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Like
California, Japan is in a seismically active area that geologists call the Ring
of Fire. Experts claimed that there was no warning before the March 11,
2011 Tohoku
earthquake other than the nation’s earthquake-alert system that warned
citizens that a tremor was coming. By the time the initial shaking from that
9.0 quake stopped, tsunami waves were on their way to devastate seaside communities
and trigger a radiation leak and ultimate nuclear meltdown of the Fukashima
Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
Over
three and one-half years later, that area of the Ring of Fire lived up to its
name again. Apparently, 150 hikers were on the crater when Mount
Onatake, a volcano located in central Japan, unexpectedly burst to life on
Saturday, September 27, 2014. Approximately 40 people died in the explosion;
many witnesses reported that there had been no warning before the ash and gas
explosion. This account worried me. As a resident in Southern California, I am
very aware that there rarely is a warning before a natural disaster—at least, a
disaster in which tectonic plates are involved. Or, are there warnings that
humans just don’t yet know how to detect?
When
Mount
St. Helens erupted in 1980, there were plenty of indicators that something
was going on with the volcano. In addition to frequent and increasingly intense
earthquakes, residents reported that their pets and livestock were behaving
strangely before the eruption. I also remember hearing stories about birds
becoming disoriented and flying into buildings; this strange behavior was
explained as a consequence of some kind of electro-magnetic disturbance in the
atmosphere. I don’t know if that was true, but I immediately thought of that
theory when a bat inexplicable flew right into a book store where I was working
in 2010. I remember telling a colleague, Either
that bat is sick or we’re in for some major tectonic-plate activity. A few
days later, on April 4, 2010, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Baja
California. Shaking from the Mexicali
Earthquake, as it was immediately dubbed, was strong enough to be felt all
the way to Los Angeles County. The next day, one of the assistant managers I
worked with came up to me and told me that he immediately recalled my “premonition”
about earthquakes and was seriously spooked as soon as he felt the shaking.
Remember
when thousands of black birds inexplicably fell from the sky, dead, in Beebe,
Arkansas on January 1, 2011? Experts ruled out poisoning or disease as a cause of death.
However, thousands of other dead birds were reported in Kentucky and Louisiana
around Christmas of 2010, and schools of fish suddenly washed up on the shores
of the Arkansas River around that same time. Meanwhile, a 3.8 magnitude
earthquake shook North-Central Indiana on December 30, 2010. Hmm….
Less
than one year after the bat flew into my bookstore before the Mexicali temblor hit
and approximately three months after the blackbirds fell out of the sky in the Midwest
following an earthquake near Indiana, the Tohuku Earthquake happened. Once
again, a quake was preceded by a spooky animal behavior. Exactly one week
before the quake, thousands of dead fish were discovered floating in a Los
Angeles harbor. Once again, my first thought was that this incident could be a
warning about an earthquake. I thought about a college geology lecture in which
the instructor explained how noxious gases can be released during a quake. In
2004, several bison were poisoned by poison gases released near a geyser in Yellowstone
National Park, which is a Super Volcano in its own right. Anyway, the
connection between the dead sardines and tectonic activity made sense to me;
and my prediction—if you want to call it that—came true on March 11, 2011.
I
prefer to think of my observations of behaviors or phenomena I observed or
heard about were just that—observations—and not specifically predictions of future
natural disasters. Again, as a resident in Southern California I am interested
in earthquakes and other related phenomena because I live in an area that gets
shaken up from time to time (pun intended). You can bet that if the Discovery
Channel® is broadcasting a documentary about earthquakes, volcanoes or tsunamis
is on that I will probably be tuning in to watch. As a fan of mystery novels
and thrillers, it is fun for me to gather clues and collect evidence about
potentially recurring events. As an animal lover, I watch a lot of
documentaries and read books about the various species that most interest me. Needless
to say, my interest definitely piques when the narrator or author describes what
these animals seem to know (predict), how they behave and what they do to
survive when a natural disaster destroys their home. Over the years of reading
about, watching documentaries and experiencing earthquakes myself (subconscious knowns), I have
created my own subconscious mental script and associations about these events
and how to survive them. I just hope that neither I nor the people I care about
are ever in a situation to have to activate that emergency plan.
I
would like to extend my heartfelt condolences to everyone who was affected by the
eruption of Tohoku Volcano last week.
