2024 Noto Earthquake

The response to the Noto Peninsula Earthquake on January 1st continues, and it is still a common subject on the news. People have started to move into the medium-term temporary housing that the state builds after a major earthquake, but a significant number (over 10,000) are still in evacuation centres. Given that the area was remote to start with, and considering the damage to the routes into it, it is not clear how much more quickly they could have been helped. However, the preoccupation of the central government with a… Read More »The 2024 Noto Earthquake 3

As expected, Jinja Shinpō has continued to report on the Noto earthquake. NHK news has also been covering it; the new problem is heavy snowfall, which might bring damaged buildings down and is hindering recovery efforts, as well as putting people in evacuation centres at risk of hypothermia. It sounds as though the authorities have set up to make it possible for everyone in evacuation centres to move temporarily to hotels in safer areas, but that means leaving their homes behind for an unknown period of time, so most have… Read More »The 2024 Noto Earthquake 2

As readers of this blog are probably aware, unless they are reading this post some time in the future, there was a serious earthquake in Japan on January 1st. I, my family, and my friends are all fine, because we live on the other side of Japan, but the Noto Peninsula, on the Japan Sea, and neighbouring areas were badly affected; as of the time of writing, the death toll is over 200, and is likely to rise a bit more — although hopefully not much. Jinja Shinpō’s first articles… Read More »The 2024 Noto Earthquake 1