Japan Earthquake 2011: Thousands Roam Tokyo's Streets
TOKYO — Japan's huge earthquake brought super-modern Tokyo to a standstill as it paralyzed trains that normally run like clockwork, crippled mobile phones, stranded hordes of commuters and trapped scores of people in elevators.
The magnitude- 9 quake that struck off the coast and triggered a deadly tsunami in the northeast also violently shook buildings in the capital, where halted trains choked an evening commuter flow of more than 10 million people.
"This is the kind of earthquake that hits once every 100 years," said restaurant worker Akira Tanaka, 54.
He gave up waiting for trains to resume and decided – for his first time ever – to set off on foot for his home 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of the capital. "I've been walking an hour and 10 minutes, still have about three hours to go," he said.
Tokyo prides itself on being an orderly, technologically savvy, even futuristic city. Residents usually can rely on a huge, criss-crossing network of train and subway lines. But authorities were forced to scan the entire web for quake damage and cancel nearly all trains for the rest of the day.
Tomoko Suzuki and her elderly mother were unable to get to their 29th-floor condominium because of a stalled elevator. They unsuccessfully tried to hail a taxi to a relative's house and couldn't immediately find a hotel room in their neighborhood.
"We are so cold," Suzuki said Friday evening on a crowded corner. "We really don't know what to do."
Although there were no power outages in central Tokyo, some elevators may have been damaged in the quake while some others were intentionally shut down as a precaution. Elsewhere, widespread electricity outages left millions of homes and buildings without power.
In all, 163 people were reported trapped in elevators throughout the country, the Transportation Ministry said, with 75 of them still stuck Saturday morning. It wasn't clear how many of those were in Tokyo.
Tens of thousands of people milled at the capital's train stations, roamed its streets or hunkered down at 24-hour cafes, hotels and government offices offered as emergency accommodations.
Mobile phone lines were crammed, preventing nearly all calls and text messages. Calls to northeastern Japan, where a 23-foot (7-meter) tsunami washed ashore after the quake, generally failed to go through, with a recording saying the area's lines were busy.
Unable to rely on their mobile phones, people formed lines at Tokyo's normally vacant public phone booths dotting the city.
Japan's top telecommunications company, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., set up an emergency phone line and a special Internet site for people to leave messages for family and friends.
Up to 90 percent of calls were being restricted to prevent telecom equipment from being overloaded, NTT spokeswoman Mai Kariya said. The company was checking on damage to towers and cables.
Osamu Akiya, 46, was working in the office of a Tokyo trading company when the quake sent bookshelves and computers crashing to the floor and opened cracks in the walls.
"I've been through many earthquakes, but I've never felt anything like this," he said.
A handful of subway lines resumed service after a six-hour outage, and officials said they would run all night, past their usual hours.
When Tokyo trains suffer rare problems, they usually are running again within an hour. So, many people initially waited at stations. But when the railway company announced a suspension of nearly all service for the day, crowds poured into the streets.
City officials offered more than 60 government offices, university campuses and other locations for stranded commuters to spend the night.
The Tokyo suburb of Yokohama offered blankets for people who wanted to sleep at the community's main concert hall.
"There has never been a big earthquake like this, when all the railways stopped and so this is a first for us," Yokohama Arena official Hideharu Terada said. "People are trickling in. They are all calm."
What's inside a Japanese quake grab bag?
The widespread devastation caused by Japan's earthquake and resulting tsunami has been a reminder that even a country well-prepared for such disasters cannot always avoid the brutal blows of nature.
With more than half a million people living in temporary shelters and panic-buying leaving stores empty of supplies, people are being reminded of the importance of government advice, which tells them to have a survival "grab bag" permanently at the ready.
So what sort of things should be in such an emergency kit?
The Japanese government recommends a long list of items to its citizens, but it is down to the individual to take on board the advice and prioritise what is crucial to them.
Portable toilets
Sarah Ono, who lives with her Japanese husband - a disaster specialist - and their two children in Kochi prefecture on the southern Japanese island of Shikoku, has opened up her family's three grab bags to show what she has at the ready for such emergencies.
"We have evacuation bags in the house and the car - fireproof bags containing first aid, coins for public phones, as usually there is a loss of mobile phone service, enough food and water for three days and also portable toilets," she explains.
Sarah's kit also contains survival equipment, such as a ground sheet and sleeping bags, a water container to fill up at temporary pumps, gloves to protect hands from broken glass, knives, torches and rope for escape.
There's also wet wipes, other sanitary products and toilet absorption powder - in case there is no supply of water - as well as communications equipment, such as a wind-up mobile phone charger and a radio to stay across the latest warnings and information.
Bracing for the 'big one'
The Onos have also installed solar panels at their home to ensure they have minimal power during cuts, and, Sarah explains, they take part in regular drills.
"We have an annual evacuation in September every year," she says. "We go to our local evacuation point and go through the procedures of what would happen in a real disaster."
And the Onos have been watching events in quake-hit northern Japan closely, because they know that one day soon, their grab bags may well be used for real.
Shikoku is braced for the "big one" - the Nankai earthquake, which hits at regular intervals, costing thousands of lives, and is expected to rock the area once again within the next few decades.
Japan earthquake: Tokyo loses skyscraper passion
By Roland BuerkBBC News, Tokyo
None of Japan's skyscrapers fell in the massive earthquake that hit the country in March, but they shook violently - and with experts saying a big quake under Tokyo is overdue, the city's love affair with the high-rise lifestyle may be coming to an end.
When Emiko Yamamoto opens her curtains in the morning, she is rewarded with a spectacular view, right across Tokyo.From the 30th floor, she can see the high-rises and elevated expressways, the bullet train and even, on a clear day, the snow-capped cone of Mount Fuji, far in the distance.
Back in March, she was inside her apartment when the earthquake hit. The building swayed alarmingly, books came off shelves, furniture crashed around her and she thought she would die. Then when she tried to get out, she found the lift was not working. It was a long, long walk down the stairs as the aftershocks rumbled through.
Now she and her husband are looking for a house. Another flat would do at a push, but nothing higher, they say, than the second floor..
The epicentre of that quake was well to the north, off Japan's coast, but it still gave Tokyo the most dramatic shake most people have ever experienced.
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These days, a great view is not the selling point it once was. Adverts and brochures for new apartment blocks now lay far more emphasis on earthquake-proofing - the elaborate foundations, the stocks of emergency meals, water and generators. .
Sales of high-rise apartments plummeted after the earthquake in March. Some renters, who were able to, have moved.
It has all got one of Japan's most successful property developers thinking.
Akira Mori has become a billionaire, the country's third richest man, by building some of its biggest towers. The proportion of low-rise housing in Tokyo is set to increase in line with demand Now, he says, the era of skyscrapers reaching ever higher is over. He is calling for a new vision of Tokyo with lower, wider buildings, designed to be refuges in times of crisis.
They would be equipped to be self-sufficient for a week or more, so their residents could stay put, while normality returns outside.
The irony is, of course, that during the earthquake back in March, not a single tower fell in Japan, even up in Sendai, the city nearest to the epicentre.Yes, some walls were cracked and pavements were crumpled, but the buildings themselves remained standing throughout.
The lesson Japanese engineers have taken is that making buildings resilient is not enough.
Japanese engineers have already developed foundations mounted on rubber to insulate entire buildings, and bracing to reinforce structures. They are designed to sway, bending and flexing rather than snapping.
But the challenge now, they say, is to make towers that do not just withstand earthquakes, but to make the people inside believe they will too.