My feeling toward the earthquake in Japan

Recently in English
class we've been studying the Earthquake in Japan. I thought
this was just another common earthquake in Japan, because earthquake was very
common in Japan, it turn out that I was wrong. As I looked through the pictures of the earthquake in Japan, I
came upon a picture of a whirlpool. Normally I would look carefully at its
beauty, but this time I am in no mood for that, all I can think was “how many
lives did this whirlpool took?” The disaster in Japan once again reminds me of
how helpless humans are in front of nature.  

“The earthquake last Friday forced 11 reactors out
of action, leaving East Japan with a serious power shortfall. In
order to conserve electricity and prevent unforeseen power cuts, Tokyo Electric
Power Company (Tepco) is enforcing scheduled blackouts across the region.”

This
quote is from Japan earthquake live report <http://www.timeout.jp/en/tokyo/feature/2530/Japan-earthquake-live-report> I heard
from other people that different areas of Japan are rotating to have black
outs, because Japan is low on fuel. I wonder how many days this will last
because without electricity things cannot run normally, school cannot start,
trains cannot run, and companies will be close. I just hope everything will
return back to normal soon.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/11/japan-earthquake-tsunami_n_834380.html

“At
first it didn't feel unusual, but then it went on and on. So I got myself and
my wife under the table," he told The Associated Press. "I've lived
in Japan for 10 years, and I've never felt anything like this before. The
aftershocks keep coming. It's gotten to the point where I don't know whether
it's me shaking or an earthquake."”

This
reminds me of the one and only time which I experienced an earthquake myself.
I’ve experienced a small earthquake when I was in China. I live near the sea back
in China, I figure the earthquake might be a side effect from an earthquake
somewhere else. I was asleep when the earthquake occurred, my parents woke me
up, and I notice my view was shaking. After a while I realized my view wasn’t
shaking, it was the room that was shaking. My parents pull me out of the house
before I can have more thoughts to myself. The earthquake lasted for 5- 15
minutes I think, we were afraid that it might strike again, so we gathered
outside of the house. Funny thing was my parents move my bed to outside of the
house so I can sleep and be prepare to go to school the next day.

I read a Wikipedia article, “2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami,” Wikipedia:
The Free Encyclopedia. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Sendai_earthquake_and_tsunami.
>This article is very useful because it provide a lot of information. A lot
of information from the article is gathered from different articles, so instead
of searching for different articles and reading them one by one, reading this
article is a faster to gather information.

A
few sentences I read that stand out to me were: “The earthquake triggered tsunami
warnings and evacuations from Japan’s Pacific coast and at least 20 countries,
including the entire Pacific coast of North America and South America. The
earthquake created tsunami waves of up to 10 meters (33ft) that struck Japan
with smaller waves in many other countries.”  In the years I live, I’ve never seen Japan
suffer from a natural disaster that is as bad as this one. Not only was the
earthquake powerful, but it was also accompany by a tsunami. After a person
survives the earthquake, he’ll have to face the tsunami. I cannot imagine the
horror Japanese people have to go through, I am lucky that the only earthquake
I faced lasted for about 5 minutes.

Another
few sentences that stand out to me were: “A fire from the turbine section of the
Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant following the earthquake was reported by Kyodo News.
The blaze was in a building housing the turbine, which is sited separately from
the plant’s reactor, and was soon extinguished.” I feel bad for the
Japanese, just when they thought the earthquake and tsunami is enough for them,
there goes the aftermath of the earthquake. I wonder how long it took them to
put the fire out, and what they done to the nuclear power plant after they put
the fire out.

I
was shock when I read “ There are reports of “ whole towns gone”
from tsunami-hit regions in Japan, including 9,500 missing in Minamisanriku;
Kuji and Ofunato have been “swept away…. Leaving no trace that a town was
there””. This is very upsetting, Japan has a lot of ancient treasures
(buildings, trees, clothing, etc), these beautiful setting might have been
destroy. I suddenly realized something as I’m writing this, that natural
disaster is a killer of ancient beauty.