Wreckage covers a large swathe of Japanese landscape from one horizon to another.
Where do you put it all?
Do you dig great holes and bury it?
Or do you burn the splintered timbers and crush the thousands of cars into steel blocks and ship them off to steel recycling mills in China?
And where
do you go when it's starting to snow and there's only one blanket between three ... and when you find a shelter there's only one heater between 300?
You would think that for a planet formed about 4.5 million years ago, and which had cold water forming in massive volumes on its surface three billion years ago, that it would have cooled a little by now.
But no.
Only about the top 80km is relatively cool and solid ... the rest of the 12,600km of our diameter is blisteringly hot, molten ... and moving.
We are basically perched on big solid, but loose, plates that get pushed around by the pressure of the molten seas below ... and we're all being taken along for the ride, whether we like it or not.
And, of course, we do not like it.
Those who live in the destructive radius of a major earthquake or tsunami are victims of an event they cannot compete with on equal terms.
Sadly, but simply, as a colleague put it - "you just have to go with it".
When those plates begin to argue over real-estate rights far below and the ground begins to shudder, much of one's "mental preparations" will probably go out the window ... with the breaking glass.
It's easy to sit in sunny silence, beer in hand, watching the monarchs circle the garden, and declare "make sure everyone is safe ... get down low to the ground beside something solid to create the triangle of safety ... and get the power off ... and don't run outside because the chimney could come down".
Too many words for a beer bill-board ...
For when things begin to move and rattle, the first instinct is often to rescue or secure things. Footage from offices and shops in Japan show exactly that ... few people dive for cover.
And many rush for the exits ... to be greeted by falling slates, iron and masonry.
Hard to think straight when nothing else is.
Geologically generated disasters are simply not fair.
Unlike wars or economic recessions or getting taken out in the Rugby World Cup quarterfinals, we did nothing to start such an event.
You just have to go with it.
However, after I am cut and bruised in my bid to save the framed, and autographed, photo I took of Giacomo Agostini, at least I will be secure in the knowledge we have two working torches, a transistor radio with extra batteries, tinned food and four large bottles of frozen water (and a dozen of the brewer's skills) tucked away.
It's a start.
And we are not alone, for many people now tell me they too have got "a few things" put aside "just in case".
A far cry from the '60s - a time when after it was announced there had been a big earthquake in Chile and there was a possibility Napier could host the effects of a tidal wave, we were sent home from school ... and we all went straight up to the beach to watch.
As did car-loads of curious locals.
Not a constable or a cordon in sight.
Back in 1947, the isolated eastern seaboard around Mahanga, about 12km north of Mahia, was hit by a 6m tsunami generated after an undersea quake in the Hikurangi trench.
The wave swept about 250 metres inland but because of its isolation no one perished.
In terms of tsunamis, it is determined the Napier coastline can expect a 1m wave every 56 years ... a 2.5m effort about every 97 years.
Not bad odds, really.
And earthquakes?
Well, this land on average can expect (as it has long done ... even in the "she'll be right" '60s) two magnitude 6 shakes, somewhere, every year, and a magnitude 5 every fortnight.
About 15 years ago, I saw the read-outs of a seismograph which was operating in Napier. Zigzagging lines were evident pretty well every day. Little shakes ... undetectable ... but little shakes all the same.
Because we live on silly, big, solid, but moving, plates.
Live every day aware, but not in fear. Don't let the vile threat from Earth's errant plates eat into your life.
You just have to go with it.
Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.
Wreckage covers a large swathe of Japanese landscape from one horizon to another.
Where do you put it all?
Do you dig great holes and bury it?
Or do you burn the splintered timbers and crush the thousands of cars into steel blocks and ship them off to steel recycling mills in China?
And where
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.