Japan earthquake survivor shares his tale
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This video originally ran in March 2011.
Narrator: Michael Morris, a Canadian from Ottawa, moved to Japan in 1993. He lives with his wife in the city of Hachinohe on the northern end of the Island of Honshu. When the earthquake struck, he was driving in his car.
Michael Morris: Suddenly I thought, “Holy God, I’ve got a flat tire!” Because the way my car was moving; it was just going side to side. I could see the utility poles starting to sway. Right near my home are these big electrical pylons and high voltage wires and these were just moving back and forth and swaying. I knew then it was a big earthquake.
Narrator: Michael managed to make it home and was amazed by what he saw.
Michael Morris: The whole house is just moving back and forth, back and forth. The way I explained it to my dad, it’s like the whole house is just surfing the waves; it went with the (seismic) waves. There was no structural damage at all. There were no cracks, nothing. We kind of ended up in the sun-room because it’s got a whole bunch of steal beams and wood beams. We thought of all places it would be safe. I’ve experienced earthquakes before but I never experienced something that lasted this long, and it just never ended. It ended up being three minutes and I would say the longest earthquake I’ve ever experienced before was maybe 40 seconds max!
Two minutes after this really big aftershock hit. The aftershocks kept coming.We’ve never had so many big strong aftershocks right after. And then finally it stopped. We knew this was bad.
We have a navigation system in my car that has a television. NHK, the national broadcaster, started showing pictures of what the tsunami had done south of us. And then just before we turned off the car they showed our port. They showed the wave coming over and it’s about two kilometers from my house.
Narrator: In a moment fueled by insatiable curiosity, Michael and his neighbor ran to the bridge spanning the river near their homes to watch the second tsunami roll in.
Michael Morris: Kind of stupidly, I don’t know why, both of us ran to the bridge and watched this wave of water come up the river. And the amount of garbage was really amazing. I couldn’t believe how much stuff! Then we started to see boats come up. And then there was about a 20 meter fishing boat that came up. We knew it wasn’t going to make it under the bridge and it smashed into the bridge support. It didn’t break up completely, but it kind of broke into two. We’re standing on the bridge looking at this and not saying anything. We’re just kind of amazed that we’re watching this kind of thing. Then about 20 minutes later it was all just sucked back like someone pulled the plug and the water was being drained out. It just went right back and the boat kind of just floated back down the river. And all this junk was floating right back. It was the speed of the water that was really, really surprising.
Narrator: With a population of 250,000 in Hachinoe, Michael chalks it up to good fortune that there were not more casualties
Michael Morris: For some reason the first big tsunami hit Hachinohe two hours after the earthquake. So, only three people died here because of the tsunami. They had enough time to evacuate. Places south of us where most of the people died they only had 16 minutes. Structurally there wasn’t a lot of damage to the city, but because of our location and because there is so much more damage to the south of us, we have basically been cut off since the earthquake hit. The highways are still closed. The train lines are still closed. We don’t have gasoline. Little by little it’s coming in and some gas stations will have gas today and there will be two or three kilometer line ups, and they are limiting it to 10 litres per car.
Most places heat with kerosene heaters in the house. There isn’t enough kerosene so that’s kind of a problem. For two or three days my bedroom was about minus two degrees. We heat our house with propane gas, but the gas company we use was completely destroyed, so they can’t deliver to anybody.
After 30 hours the power came back, so that was a God send because then I was able to get onto the internet and tell my family I was still alive.
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