6.8 M Earthquake at the middle of the symposium

Anant Marahatta
Tohoku University
Sendai, Japan

The “Global Center of Excellence” (G-COE) program of Chemistry Department, Tohoku University, Japan had organized 4 days long int’l symposium from August 17 to 20, 2011. There were around 200 participants from the Graduate school of (Science, Life science, Pharmaceutical science and Engineering). Out of them around 20 were int’l delegates from Korea, Taiwan, Geneva, US, Germany, China, France and Canada. The symposium was divided into Oral and Poster sessions. Only selected candidates were asked to give oral presentation within 25 min. time interval.

It was the third day (August 19) of the symposium. All the events were running smoothly. All the participants were inside the auditorium hall. After the talk about “significance of metal-metal bonding to enhance the catalytic activity of binuclear complex” given by the guy from Germany, the chair person announced the 15 min coffee break. We all had a light snacks.

It was around 14.20, second half of the afternoon session was called and all the participants including Tohoku’s professors entered inside the hall. The guy from Korea was already ready for the presentation. He was from “Pohang University of Science and Technology” South Korea. He at first introduced his university and did not hesitate to tell about “how young is his university (less than 25 years, younger than him)”. His title was “Single Crystal to Single Crystal Post-Synthetic Modification via Framework Constituting Metal Ion exchange”. He was speaking about smart supramolecules with some wonderful videos and illustrations. Suddenly, the one story auditorium hall received quite strong jolt. The high tech. auditorium hall started to produce some noisy sounds (chuii, chuii….sound of glass wares). The speaker said “wow!!, what happened? ” Though this was even not became the news of the Japanese TV and radio channels, the int’l delegates were saying “Oh my god!! Is it called earthquake? What to do? Where are our host students…etc”. By chanting it, they left the hall and reached at the main entrance. The tremor was over within around 5 sec. At the middle of this scenario, the Japanese professors requested all to calm down by announcing not to scare, it’s not a big quake. The speaker started to talk after about 1 min disturbance. My eyes were looking towards the guys from US and Germany. They had made their face horrified. They were talking each other about that tremor. Anyway, the schedule of that day was completed successfully.

I was asked to follow them in excursion on 20 Aug. On that day, they shared about their initial thoughts raised (due to the March 11, 9 M quake) before finalizing the Tohoku’s invitation. If they were correct, they used to think “what to do if earthquake occurred at the middle of the symposium”.

What a coincidence? Isn’t it? They must have got nice experience.

Have you ever been shaken by 7.2 M earthquake ? my experience

Anant Babu Marahatta
Ph.D. student in chemistry
Tohoku University, Japan

(I am one of the eyewitnesses of the "Sendai catastrophe" occured on March 11, 2011. That time, Sendai was shaken by 9 M earthquake and hit by a giant tsunami which killed ~30,000 people.)

Japan is well known for having a large number of earthquakes though the largest recorded earthquake in the world was a magnitude of 9.5 in Chile on May 22, 1960. According to the tectonic theory of Geology, earthquakes are most frequent where two or more plates meet. The Japanese islands [archipelago in Geography] too are located in an area where several continental and oceanic plates meet which causes the frequent earthquakes. So the meaning of it can further be clarified by saying “Japan sits on the ‘Rings of Fire’"
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I have been living in Sendai, Miyagi prefecture, Japan since 2007 October. In the “Frontiers of Science” course, I was taught about the “Statistical probability theory to predict the percentage of earthquake occurrence” especially in the Miyagi prefecture. The lecture was concluded by disseminating “99% earthquake probability in Miyagi prefecture”. Till that moment, I did not know about this much percentage of probabilities of the temporal occurrence at my residing area; I just happened to know that I will be shaken any time. On the same week, I was asked to attend the training/preparatory session organized by the “Disaster unit” of the local government of the mentioned prefecture. From that moment, I was mentally ready to be shaken by the tremor any time.

It was the year of 2008, June 14, Saturday, 9.30AM JST. All the int’l students were inside the dormitories of “Tohoku University int’l house” and enjoying their weekend. I was also lying on the bed of room 905 located on the 9th floor of the 12 story building. Suddenly, this skyscraper received strong tremble. The intensity of the quake was comparable to that of the “late Michael Jackson’s hip” during his performance. As the building became the branch of the tree “being shaken by monkey”, we people inside the dorm became the ripe fruits being the Monkey’s trial-target. I happened to look outside the window during the quake and noticed that all the parked vehicles were hopping on their seat.Here is the sample video of 6.8 M earthquake occured on July 24, 2008.

As all the people were trained, immediately after the quake, about 300 people gathered at the nearby designated refugee area holding their passport and a bottle of mineral water. The condition of the ladies was pathetic who were gathered there by wrapping their body with a towel. Some were saying “Oh my god!!! What a terrible shake, it’s my first time”, some were shouting “Allah, you saved us!!!” and several were hugging by congratulating each other and saying that “we got new life!!”. Several Chinese and Koreans were shouting in their mother language with horrified face.
Almost all including myself remained at the lobby around 3 hours by chatting about the “aftershock” which was also pretty powerful. You can imagine that how strong the temblor was? The frequency of the shaking in Miyagi prefecture is 6/month in average. The magnitude of around 5 is even excluded by the local media. It has become habitual now.