Major Earthquake Hits Kumamoto: What’s the Current Situation?

Abroad in Japan - Stak

This episode of Abroad in Japan explores the aftermath of a major earthquake that struck Kumamoto, Japan, highlighting both the immediate dangers and the broader societal

Key takeaways

• The earthquake's intensity was so severe that people could not stand, with shaking reaching Shindo 7 on Japan's seismic scale.
• Despite the destruction, many lives were saved due to timely evacuations, including a successful surgery performed during the quake.

Main topics

• Kumamoto earthquake impact and aftermath
• Media coverage and misinformation during disasters

Notable quotes

"You can't stand up. You can't physically stand, right?"

"They managed to hold on to the person on the bed while all the equipment's shaking."

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a reflection on Japan's preparedness for natural disasters, emphasizing both its

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) At Speaker 3 (0:02) nine! Did you say vasectomies at nine? Wow! Hello and welcome to the Abroad in Japan podcast. Probably the best way of learning about life in Japan without actually being in Japan. I'm your host Chris Broad and we're joined as always by England's top Japan enthusiast to my left this week, Mr Pete Donaldson. Pete, how the devil are you doing? What's Speaker 2 (0:18) going on? I'm good. I like the fact that air you up. Get off my ginger drink. Speaker 3 (0:23) What's this fresh root ginger, fiery, super root robust? Speaker 2 (0:26) I didn't realise it was Japanese when you say it like that. You do sort of, in the Sainsbury's meal deal, you don't realise that these little bottles of muck are available as the drink option. But they are. That'll burn your throat, that stuff. It will, yeah. I'm Speaker 3 (0:42) absolutely fine with it. I wasn't Speaker 2 (0:43) using it anyway. For good, anyway. Speaker 3 (0:46) I've been channelling my inner Pete Donaldson recently. I just got back from doing a three-day audio book recording. That's right! Speaker 2 (0:53) Where was it? In one of the home counties? Was it Cambridge, Oxford, somewhere like that? Speaker 3 (0:58) Yeah, in Oxford. I did want to do it in London this time. Last time I was Speaker 2 (1:02) in Speaker 3 (1:02) London I wanted to escape to the countryside. So Speaker 2 (1:05) you basically book your own sort of Penguin recording booth? Well, they book it for you, yeah. It's like an independent recording Speaker 4 (1:12) booth. So where would you Speaker 2 (1:12) like to do it? Speaker 3 (1:12) Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can sort of pick three or four different places. How are the facilities? Yeah, cool. Really cool bloke called Rich that ran it. And you become acutely aware when you go to these places, though, that you're rubbish because they'll list off like all the people that were recording before you. Like the last time it was like Brian Cox and David Mitchell was in it before me. And this time it was Jeremy Irons. Oh, wow. I mean, that Speaker 2 (1:39) is a gravelly, gravelly voice. And. Speaker 3 (1:43) It was a bit in my book. He just told me Jeremy Irons recorded that. I was like, that's cool, isn't it? Started the book and like, on like page 10, there's a reference to Riotaro like throwing me off a cliff. Like when Scar throws Mufasa off. Of Speaker 2 (1:57) course, Speaker 3 (1:57) yes. And I'm just sitting there just laughing in the booth. It's Speaker 2 (2:00) like Speaker 3 (2:00) Jeremy, because of course, Jeremy Irons plays Scar. Speaker 2 (2:03) Sat in that same seat. And I was like, that's Speaker 3 (2:05) pretty cool. Speaker 2 (2:06) Will the man who... Synchronicity. Who runs that booth. on the next session with whoever they're doing next, are they going to be talking about you being in the seat or Jeremy Irons? I Speaker 3 (2:17) think Jeremy Irons is a bit better. Do you reckon Jeremy Irons will just nudge it over? Speaker 2 (2:20) I Speaker 3 (2:20) think so. Speaker 2 (2:20) Just Speaker 3 (2:20) nudge it over the line? I think so. Speaker 2 (2:22) Though I did tell Charlotte, oh, Jeremy Irons, and she was like, I don't Speaker 3 (2:25) know who that is. And I was like, what? Yeah. What? Speaker 2 (2:27) He did a film quite recently that was a little bit, it was like a cheeky little, no, it was like a cheeky little film. You're like, hmm, that feels like. It feels like if everybody knew about that, they'd think less of him. But