O Canada! > Canadian > Canadian Chat > The clean up in Japan

The clean up in Japan

Hard to believe they did such a good cleanup so quickly. I gotta admit, they probably worked really hard to pull it off.

If that was Canada or the USA I think the mess would have been worse a year later!

reply to FaxCap
Dramatic change.
Still I wonder about some of those smaller towns which had been all but erased by the wave. The debris can be removed; however nothing can replace the thousands of lives that had been lost that day. Will the few survivors return, or will these once towns remain an empty grid of pavement?

I have a feeling all those cleanup pics are the Sendai greater area, while the smaller coast towns haven't really been touched. Getting the heavy equipment into those towns would actually be VERY difficult if you saw the narrow roads that access those towns. Even if they did it by train, the tunnels are designed for passenger trains, so they would have to disassemble bigger cranes and diggers.

reply to Warez_Zealot

look how fast the hydro company restored power in japan. pretty flipping fast. here the hydro companies would complain and wine. hydro is an essential service, they put new poles and transformers and wires so quick in japan its unheard of over here, probaly due to unions and waht not
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reply to elwoodblues

reply to Paolo

I lived in Shimane prefecture for 2 years, it's basically the lowest/second lowest populated prefecture.

If you look up the bridge to nowhere, it's in Shimane, and it's one of the things they are famous for. (made fun of for)

»www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/world···nted=all

It's too bad they do this kind of stimulus seems like the only people who really make all the cash are the red light districts and jewlers.

»www.tokyoreporter.com/2012/01/15···penings/
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reply to FaxCap
Clearly shows that Japan is a resilient nation. The rest of the world could learn a few things from them..

reply to FaxCap
I wonder how New Orleans is recovering?

reply to qws
I was in los angeles about 1 week after the northridge 1994 earth quake.

My aunt and uncle drove me around before I had to get to the business functions. Went through northridge on Interstate 5. Went through the interchange that had partly collapsed. They had already removed all debris and were it not for my uncle pointing me to the cleanly cut brdge ends, I wouldn't have known that part of the interchange above me had collapsed.

The governor had given incentives for contractors to re-open the highways , something like a mlllion bucks for every day ahead of schedule.

One has to remember that an earthquake generally has very limited zone of destruction.

They rebuilt whole highway sections around northridge in record time. While in Long beach hotel, we did feel some tremors. But while I was there, the TV stations were talking about a far greater threath to Los Angeles: RAIN. Rain causes lots of accidents on roads, and it also causes hollywood stars' homes perched on mud hills to slide down.

I was also in Sanfrancisco weeks before the Oct 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and a year later. That year later, I walked through the neighbourhood between pier 39 and the bridge (the one built on quicksand that destroyed many homes), and you couldn't tell there had been an earthquake and all the homes were rebuilt and shiny new.

These 2 earthquakes had nothing compared to the amount of destruction caused by the tsunami in Japan and the damage was rather focused to certain areas while in japan, a large swath of ocean front was destroyed.

reply to JBear

reply to FaxCap
Hardy bunch. They pick themselves up after a disaster, and get to work rebuilding their homes.

Then again, they do live in an earthquake zone. They're used to rebuilding after a natural disaster. Look how quickly they recovered after the 1995 Kobe earthquake. That one left whole buildings slanted!
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reply to FaxCap
makes you wonder where they put all that garbage??

their recycling depot must be packed.

reply to FaxCap
Wow, pretty impressive.

I'd be curious to see the other extreme, a picture of Haiti a year later.

reply to FaxCap
One of the best presentations on the clean up in Japan by Ryo Chijiiwa who went over to Japan as a cleanup volunteer and spent two months in Iwate prefecture in Ofunato, Rikuzentakata, and Yamada, as well as many smaller communities along the coast.

reply to FaxCap
Judging by the pictures they have done very well at recovery efforts but you can bet some is a front to save face and much work is still to be done. Not to mention the decon of the nukes.

When is the island of debris scheduled to wash up on the left coast. Some of that is radioactive isn't it ? I had seen an article where after so much loss we are asked to be respectful of the debris.

reply to Thane_Bitter