Typhoon Hagibis

A few friends of mine have asked me how I was doing with typhoon Hagibis. As a conclusion, like I reported in facebook before, we have had no damage from that storm at this place. We were only just lucky. It has hit the central area of our country very badly with record hard wind and record amount of rain. So far as they researched, 47 rivers have flooded and 66 people were killed with this storm. A friend of mine, the violinist whom I have asked to play chamber music for the past couple of decades, has had flooding in the vicinity and spent a sleepless night with her family including 2 infants.

Now more dameges and victims are being revealed especially in the mountainous areas in central Japan. Some people have lost their grounds for living. A number of people are being found dead mainly due to landslides. Infrastructures including roads, railways and trains have been lost. It may take a long time and budget to recover from these damages. 

It is reported they haven't done preventive drainage from 6 dams despite of being advised to do that by authorities. It sure caused some flooding in the downstream areas. Even though this storm was a historically record in size and intensity, it should be questioned whether there was anything they could do daministratively to prevent or lessen the damages.

One of my concerns with this storm was if it has caused anything ominous to the destructed nuclear reactors in Fukushima. Actually, a member of a scientist group, whom I rely on, has announced the radio activity in the air has transiently risen in some suburbs in Tokyo. It was quite probable radioactive substances have flown from the accident area to the surrounding areas. The so called decontamination of the soil, that is, removal of contaminated soil in limited depth, has done only in the living area. The forests and fields have never been done anything to remove radioactivity. A research report said the fallen leaves of broad-leaf woods would absorb and maintain the radioactive substances fallen on the ground while the soi in the naked area would easily flow into river etc and cause further contamination. The river base should be highly contaminated with radioactive substances. In Fukushima, they have had flooding this time, which might expand the contamination to the other areas.

The contaminated soil from decontamination procedure is stored in vinyl bags. The number of the bags is increased up to 16.5 million. They are exposed outdoor to the weather. Soon or later those bags are decayed with ultraviolet light of sunray. In this storm, some of them have been flown into a river, that has caused further contamination there.

There are high ventilation ducts of 400 ft of height in the destructed nuclear power plants. They are highly contaminated that they could not be dismantled easily. Together with the other structures like the reactor cases, they have been most likelily destructed with high winds. It was not realized this time. But we should observe it closely when such a gust hits the area. The accident of the nuclear power plant is not finished at all. 

While the storm passed by here, I operated radio to know if the antenna was intact. It resulted in no damage. In pretty good conditions, I could manage QSOs with some old friends. It was the only good thing this storm had brought to me.

So I thank you for your concern toward us and for your wishes. I will be seeing you either in the internet or on the air soon.