Noto Peninsula Earthquake 2024 afterward

By last night, it was reported that 73 persons were killed in the earthquake in Noto Peninsula. More than 1000 houses were completely or nearly completely destroyed. Ninty percent houses were lost in a city near the epicenter. There should be much more damaged or distroyed. There seem to be a lot of people suspected to be crushed under destroyed or fallen houses/buildings. The trunk roads to the northern part of the peninsula, most damaged, are not usable due to landslides etc at several places. It seems difficult for them to go there for rescue or to bring there items necessary for life. The government has decided to increase the number of JDF deployed to 2000. I suspect it is too late and insufficient at all.　

At this moment when the disater is still going on, I won't criticize the government. But I should point out the present government of PM Kishida has reduced a great deal of the disaster prevention budget, which used to be comparable to the military budget but now go down to 1/4 of the latter. Watching crowded old fashioned wooden houses packed in a city there on photos, I could not help feeling they are vulnerable to earthquakes or subsequent fire. There have been a cluster of earthquakes in the area for the past 2 years. They should have implemented policies to prevent damages to them from earthquakes, if not perfect. It was much more desirable and impending to the area than such as military expansion.

I am still much concerned about the nuclear power plants, NPP, in the vicinity of earthquake area. Shika NPP in the area turned out to have severe quake with seismic intensity of 7. There have been 3m of tsunami hitting there. The seawall is only 4m of height and was slightly damaged by tsunami, as news reported. If tsunami were overriding the seawall, there could have been another serious accident like that at Fukushima in 2011. The water of cooling tank, contaminated with radioactive materials, in that NPP has spilled out. Large amount of cooling oil for transformers have dropped on the floor as well. Even not confirmed it directly, there seemed to fire at one of the transformers, which was extinguished automatically. The cooling system for the used fuel has acted up for 40 minutes. Even in this situation, the power line company insists there have been no serious accidents at all. Who could believe that?

About 200km southwest of the epicenter area, as I told in the previous post, there are 14 reators in total at a few NPPs. I was told by a reliable geologist that the area where those NPPs are located are formed by active faults. There are still a lot of faults running there. The Nuclear Regulatory Comission, NRC, is, as he said, inclined to permit re-run of NPP with lighter regulation. If there were any active faults in the vicinity of NPP, its construction or even operation was not allowed. That regulation is getting eased by NRC. Of course, it is in accordance with the government's policy for re-run.

As told in the previous post, the mechanism of the clustered earthquake in Noto Peninsula may be carried on and may cause further big earthquakes. We sure are now in the era of the activated earth's crust at present. We should get prepared for that. There are a lot of things for the government to do to prevent damages or casualities. It is the main reason why a government exists.