Japanese earthquake: the brutal facts

Well, ya can’t say I didn’t warn ya. I’ve been writing about a forthcoming earthquake in Japan for months. And now it’s struck with a vengeance. Hundreds of thousands are dislocated, their homes either destroyed or threatened. The death toll is over three and a half thousand and is still climbing. And their Government has warned that another could be on the way.

Now there’s shortages of food, water and heat, with reports of ten-hour queues outside shops. Huge fires still burn, and ruptured gas pipes threaten an even worse catastrophe.

It’s a hell of a turnaround for a city like Kobe. A week or so ago it was a bustling modern city. Its population is/was 1.4 million, almost exactly the same as Dublin. One way of understanding the impact of the disaster is to imagine Dublin flattened by an earthquake, buildings splattered into the streets, bridges down, no running water and nary a working phone or fax to save your bacon.

Quite a few readers might well reckon that such a development would not be all bad. Depends on what you think of Dublin, I suppose!

“Downtown Kobe looks like Godzilla went through it,” said one witness. And it’s a fact. Anyone looking at the pictures on the telly will have seen it. Other reporters have said it’s like it was at the end of the last war. Devastated.

Observers over there have been putting a positive gloss on things. It could have been worse they say, and when they tidy it all up they’ll probably find that the buildings which fell were the riskiest ones, and that they’ll be able to build properly now.

Maybe so. But earthquakes are no respecters of reinforced concrete either. Still, if I were involved in the construction business, I’d have light planes circling the area scattering business cards.It’s an ill wind . . .

The deaths are a terrible tragedy for the survivors. Ready and all as the Japanese are for these huge disruptions, there is no way that anyone can anticipate the personal shock and grief attendant on losing your home and perhaps your family just because the earth quivers.

And only one in ten victims had earthquake insurance. Right now, nobody knows what this will mean. Will the Japanese government be forced to act, to set up a rebuilding programme? Because, as sure as eggs, the insurance companies won’t. They’ll only pay on policies. Business is business, and charity is charity, and holistic and all as Eastern companies are, they’re entirely unsentimental about these things.

And to do so, they may well put an immediate stop to the present recovery over here. Current estimates of the damage are around 50 billion dollars and like the death toll, they’re climbing too. That wouldn’t do us all too much harm. But if, as often happens, these estimates turn out to be low, or if another quake comes knocking, then there’s trouble brewing.

Japanese insurance companies have huge portfolios of investments in Europe and the USA. Any repatriation of such funds would cause a lack of liquidity in the west, which would drive up interest rates here, which would in turn slow down growth. And you know the rest.

If I were framing a budget, I’d explain the possibility to the punters, and leave a little aside in case the worst-case scenario came true. It isn’t as utterly devastating as if Tokyo came tumbling down, but is still bad enough to cause a few ripples.

And don’t forget that Japan lies on what is described as one of the world’s most active and richest seismic hotspots. It spends 10 billion yen ($100m) each year trying to predict earthquakes. Without success, as it happens.

Experts quoted in the Irish Times believe that last week’s giant tremor is the first in a series of big ‘uns in the area. One commented that “the area has been very quiet for years and some people thought we could enter a more active period. It seems we have entered that period.”

It’s one of those paradoxes we have to live with: the most technically advanced society on earth is at the mercy of the most brutal primitive terrestrial forces.

Japan is located at the meeting points of two tectonic plates. They’re the massive slabs that make up the earth’s crust. And they move, grinding off one another with unimaginable force. That builds up stress in the surface, which eventually is released in a spasm of great force.

Kioyo Mogi, an earthquake predictor, said he thought it would be several decades before a really huge quake hits the Pacific coast, but in the meantime there would a series of shocks like last week’s. Nice.

Of course, their worry is fuelled by the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, when 140,000 people died in Tokyo and Yokohama, as the old light earthquake-smart buildings torched everything that moved in hurricane-like fireballs. They say that quakes like this are cyclical, and that Tokyo is due a big hit any day.

The recent storms in Ireland will have a bit of the same effect. At the very least, a stiff hike in home insurance rates is on the way, they say. Better that than a pint of stout, says The Student. And why not?

But on the other hand, if all that money is going to be paid out on repairs, then is it not also going into circulation, into wage packets and sales outlets of one kind or another. For many things, including pints of stout, if The Student’s financial supporter is a beneficiary of the rising tide in the building trade.

It’s cold comfort to the victims in Galway’s lowlying areas as they dry out their carpets and kitchens, but this kind of trouble often means jobs. If the disincentives to work are alleviated in the budget, as is promised, then some skilled unemployed might start to take the first tentative steps back into the economic mainstream.

We live in hope.

• The Hog