Friday, March 11, 2011

Japan earthquake/tsunami

An 8.9 point earthquake! How exciting! And not in a good way.

This morning, the mallwalkers asked me whether Cloud's home was affected. I didn't know, so I looked it up. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that China has pledged to give aid to Japan. I'll talk about my thoughts on China as a world power some other time; for now, i'll say their generosity makes me happy.

Their tsunami warnings have been downgraded; apparently the east coast of China is only expecting waves a foot and a half high.

Meanwhile, there was a separate earthquake in Yunnan province, unrelated to the Japan earthquake (the two regions are on different tectonic plates), in which 25 people died. Yunnan is part of that vast region of China that does not have disaster-resistant architecture. The mallwalkers and i were talking about that, too. The lack of disaster-resistant architecture continues to be a problem in most of China.

When I told them I wasn't worried about Shanghai, because their buildings were designed to withstand whatever tremors they got from the distant earthquake, the mallwalkers said, 'Of course."

Actually, no, not 'of course.'

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