Disaster -- Naturally

So there was an earthquake last month in Japan. And it was in Iwate, my soon to be prefecture! It wasn't exceptionally deadly as earthquakes go, but still it WAS and earthquake, right where I am headed.

I mean going to Japan you have to expect these things. It is on the biggest fault line in the world. But even thinking about earthquakes is difficult for me.

Let me put it into context. I am from Barbados, in the Caribbean. We don't get earthquakes. Which is some sort of amazing, considering we are right above a fault line as well. In fact the whole Caribbean chain was created by movements of the Atlantic and Caribbean plates. All the other islands were made by divergence and volcanoes. Barbados is the only made by convergence, i.e. Earthquakes. Our neighbour to the South, Trinidad, gets Earthquakes all the time. No one can explain why we don't.

In fact, people are constantly joking that God is a Bajan (slang for Barbadian) because we never get natural disasters. Not even the scourge of the Caribbean- hurricanes. Islands and countries and states get devasted every year and somehow the last time Barbados had a direct hit from a hurricane was Hurricane Janet in 1955!!!

As a result, Barbadians may quite possibly be the most disaster-retarded people of the world. I remember a stopry told to me by a friend from another island, St Kitts. He had just come to Barbados to study at the university here and we had a hurricane warning in effect for Ivan. Hurricane warning means that the Met office predicts that there will be hurricane conditions in less than 24 hours. In Dominica and St Kitts and St Lucia and St Vincent, people were running into stores trying to get last minute supplies and barricading windows. His landlord, here in Barbados, decided that since he had the day off it would be a good idea to paint the house!

Last year Barbados had its first earthquake in memory. It happened on November 29th, the day before our Independence. I think it was like a 5 on the Richter at the epicenter in Martinique and did some serious damage there and in Dominica. Here in Barbados we felt a 3. To show you how weak that is, I was driving in a car and didn't even know anything was wrong until all the radio stations went off air, and all the telephone networks jammed. (Another silly Barbadian habit, as soon as something happens, everyone picks up the phone.) Most people had no idea it was an earthquake at first, they just felt disoriented and woozy. When they did realise what it was everyone freaked out, got in their cars and went home, at like 3 in the afternoon. The media was ridiculous about it too. You know how you see those post-hurricane scenes with people being interviewed about how they were affected and stuff, Yep they did that. Another friend from St Kitts laughed at us for weeks. All of them had just come out of the buildings and gone back in afterwards. The following day was a Friday and a holiday but some Barbadians didn't even bother with work the Monday because they were so traumatised.

There was a small aftershock in St Lucia the next week and some one called in a hoax at the radio station WITH A TIME!!! Come on people, no one can say at 10 o' clock, there will be an earthquake at 2.30!!! Nonetheless, the disaster-retarded responded and wide spread panic set in. I was working at a school at the time and some one called their mother from the pay phone to ask them something and found out about it, and suddenly the whole school was in an uproar: kids having panic attacks, asthma attacks, throwing up. Parents turning up for their kids and the teachers running around trying to control the scene like headless chickens. Clearly, lessons were done for the day since the children wouldn't go near the buildings.

So all of that is to say this, while I don't consider myself disaster-retarded, I have never been through a full force hurricane and the only earthquake I've ever been in I didn't even feel! I am going into this thing completely blind. I'll just have to err on the side of caution. Make up an earthquake kit with all the stuff advised and do as I am told. And pray that God really is a Bajan and will watch over me in Iwate-ken, Japan.