On Friday, March 11th, a 9.0 earthquake struck the northeast coast of Japan. 80 miles east of the town of Sendai. Sendai is 170 miles south east of Misawa, and takes about 3 1/2 hours to get there. Luckily, we did not feel the 9.0 earthquake, we felt around a 5.0 here in Misawa. Following the earthquake, Tsunami's hit up and down the coastline. The biggest one being in Miyagi Prefecture, near Senadi. A small Tsunami hit our coastline in Misawa, and luckily only one fisherman didn't make it, compared to the thousands of lives that were lost in Sendai. The following story is what I experienced the day the earthquake hit.
On Friday, March 11, 2011, I had just picked up Chase from Daiichi and had arrived home. Bryce fell asleep in his car seat, so I had put him in his room to nap while Chase and I bundled up and played outside for awhile. Around 2:50 p.m. the 5.0 earthquake struck. All of a sudden I could see the neighbors car shaking back and forth and ours were doing the same. I grabbed Chase and I ran inside since I was nervous power lines could fall on us outside. Chase and I crouched in the middle of the room where I thought nothing could get us. I could see that some things had already fallen of the shelf and our sliding entry door was sliding back and forth. I just kept thinking the earthquake would stop, but the ground just kept shaking for about 5 minutes. Usually they last only a few seconds, which feels like 5 minutes, so when it last 5 minutes, it felt like 20. When it stopped I went and checked on Bryce, which scares me now to think why I didn't go and grab him in the first place. But he was still sound asleep. Then looked around to see if their was any damage, but the only damage done was a head of one of my Terra Cotta Warrior statues from China had fallen off. Then Chase and I headed outside to go check with the neighbors to make sure everyone was o.k.
Right when the earthquake struck we lost all our electricity, heat, and internet. This was the worst part of the earthquake cause we did not get our power turned back on until 36 hours later. Which doesn't seem that long, but in the dead of the winter our house got extremely cold and I had a 2 year old and 2 month old I was trying to keep warm. All phone lines and cell phones lines were dead, and this was true all through out Japan. So you couldn't just drive anywhere cause you would run out of gas and everyone else had no power, etc.
The first night was pretty rough. My neighbor Tawnya had brought over a good size lantern for us to use that night and luckily I had just charged the portable dvd player a couple nights before randomly. So we had a little bit of light and I was able to put the kids down early for bed. Chase kept telling me to turn the lights on. I maybe slept an hour that first night. I kept worrying about the boys getting too cold as I kept piling blankets on them as the temperature began to drop. And we were having good size aftershocks every 15 minutes or so, that just made my heart jump everytime cause I didn't know how big they were going to be. And then around midnight or so the doorbell rang with someone from the base doing a people count and telling us not to drink the tap water. Luckily, the boys slept good that night.
The next morning Tawyna invited us over for pancakes, and then we spent the rest of the day hanging out at neighbors houses so Chase could play with kids. Bryce woke up that morning with a bad cough and stuffy nose, so I was trying to keep him bundled up the rest of the day as best I could. The only thing that worked in our house was the gas stove we could light up with a match. So that was nice cause I was able to boil water to wash dishes since we were told we couldn't use any water cause it might have been contaminated. And I was able to warm up some warm meals for Chase and I. That night before bed I said my prayers that the power would come back on. I was super tired, exhausted, cold, and just worried about my boys. Thankfully around midnight the power came back on, I was singing hallelujah. I immediately cranked the heat on, got on the internet and sent an email to Cole and my family, and took a nice hot shower.
It wasn't till I got the internet back on that I started to see what the rest of the world was seeing about what had happened here in Japan. The earthquake, tsunami, and then the nuclear reaction plants exploding. It was truly devastating to see what had happened. My heart just melted for Japan and all the sweet Japanese people that had lost loved ones and all their homes. I was so glad to see Cole 3 days after the earthquake happened and was thankful nothing bad happened to him or us.
The following two weeks after the earthquake, we were still having constant aftershocks all day long. I felt like I was on a boat ride and was getting dizzy at the end of every day. We were having to conserve resources and power. We were scared cause we didn't know when they were going to refill our propane tank which was our heat. We had to be careful how much gas we put in our cars. The nuclear plants that had exploded in Sendai were a big scare cause they were leaking radiation and the radiation was starting to travel in all directions. With everything that we were experiencing and the fact that Cole was going to be going back to the states in April for two weeks, I decided that the boys and I should take the Voluntary Evacuation and head back to Utah. So after 3 full day of processing paper work, we boarded a flight full of moms with toddlers and babies(pretty comical), and flew to Travis Air Force base, and then left Sacramento Airport and arrived in Salt Lake. My boys were thankfully angels on the flight back and I was glad we decided to head back to the states for awhile to visit family and friends, even though it was tough to leave Cole in Japan since we didn't know when we were to return.
