Do I have to dwell on the disasters du jour?

2011 has not been a very good year to date.

That's called 'understatement'.

It has been an appalling year thus far, with all sorts of natural disasters impacting on my psyche.

It began with rain - loads of the bloody stuff! As I type this Saturday afternoon it is raining yet again, but in some parts of northern Australia it has not really stopped for months! They're measuring it in metres now, and even the hardened folk who are used to living in the Tropics have been saying, "enough's enough!"

Prince William is touring devastated communities this very moment; giving some media attention to the plight of these poor people BUT when you compare disasters, SO many people in many, many places are suffering and enduring unbearable losses and challenges YET one knows that most will overcome this setback and rebuild, as humankind has done since time began.

Japan is huge in my mind at present simply because of the enormity and complexity of the devastation. But we have had Christchurch suffering another, even more powerful, earthquake (6.3) that has made the one from last year (7.1) seem almost inconsequential. Having just come back from there, I felt incredibly connected and concerned - almost as if it had happened here in Australia. We've had communities in our beautiful state of Queensland still not yet able to rebuild after a cyclone and flooding, and yet even more incessant deluges from the heavens. The inland tsunami that wrecked the Lockyer Valley communities just west of us here on the very day we returned from Christchurch was appalling, yet the vision from Japan a week ago was even more horrifying, creating even more cataclysmic chaos on a scale I have never seen before.

This picture (above) epitomises the current situation in Japan. There are thousands of images from Japan in the last week that I could have placed here, but this child - arms up in the air as if surrendering - sums up the helplessness of the population at large around Sendai in the north.

I have reduced confidence in Japanese institutions like TEPCO to handle the truth, the whole truth and nothing but... This is why everybody of note in international organisations are in Japan now seeing first hand what is happening regarding the atomic power station because these institutions have been found out on many previous occasions fabricating results or just plainly misleading both regulatory authorities and government. Even the Japanese PM has been frustrated about hearing of developments through the media and not directly from the company. It stands at Level 5 (equal to Three Mile Island) - let's hope the number doesn't go higher.

(from Bloomberg March 18)

Accurate and timely information from Tokyo Electric Power Co. about the accident at its nuclear plant in northern Japan has been hard to come by.

About 60 reporters at a March 16 briefing with utility officials wanted to know whether helicopters would dump seawater on reactors at the Dai-Ichi station to prevent a meltdown. The company was considering the plan, said Masahisa Otsuki, head of the nuclear maintenance division.

At the same time, a live broadcast on a nearby TV screen showed a helicopter taking off with a massive bucket of water hanging from its belly. Reporters barraged the officials.

“We are sorry,” a spokesman said. “We need to check on this.”

Prime Minister Naoto Kan was so frustrated March 15 by a delay in informing him of a fire in reactor No. 1 that he asked utility officials, “What the hell is going on?,” several news agencies reported.

Neighboring China, worried about the spread of radiation from damaged reactors, urged Japan to keep the world fully informed of its efforts and to provide timely and accurate information, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.

‘Confusing Situation’
“It’s a confusing situation, and we’re not getting consistent reports out of Japan,” said Gerry Thomas, professor of molecular pathology at London’s Imperial College who has studied the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. “There is an awful lot of misinformation, I think, being put out.”

On March 16, spokesmen for Asia’s biggest utility, also known as Tepco, appeared to indicate that the containment vessel of reactor No. 3 was breached, citing a fire and a surge in radiation as evidence. They later backtracked after no breach was found.

They also told reporters that smoke was coming out of reactor No. 4, then later corrected that to reactor No. 3.

My thoughts are with those hundreds of thousands of displaced Japanese who have to stay and call it 'home'. Last I saw it was snowing and -2C and people were hungry and cold. I think I'm taking on too much writing about their plight...

(Picture above of a petrol tanker caught on a windy road heading towards Lyttleton during the Christchurch earthquake - note the change in the roadway's edge - the driver couldn't go forwards or backwards.)

A few thoughts about Christchurch: New Zealand feels like family to me; like those cousins you rarely see but are aware of what they are doing even if you don't chat all that often (much less visit). The once grand city of Christchurch was severely damaged with a third of its CBD to be demolished and a sixth of its population of 360 000 already departed, maybe never to return. The whole Canterbury Region is also affected thus spreading the pain, and everyone here in Australia has a Kiwi connection of some kind thus making this disaster more personal. The senior high school geography lesson that mentioned 'liquefaction' is a distant memory, but on February 22nd streets in the city turned to grey, sandy mush - and water flooded homes and businesses, in some cases creating whirlpools of unstable soil. There is a possibility that some areas of suburban Christchurch (even the CBD) may not be able to be rebuilt on. (definition of liquefaction is at the end of this entry for those who - like myself - have forgotten their schooling from more than 40 years ago).

