Tokyo Earthquake and Tsunami

Friday afternoon, right before I left to go pick London up at school, Emmy was sitting on the front step eating a sandwich and Kelly and I were chatting.  Emmy looks up at me at one point and says, "Mommy, I'm shaking."  Since she had been off school sick, I felt her forehead, but she didn't seem feverish.  So I joked, maybe it was an earthquake!  You see, these phenomenon actually happen quite frequently here.

It wasn't until later in the afternoon that some of the neighborhood kids asked me if I had heard about the earthquake on mainland Japan.  So I guess Emmy had felt an earthquake - the big one in Tokyo!

As the images are flooding in, the devastation revealed, and the death toll rises, it's hard to conceive the enormity of this disaster.  Fortunately for us, the effects of this one-two punch of natural disasters has been on mainland Japan, and not Okinawa which sits several hundred miles north of our little island.  In fact Tokyo is almost 1,000 miles from Okinawa.  I do have to say, though, that the concern from close family and distant friends has been very touching.  I've been contacted by people that I knew in middle school who I didn't even know knew that I was living in Japan.  We thank you all for your concern, and, yes, we are fine.  We were under a tsunami warning on Friday night, but because we live on a hill and overlook the East China Sea not the Pacific, we weren't too concerned.  Turns out our wave was just 8 inches high.

The American military here has now jumped into action as we are close, available and willing to help.  Several people we know personally have been sent to help fly rescue missions, get power up and running and deliver supplies.  Here's a video of our friend Chuck's plane getting loaded up with supplies (he's a pilot).

http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=200532283307684&oid=145647335459000&comments

Another friend of mine was actually vacationing in Tokyo when the earthquake struck.  She wrote a story that ended up in the Idaho State Journal.  It makes for a personalized read...

http://www.idahostatejournal.com/news/world/article_41d7d008-4d48-11e0-b00f-001cc4c03286.html