Millenium News

Experts: Early warnings mitigated Japan disaster

TOKYO (AP) — Though earthquakes can't be predicted, experts say an early warning system that detects the earth's rumblings before they can be felt saved countless lives when Japan's once-in-a-millenium disaster struck two months ago.

Millions of Japanese live in areas, including Tokyo, that are in high risk of being hit be major quakes at virtually anytime, and over the last decade or so Japan has invested heavily in its early warning system, which is the most advanced in the world.

Despite the massive destruction wrought by March's magnitude-9.0 earthquake and the tsunami it spawned, experts say it could have been worse had Japan not been so prepared.

"I think it saved many people," Kunihiko Shimazaki, a leading seismologist and head of the government's earthquake prediction advisory board, said Thursday. "Particularly with the tsunami warning, it gave people time to act."

Japan has poured some $500 million into a sophisticated network capable of detecting the first vibrations of an earthquake, called "P waves." These initial pulses do not create a lot of shaking and travel much faster than the killer shock waves that follow.

The network of sensors, launched as the world's first in 2007, record the P waves and relay the information to computers that then calculate how big the quake will be.

Before the ground ever started rocking on March 11, warnings a huge quake was about to strike flashed across TV screens, were broadcast over radio stations and arrived on mobile phones. Alerts were also sent to halt trains and factories.

The heads-up it gave was brief — in Tokyo, about 230 miles (370 kilometers) from the epicenter, messages with alarms interrupted TV programming only about 10 seconds before the hard jolts began.

But those 10 seconds could be vital, said Roger Musson, a seismologist at the British Geological Survey.

"In terms of the safe shutdown of mechanical systems, factory outputs and bullet trains, then it seems to have worked really well," he said. "Ten seconds is time to turn the gas off if you're cooking, and that could make all the difference between your house burning down or not."

Still, Shimazaki warned that completely quake-proofing a country like Japan is impossible, and said the early warning system had its faults.

Many of its sensors were quickly knocked out by the quake or the waves, and, because of the intensity and number of shocks, the ones that worked provided an overwhelming amount of information that made interpretation difficult.

Woyane's Millenium Dam | ECADF Ethiopian News

By UTUBO

The other day I was calling home to speak to my parents on the occasion of the Easter holiday. As usual, after the initial greetings and enquiries about the wellness of immediate and extended family members, we contnued our conversation about the neighborhood, the community and the general frame of issues dominating the small southern town where my parents live.

Unlike other times, what struck me most during this round was, my mother’s mention of the “the issue of the Gojam river dam as the deafening news of the time”. It didn’t take me long to realize that she was talking about the, “The Millenium Dam of the Woyane”, the dam that will never be built under the ethnic dicatorship of TPLF.

That this dam is just a hoopla to divert the public’s attention from the growing repression, escalating inflation, dissatisfaction, anger, frustration, poverty and famine, and above all, from the increasing signs of a sweeping revolution, can be noticed well from the absence of any mention about such a huge dam as a key energy development strategy in the much purported Five Year GTP of the country, and the conflicting and inconsistent propaganda of the regime’s own mouthpieces, like Amare Aregawi’s Reporter and Aiga Forum.

The so called Five Year GTP, that was endorsed by the rubber stamp parliament as the offician development plan of the nation in November 2010, does not mention as single word about the “Mellenium Development Dam” as neither a starategic direction nor as an implemetation startegy of the the energy sector development. It would be so absurd not to mention about such a dam, that is supposed to cost hundreds of billions of dollars of tha nations budget, in the plan document that is supposed to direct its implementation.

Another evidence that this dam is just a hoopla is the fact that, of the estimated total Five Year GTP budget of around 700 bln Birr, the whole of the energy sector’s budget constitutes, just 177 bln Birr, jus a few billions more, than the cost of cement required to build the dam, as Amare Aregawi tells us.

Over the last couple of months, this “dam” has been the editorial of Amare’s Reporter week after week. But the story he has been telling us does not hold water. Just the other day he tells us a delegation of 45 Egyptian diplomats came to Ethiopia to express their support of the launching of the dam and another day, his editorial laments about that delagation trying to sabotage Ethiopia’s efforts to develop its river, once they are back in Egypt. One week he tells us the famous PM Mele Zenawi had laid the corner stone of the dam and its construction is in progress, and another week he tells us, that a study team has been established to reasearch about the dam, and again he tells us about the amount and cost of cement required to complete the construction. What a speedy research! And yet gain, he laments the famous Meles Zenawi has agreed to halt the whole implementation of the dam until an elected government is formed in Egypt.

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