
It is to the credit of Japan's leaders -and their predecessors -that this is exactly what they did in the years leading up to the 2011 Sendai earthquake.
Japan's emergency-response system kicked into action the second that shock waves originated off the coast of the Oshika peninsula on Friday: An earthquake early-warning system, connected to hundreds of seismometers around the country, broadcast bulletins on the country's television stations. In the minute or so it took the seismic waves to travel to the country's major population centres, millions of Japanese already were executing their well-rehearsed earthquakeresponse procedures.
The fact that the majority of buildings withstood the earthquake, even in the worst-affected areas, is tribute to the advanced building codes and materials the country has adopted. Unlike in Haiti (2010), Pakistan (2005) or Sichuan (2008), the casualty toll was not bolstered by acres of ramshackle tenements that collapsed immediately upon their occupants.
Even the country's nuclear installations may come out of the earthquake without generating any large-scale radiation calamity. An explosion at the Fukushima I facility blew away the installation's outer structure -yet the reactor itself, though having suffered a partial meltdown, apparently remains intact, for now. Thanks to safeguards and worldleading nuclear technicians and scientists, a Chernobyl scenario likely will be avoided.
Technology cannot save everyone: Thousands of Japanese citizens were swept away in the waves that hit shore in and around Sendai -a tragedy that no electronic network or construction technique can fully prevent. Yet the fact that Japan, 2011 is a far cry from Haiti, 2010 shows that the toll wrought by nature's most horrible tragedies can be massively reduced when societies amass the wealth and political will to prepare for the worst.
It is to the credit of Japan's leaders -and their predecessors -that this is exactly what they did in the years leading up to the 2011 Sendai earthquake.
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