We were reaching the end of our workshop in the heart of Tokyo, in a building next to the massive Tokyo train station, when the earth started to move. At first it was quite mild though worrying but the Japanese smiled and thought of it as yet another ‘normal’ earthquake.
Suddenly everything shook as if a bomb had hit us. Everything toppled. Everyone had the sensation of being on a roller coaster, as if we were in two different, distant places in the same room at the same time. Looking out of the window I saw massive skyscrapers, 60 to 80 storeys high, swaying in the air like toys.
That was a year ago, 11 March 2011 – a day I will always remember.
The Japanese are a calm, disciplined nation. There was no panic but, yes, there was fear [especially when videos of the tsunami started coming in on their mobiles about 15 minutes after the quake]. There was no looting of shops, even though some were without personnel as they had gone out into the streets. The trains stopped. Five million commuters had to find a place to sleep for a long night full of aftershocks: they all accepted a tiny space on the floor of the lobbies of hotels and office buildings that stayed open all night.
All through the night the aftershocks continued. Even though the centre of activity was more than 100 kilometres away, the feeling in Tokyo was as if the epicentre was there. At around 4am, the Xarabank team called me at my hotel room, 28 floors up [I had to use the stairs as the lifts had been turned off as a safety precaution], and soon after the room started shaking vigorously and at that height it felt like I was going to be catapulted out of the window.
The Japanese are an amazing race. As the personnel from the ministry struggled the next morning to find me a taxi to the airport [there was a four-hour wait for taxis], their talk concentrated on two issues only.
Amazingly, their first exchange with me was a terrible feeling of shame of how they could have put the world at risk by what happened at the nuclear plant. How could we do this, they asked. How could Japan allow such a thing to happen?
The second main thought was about immediate reconstruction. They had been through devastation in the Second World War and they would once again rebuild Japan, but in a much better way. They would not allow a tsunami to shatter the tranquil image of this proud nation.
The meticulous way in which they went about their checks on buildings, the train tracks and the highways, their sense of having to do things immediately, was impressive indeed. Within hours Tokyo was back to normal, back to being the business giant that it is. Office workers helped the cleaners and together they got everything back to normal. Government workers planned to do extra time at work, for free, beyond the usual, almost mandatory, free hour they give every day.
The rest of the world has already forgotten last year’s lesson however. As we all go about our daily lives, we forget that natural disasters can destroy even the most organised and rich countries.
Certainly the earthquake and tsunami incident in Japan was yet another major reminder and some action has been taken.
For instance, in the Mediterranean [as elsewhere] UNESCO has put in a monitoring and early warning systems for tsunamis [which has been tested and to which the University of Malta also contributes]. Yet awareness among the general public is very elusive. We do not want to hear the bad story. We just want to get on with our lifestyle.
As an island state Malta needs to be better prepared. We are not in an earthquake zone yet we are surrounded by such zones, especially to the north and east. As far as I know, only the famous Noto earthquake of 1693 had devastating results in Malta, causing a lot of destruction in Mdina and elsewhere. 1693 may seem a long time ago for us but not in the history of the earth. We must therefore work harder to increase awareness and risk-preparedness.