The day of the earthquake

Recently in my group they have bought a Raman spectrometer. The people of the company were offering an exhibition-operational course and i joined it: Friday the 11th of March from 9 to 15h in a lab in the third floor of the main building on NIMS. The exhibition finished a bit earlier than expected and around 14:30h we were ready, so I left to the lab thinking on the measurements that i wanted to do that afternoon. NIMS is a complex with several buildings, a big central one and others surrounding this one. The main building is 8 floors high and in the top one, Michael and me we have our desks. Our labs are, however, in another building which is only one floor high (is better for avoiding vibrations) (both places are marked in the map).

In this city we have often earthquakes, the floor shakes during several seconds and then all come back to normal. If you are moving during the "shaking" (walking or by bike), it is almost not noticeable, but if you are in the bed or sitted on a chair (especially in the 8th floor) you feel them strongly. As i was writing, i was walking in the corridor planing my afternoon when suddenly i started to hear a strong noise coming from the walls and some metallic doors. I thought that it was strange so loud, but maybe there were repairing something. Few seconds later I noticed that the floor was moving... and a lot, so i looked for something where to hold on. Since we arrived to Japan, we got pamphlets, instructions and information about what to do if an earthquake takes place, including our Japanese course. At least, i had a couple of things clear on my head: stay inside the building during the earthquake since they are supposed to be secure and to cover my head. To go either under a table or under a doorjamb, which is architecturally a stable part of the houses and a good shelter... and this was mine! Since i was in the middle of the corridor i hold on the first door that i found open. I could not see the rest of the workers on the room because they had high walls between their desks. The door was shaking a lot and for a while i thought that it would not stand the earthquake but it lasted the almost 5 minutes that the building was moving. During this time, several people tried to run but they could not go too far away which such a shake. Firebreak doors closed on the corridors separating then in various pieces. In the offices, the doors of the wardrobes opened and the books were flying out as they were spitted. The electricity went out after the firsts charges and did not come back. At the beginning a couple of persons shouted but there was no hysteria: since they are born they know that one day this will happen and they are trained for it. When the earthquake finished, we all went down through the emergency stairs and were out of the building after several seconds.

This had been very strong! I was thinking on my colleagues on the 8th floor and the ones that were in the laboratory, including Michael. The people were outside the buildings waiting at a certain distance to avoid glasses in case they started to fall down. Bordering them i went to the lab. In the way, i pass technical staffs that were running going to repair the electrical network and others institute needs. When i arrived to the door of the laboratory building, i found all my colleagues together waiting that the strong aftershocks finished. All were ok, some of them could run out of the building rapidly and other managed to go under the table to protect themselves (as Michael did). In one of the labs, a rack full of electronic appliances had falling into the UHV chamber, but luckily the guy who usually works with it, was not there at that moment. We were there for a while. The electricity did not come back and the mobiles were hardly working. After some time, the boss of our group appeared bringing news: the epicentre was in Sendai at almost 300km away from here! Then, we started to look to each other with the same idea in our heads, if it has been so strong here, how it has been close to the epicentre? Actually, it was better not to know it...