Hey Baby, Did you Feel the Earth Move? (Danny Markov Day)

---

I was awakened Monday morning at the rude hour of 5 am not by my alarm or an errant phone call or even by the persistent din of ambulances on their way to the hospital down the street from my apartment, sirens wailing, loudspeakers booming polite suggestions for motorists to, “please move to the side because we are turning left,” but by the force of my bed, my room, my apartment, my building and indeed the entire city shaking violently.

When I arrived in Japan I was keenly aware that it is a country susceptible to earthquakes. Moreover, I can hardly forget the images of the 1995 earthquake that left much of Kobe, a city 4 hours to the east of Hiroshima, leveled and burning. As such, I was quite bothered by a nagging and somewhat paranoid premonition that I would meet an untimely end in a similarly devastating earthquake. However, in the close to two years that I’ve been here, I’ve learnt that earthquakes, although an ever-lingering threat, are not nearly as common as I originally imagined (In an effort to console myself over this new, dangerous land I was moving to, I rationalized that if something happens often enough, you’d eventually grow accustomed to it. I furthermore tried to calm my anxieties by anticipating that tremors would be so common I’d get to a point where I could sit through one unperturbed, exclaiming with a roll of the eyes between sips of sake, “oh, bother. What a nuisance. That’s the fourth time this month”). In fact, the other morning’s display of the earth’s seismic power is only the second such incident I can recall. And, obviously, I have yet to meet my untimely end in a horrific earthquake. But there’s still time for that I suppose…

Although the quake was nowhere near the magnitude of other recent and more devastating earthquakes—the one in Indonesia for instance, it was nonetheless a terrifying experience. Jolted awake to the realization that an earthquake, or jishin as it is called here, was in progress, I was stuck by the thought that, “this could be it; this could be the big one,” recalling those fears I had when I first arrived. Turns out it wasn’t (and thank goodness for that), but I think my reaction to the quake reveals what is, in my opinion, an earthquake’s most terrifying quality: uncertainty. There is no system by which an earthquake can be predicted. A tornado you can predict with some accuracy by observing weather conditions. The development of a hurricane you can predict in much the same way. And the conditions under which a tsunami might develop can be ascertained by measuring seismic activity on the ocean floor. But of course, one can only predict the likelihood of a tsunami after an earthquake has occurred, leading back to the uncertainty surrounding earthquakes: there is no way of knowing when seismic activity will occur, in water or on land. All one can ever know for sure is that if you live in an earthquake-prone area, you’ll experience one sooner or later.

Just as we can’t predict when an earthquake will occur, nor can we predict how strong it will be. There are quakes that are so miniscule that they are imperceptible to humans who don’t have a seismograph to stare at all day. Then there are quakes with the strength to cause extensive damage to cities such as Kobe in ’95 and San Francisco in ’89. We can’t know for certain how intense an earthquake will be until it happens. So I think that under the circumstances, I was quite justified in being more than a little worried as I woke to the rattling of glass and a sensation of swaying. “Is this it? Is this the big one?” No. But next time, who knows? And when will that next time be? This is the veil of uncertainly under which I live.

However, in contrast to when I first arrived, I don’t spend all my waking moments fretting about being under that veil. Because earthquakes are generally rare—not the weekly occurrence I once erroneously imagined—it’s been easy to become complacent about my safety, and most days I no longer think, “Hmmm, I could die in a devastating earthquake today.” This is obviously quite counter-productive. What this recent earthquake so sharply brought back into focus, though, is that my safety is determined by forces well outside my ability to control, so it’s not a good bet to become too complacent. For really, what it comes down to—the reason I haven’t met that untimely end yet—is luck, pure and simple. It is luck that has prevented me from experiencing a powerful and deadly earthquake like the ones that ripped apart Kobe and San Francisco. And it was lucky for me and for everyone else in Hiroshima and the greater area that this earthquake wasn’t one of those.

The awesome power of natural forces, my friends, is a great teacher of humility.

---