I spent a lot of time this weekend watching video of the earthquake, tsunamis and melt-downs at the nuclear power plants near Sendai, Japan. I wouldn’t say that I was mesmerized, but I could hardly believe what I was seeing almost as it occurred live on television and I searched the internet for even scraps on current news. Any one of those events would be a catastrophe on their own, but to suffer all three is unimaginable.
Watching the video footage of the destroyed coastal towns was heartbreaking. Watching the second and third lines of waves coming ashore had to be terrifying to the folks who survived the first barrage. The photo of the wave breaking over the tops of thirty foot tall trees said it all.
When you know someone from a country being devastated, you seem to take more interest than when you don’t. I have a friend from Sapporo so I always check to see if her home town is being impacted whenever there is an event in Japan. Fortunately, they are all safe that far north, this time.
I spent Saturday in Abbotsford, British Columbia attending a Kiwanis Zone Conference with eight other Kiwanis members from our club. Among them was Terri-Jo Countryman. We learned on our trip north that her family hosted exchange students from Japan for about twenty years. Several of them were from Sendai. She also shared with us the fact that she went to live in Sendai for four months when she was in high school.
Terri-Jo was more than a little interested in what had happened in Japan. All of us who rode with Terri-Jo felt the anxiety she felt as she waited to hear word from anyone about her loved ones. It may be days before she knows for sure.
We also live in a seismically active area. The Pacific Ring of Fire follows the east coast of Asia north around the Aleutian Islands and down the west coast of North America. It is possible that we could suffer a similar earthquake here in Snohomish. It makes you wonder how our landscape would look after an event like that.
There is no doubt that the earth is in an active phase. Haiti, Chile, New Zealand and now Japan have all suffered serious earthquakes in the past year.
I don’t know about you all, but it makes me feel pretty darn insignificant.
I think I will light a candle for all the victims of these terrible events and pray that God will look after them. I doubt any of us has the power to do any more.
No Loss for Words 
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