I can't remember what it was. Speaker 3 (2:42) I'm going to find it. All actors lower their standards for money sometimes. I know, I know. Speaker 2 (2:48) Same Speaker 3 (2:49) as YouTubers. Cool. But yeah, this week we're talking about the Kumamoto earthquake. It was a sort of strange, well, twist of fate that the last episode we talked a fair bit about earthquakes. And then literally the next week. Big earthquake in Kumamoto, a place that you and I actually just sort of went to. Me, you, Natsuki. I remember when we were in Kumamoto, we were walking downtown and there was a brand new shopping mall by the station, really beautiful building. I remember remarking to Natsuki, Speaker 4 (3:19) wow, that's amazing. Speaker 3 (3:20) And then seeing that building shake like jelly on a plate rather aggressively. Was Speaker 2 (3:24) that the Aeon Mall? Oh, it was a different one, right, okay. Speaker 3 (3:27) It was in the middle of town. And just seeing that shuddering like crazy on camera. And shaking in a way that... You kind of look at the building shaking you're like how Speaker 4 (3:36) the heck can Speaker 3 (3:37) that survive it is an absolute miracle of engineering Yeah, that things could things gonna go a lot worse than they did but I also saw footage today of Like there was a operating theater doing some surgery. Oh, this is like Speaker 2 (3:52) the way Yeah, so the whole building starts shaking there in the middle of a really intense operation and everything just goes absolutely crazy in there it's it's it's wild and Speaker 3 (4:03) like they managed to hold on to the person on the bed while all the equipment's yeah it looks almost like an insane game show yeah i've never seen anything like it what's incredible is they they i don't know what the surgery was it was something quite serious but they were like and after the earthquake we finished the surgery successfully which is incredible and Speaker 2 (4:20) amazing an amazing performance from the surgeons who also um create you know magic every time they walk into the operating theater one might suggest um it was an interesting it was interesting to see and obviously our main news stories obviously the the major earthquake um injuring at least 50 people um 13 killed across the the country as well um the the big story was the shopping center incoming water the aeon one because there was an explosion um on top of that though uh there was a quite a lot of um kind of uh conspiracy theories that um the the the thing was man-made yeah Speaker 3 (4:55) you always get that actually there was one after the there was after the 2011 earthquake something was like it was a atomic bomb put below the seabed or something right okay there's always something yeah silly folks online who say things like that but they would have Speaker 2 (5:09) to have dug a hole 13 um kilometers deep um and the deepest hole took 20 years to create in the soviet union Speaker 3 (5:17) yeah it's the cola borehole yeah the Speaker 2 (5:21) super deep borehole Yeah, which is named correctly, one might suggest. I wonder what they do with that now. I remember Speaker 3 (5:27) reading about this and I looked up at a video and it's just like a hole and they're like, let's just put some metal over that. And they've just concealed it. It's like Barry down the pub concealing a well, but it's like 12 kilometres deep. Speaker 4 (5:38) Put a mat Speaker 3 (5:38) over it. You're falling down that hole. I don't think you can fall down it because it's really narrow. It's like one half a foot across this hole. There's epic times. Speaker 2 (5:47) One might be able to do it. Speaker 3 (5:49) I don't know what the Soviets were doing there. What were they trying to do? Speaker 2 (5:53) I don't know. Hide a very long pencil. I don't know. I think people just try things out. When you're in charge, people just try things out. When you don't have to be hoping to the people, just get on with it, don't you? Just do whatever you want. You're Chinese, aren't you? Speaker 3 (6:09) It must have been a bit of like USSR prestige. Like, we didn't go to the moon, but look, we dug a hole. Look how tall our hole is upside down. Well Speaker 2 (6:19) done, Romanov. Good job. Some of the people who were spreading these conspiracy theories, Sean Benwood on the Japan Times piece. Quite interesting. He said, I live in Kumamoto and my experience during the most recent earthquake was not only the spread of misinformation and disinformation, but