My six year old son is now aware of the power of nature. Together, we watched some of the footage of the terrifying impact of the tsunami that followed last Friday’s massive earthquake. In one clip, there were cars moving along a road moments before the wall of black water picked them up and carried them off, as if they were toys. “Was there someone in the car Daddy?”, he asked me. “Yes”, I replied. “What happened to them?”. “I don’t know”, I reply, lamely. In the silence that follows, the whirring of his imagination is almost audible. It’s clear that we both have a pretty good idea what happened.
It will probably be some time before the scale of the death toll is known, but the scale of the human tragedy is utterly heartrending to behold. Houses that survived the massive earthquake more or less without damage were picked up and washed away by the tsunami that followed so quickly after. Lives have been wrecked or ended in a few moments leaving the survivors to try and rebuild shattered lives, maybe without their loved ones to help them.
And even now, the tragedy is still unfolding, with radioactive emissions escaping from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station following a third explosion there. If you were near the plant for an hour, latest reports suggest, you would receive eight times the recommended maximum dose of radiation for a whole year! It would appear that even if a full meltdown were to happen at Fukushima, the outcome would be a far lesser problem than the last major nuclear accident the world has faced, which took place at Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986. Then, a radioactive cloud travelled around the globe. This time, it’s thought that any radiation leaked would travel a much smaller distance. However, there is now a 30km exclusion zone around the plant, up from 20km earlier this morning, which would suggest that fears of a leak are increasing.
It is even more striking somehow when this kind of event takes place in a highly developed industrialised country like Japan. People there were prepared for earthquakes and even tall skyscrapers stood up to the force of the earthquake, which is rated in the top five since records began. But the sheer destructive force of the tsunami that followed could not have been planned for or guarded against. A wall of water, ten metres or more high and up to 300 metres in length makes for a torrent that no amount of flood protection could prevent.
My heart goes out to the people of Japan. They will find the strength to rebuild and carry on as they have had to over the centuries following past natural disasters, but ongoing events must be very painful and raw, laced with a good deal of uncertainty as to how things will end up at Fukushima. It’s not evident yet how much Japan’s environment will be impacted by the current crisis in the longer term, but this will become clearer in the coming days.
But this has come as a real reminder that no matter how technologically advanced we become and how clever we think we are, we can still do nothing to prevent the forces of nature from overwhelming us, if the planet’s power is unleashed against us. My son knows this now.
Why we can never tame nature
My six year old son is now aware of the power of nature. Together, we watched some of the footage of the terrifying impact of the tsunami that followed last Friday’s massive earthquake. In one clip, there were cars moving along a road moments before the wall of black water picked them up and carried them off, as if they were toys. “Was there someone in the car Daddy?”, he asked me. “Yes”, I replied. “What happened to them?”. “I don’t know”, I reply, lamely. In the silence that follows, the whirring of his imagination is almost audible. It’s clear that we both have a pretty good idea what happened.
It will probably be some time before the scale of the death toll is known, but the scale of the human tragedy is utterly heartrending to behold. Houses that survived the massive earthquake more or less without damage were picked up and washed away by the tsunami that followed so quickly after. Lives have been wrecked or ended in a few moments leaving the survivors to try and rebuild shattered lives, maybe without their loved ones to help them.
And even now, the tragedy is still unfolding, with radioactive emissions escaping from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station following a third explosion there. If you were near the plant for an hour, latest reports suggest, you would receive eight times the recommended maximum dose of radiation for a whole year! It would appear that even if a full meltdown were to happen at Fukushima, the outcome would be a far lesser problem than the last major nuclear accident the world has faced, which took place at Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986. Then, a radioactive cloud travelled around the globe. This time, it’s thought that any radiation leaked would travel a much smaller distance. However, there is now a 30km exclusion zone around the plant, up from 20km earlier this morning, which would suggest that fears of a leak are increasing.
It is even more striking somehow when this kind of event takes place in a highly developed industrialised country like Japan. People there were prepared for earthquakes and even tall skyscrapers stood up to the force of the earthquake, which is rated in the top five since records began. But the sheer destructive force of the tsunami that followed could not have been planned for or guarded against. A wall of water, ten metres or more high and up to 300 metres in length makes for a torrent that no amount of flood protection could prevent.
My heart goes out to the people of Japan. They will find the strength to rebuild and carry on as they have had to over the centuries following past natural disasters, but ongoing events must be very painful and raw, laced with a good deal of uncertainty as to how things will end up at Fukushima. It’s not evident yet how much Japan’s environment will be impacted by the current crisis in the longer term, but this will become clearer in the coming days.
But this has come as a real reminder that no matter how technologically advanced we become and how clever we think we are, we can still do nothing to prevent the forces of nature from overwhelming us, if the planet’s power is unleashed against us. My son knows this now.