Waves

The other day on March 11, 2011, Japan was hit by two kinds of waves. First it was rocked by a massive Intensity 8.9 earthquake, shaking the land with waves upon waves of movement. Watching CNN, I was quite surprised at how long the earthquake lasted. Things were literally shaking apart.

Then came the second wave, literally. A towering 10 meter tall wall of water hit the northeast part of Japan inundating the coast and doing quite a lot of damage. It was both fascinating and horrifying to see that wave crashing inland and mowing everything down.

I was thinking at first Japan was lucky the quake happened out at sea instead of over land but the sight of the tsunami hitting it made me reconsider. News has been coming in daily. Nuc plants were automatically shut down but one plant was having problems and an explosion actually happened yesterday which the result seemed to have lessened the danger, surprisingly. Power lines were down and a lot of the country has no electricity. Infrastructure was hit pretty hard as well with the bullet trains initially halted and now operating but still not at 100%.

Makes me wonder what would happen if a big one hit near Metro Manila. If we could survive the quake. I think we would be protected from tsunamis because of the way Manila Bay is formed but I fear a lot of the buildings here would be severely damaged. I hope a big one won't hit. I pray a big one won't happen.

Gives a grim meaning to the song currently in my head: "we're gonna party like, like it's the end of the world, we're gonna party like, like it's 2012". I hope this is not a preview of things to come.