also a serious lack of accurate, consistent and practical information. A lot of the news coverage did... focus on the mall that obviously exploded and um it created the impression that conditions throughout the area were actually far worse than they actually were it felt less like responsible reporting and more like sensationalism searching those dramatic images and frightening situations to exploit um what was largely missing was the information that people genuinely needed what to do where to go which services were operating what areas were affected and when reliable updates would be available um during emergency the purpose of news should be to inform and guide the public not simply frighten them you do sort of see there's a quick Generic kind of the main kind of like news dissemination is because Japan's quite backwards We're quite slow to adopt new technology a lot of the information disseminated by television isn't it? Well, I love like the diagrams of where things are getting hit. It's not ideal for people to live there is a Speaker 3 (7:28) lot of people get their information from Twitter Twitter has like a usage rate In Japan of any country, I think right And you can, on Twitter, as much as I dislike the platform, you can get immediate news there. But also you could get very not factual news. And there was a lot of like, you did see some AI videos and all sorts. And it's not unique to Kumamoto that it's happened. It's happened. Every time there's an earthquake, you get things like that. Yeah, the gas explosion at the Aeon Mall was very, you know, it was horrific. I remember seeing the footage and it was a pretty big explosion. And on the one side, I saw that and I went, oh, my God, that's going to be catastrophic. But luckily, they were able to evacuate 3,000 people before it happened. So after the earthquake, everyone got out of Speaker 4 (8:12) the Speaker 3 (8:12) mall. But seven people did die and two of them had been sent in about an hour or so after the evacuation. I think one of the workers was sent to go in and, like, get the money out the till. One of the companies was like, oh, you know, go and get the money out. Went in, explosion. And yeah, a girl, Kurumi Otake, who's like 22, lost her life doing that. And the people that ran the shop had to give an apology on TV. Well, sorry, but it was just like, fuck's sake. It didn't need to happen. Why are you sending people in to get the money out of the till when the structural integrity of a massive shopping mall could be compromised? And it was. But the deadliest incident was a chimney collapsing, like a paper plant, and the chimney collapsed. Yes, 11 people were trapped and I think seven or so passed away. All right, but yeah, but I mean given the it was a Shindor 7 which is like there's two different scales. You've got magnitude right right sort of the objective What was the scale of the earthquake and the energy released and I think it was originally seven but it got downgraded to 6.8 but the Shindor scales like the shaking and if it gets to Shindor 7 which is the maximum amount, that means you can't stand up. You can't physically stand, right? I don't know what the one I experienced in Sendai was in 2022. It was either 6.5 or 7. I remember not feeling like I could stand up, which is utterly surreal, you know, to be in a situation where your entire surroundings are suddenly in a position where you can't stand. Before that... All earthquakes I'd experienced were like, oh, there's a bit of noise. Oh, the water's shaking. Wow. Well, it's four Speaker 2 (9:57) a day happening, isn't it? At some point you will experience it. Speaker 3 (9:59) Yeah, yeah. On average. But that was like, oh, shit. There was one other earthquake I had in Hokkaido, I think the year before that, and that was like, oh, crap. That's quite scary when you're high up in a building and you can't get out. It's quite unsettling. So there was a lot of shaking. And the footage. So I saw the shopping mall and the operating theatre, the shopping mall as well in the central Kumamoto that we walked past, but also Kumamoto Castle, which itself, you know, it's been under repair for about 10 years now. It's exactly 10 years ago since the last time Kumamoto was hit by an earthquake. Kumamoto at that time, 2016, had one earthquake which was quite bad, I think magnitude like six and a half. And it sort of affected buildings and made them a bit sort of structurally weak. And then I think a week later, a few days