The Roman Catholic Cathedral will be rebuilt and saved. There won't be many others - all are condemned to be demolished - one third of the CBD (central business district).

The landmark Anglican Cathedral in Cathedral Square will also be rebuilt and saved. Rene and I celebrated New Year 2011 in this square just two and a half months ago, and the bells from the once grand spire rang out welcoming the New Year whilst fireworks exploded in the night air. It will do so yet again - just not for a while.

Another geography lesson came to mind during this event. A 30 million tonne iceberg 'calved' from a glacier in NZ. Now there's something you don't see everyday! I think from memory it later rolled further and the blue parts went below the water level. Nature in all its glory.

If you call Sendai home, or Christchurch, let alone Grantham in the Lockyer Valley, your world will never ever be the same again. Yes, here in Brisbane and dozens of Queensland towns, water invaded homes and disrupted lives to an enormous extent yet almost without loss of life. In the three disasters mentioned above tens, hundreds and even thousands of lives have been lost and as a result families will rebuild with grief as a constant companion. My thoughts are with them - I know I am extremely fortunate to be safe.

The picture (above) is a reminder of the volunteer job I have being an Airport Ambassador. During the floods we all helped the Brisbane Airport assist passengers arriving from overseas or departing during a time of upheaval. We have assisted passengers escaping Christchurch by making their progress through the airport a little easier (and always with a smile). We have seen teams of police and emergency crews leaving for North Queensland and New Zealand
and directed overseas people arriving to assist us here. As I saw the vision of Sendai Airport being swamped by the tsunami last week I was reminded of just how valuable an asset an airport is. It is often something people take for granted, but when nursing homes were evacuated from up north during the cyclone, the patients arrived by military aircraft at our civilian airport and were processed in a temporary set of marquees on the edge of the runway. As I directed a passenger this morning to the airport train station directly from her arriving international flight, her comment was, "we don't have a train at Melbourne Airport". Our transport access to Brisbane Airport is first rate now with new roads opened and bottlenecks removed by flyovers etc.

OK, enough gloom! I can tell you a few things we have been doing lately. We have been to see a touring Dutch theatre group in a production of 'Good Cop, Bad Cop' (part of the WTF World Theatre Festival) which was about three animals sharing a home. The three Dutch actors spoke in English, and it used multimedia visuals to do the speaking whilst they were the animals. After ten minutes I understood who was who, but it was a challenge to get into it at first. Very good! So was Lily Tomlin, who we saw on a weeknight as part of the Brisbane Comedy Festival - she began at 9 and finished at 10:50 and at the age of 73 she had lost none of her wit and her insightful humour. I just wish I could remember her one liners - they were brilliant! There were just too many to remember. I saw 'Wicked' at last on Thursday night (it was postponed from the floods and our seats this time were even better than the previous booking). 'Defying Gravity' and 'Popular' were my favourite songs. Excellent in every respect. I went with five of my friends, but Rene stayed home - he hates musicals. His loss...

Last Wednesday evening I went with a friend to see a free preview screening of 'Biutiful' starring Javier Bardem. Very dark and gloomy (quite Spanish) set in a Barcelona I've never visited. Excellent film, but Kit and I needed a damned good laugh afterwards. Phew!

I'm leaving the best news till last. My dear friend Di has had open heart surgery and come away from it quite well. A leaky valve was found to be torn and relatively easily repaired in a 2.5 hour operation instead of a 4 hour one if it had needed replacing. She was home in twelve days and will have to take life easy for around three months. Her husband, Torquil, has taken a month off work and I've taken on two of his three schools for ESL work.

That's about all for now. Four weeks until the end of term and our trip to Auckland. I still can't quite believe how the year has rocketed by; but with work, a busy social life plus the news dominating daily life one can hardly expect it to be any different.

Until next time.

(High school geography revisited - a definition of 'liquefaction')
Liquefaction is the name given to the process that converts a solid soil mass into a liquid.

Liquefaction occurs in cohesionless soils (typically those with a higher content of larger grains such as sand sized clasts) which have water in the pore spaces, and are poorly drained.

When the seismic waves from the earthquake pass through the soil, the vibrations cause the individual grains in the soil to move around and re-adjust their positions. This ultimately results in a decrease in volume of the soil mass as the grains pack more tightly together (a reduction in porosity).

The pore water which was originally in those spaces becomes compressed. Water is relatively incompressible and as such it pushes back against the soil grains (more correctly this is described as an increase in pore water pressure). The pore pressure becomes so high, that the soil grains become almost buoyant causing a significant drop in the shear strength of the soil to a very low value.

When this occurs the soil loses it's ability to support loads (technically described as a loss of bearing capacity) which can cause subsidence of building foundations.