Japan's continuing problems

The earthquake and tsunami a month ago were bad enough. Now it seems that parts of Japan may be literally floating and or sinking.

Japan, in it's efforts to get more land for habitation and buildings, actually filled in part of a bay (Tokyo Bay). I recalled seeing something on this huge project a few years ago on a Nat Geo special. the feature was on the airport that was built on part of this land fill project.

What seemed like a good idea at the time, might now be a huge, expensive mistake.

I saw this video for the first time, this morning. It starts a bit slow, but stick with it and watch this amazing video shot, apparently, by a person from off the street with a video camera. In it you will see land, sidewalks, and streets acting like they are floating on water. One of the freaky places in the video occurs at about 6 minutes in where the kids playground has turned into a new pond..... keep watching because at just past 7 minutes, you can see the water gushing out of the crack as the 2 sections of land are moving back and forth, squeezing it out with each movement.... and, there is NO earthquake happening to cause the land to move..... it's apparently floating.

Video here

I think it's time to move if you just happened to live there. Since this is man made land, it will liquefy much easier than normal in a big quake. It looks like that might have happened, and if the base has liquefied, and water is obviously infiltrating the sub soil,  how long until it liquefies enough and a major disaster occurs there? 

Liquefaction doesn't actually have anything to do with water, despite the name. It's a phenomenon in which loose soil starts to act as if it were a liquid when vibrated.

When I studied geology in another life (I was a rockhound as a kid and once wanted to pursue geology as a career), we watched an amazing film about liquefaction that included both a laboratory demonstration and footage of entire buildings that had sunk into the earth. In one scene, residents are seen with wheelbarrows walking up and down the outside of their high-rise apartment building salvaging their belongings after the entire structure (though intact) had sunk to a 30 degree angle. That was shot in Japan in the 1950's.

BTW, anyone here in the Pacific Northwest should know that a) we have a very similar subduction zone just off our coast, too, and b) our soil is glacial till that is particularly susceptible to liquefaction.

In the late 1800's a quake hit Arkansas and the local witnesses say that the sands heaved in 40 foot "waves". Many small wooden houses rode out the event because the wavelengths were so large that the houses just floated on the surface.

Seattle, San Fransisco, and Boston also have large areas built on swamp fill.


best regards,
mike

Wow--that's unreal. 

In the late 1800's a quake hit Arkansas and the local witnesses say that the sands heaved in 40 foot "waves". Many small wooden houses rode out the event because the wavelengths were so large that the houses just floated on the surface. 



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1812_New_Madrid_earthquake

There are worries...

http://maxi-pulsa.com/new-madrid-fault-arkansas-earthquakes-spur-fears-in-the-midwest/

http://geology.com/news/2011/hazard-in-the-new-madrid-seismic-zone.shtml