THE MOMENT THE QUAKE STRUCK:The potential for panic in a crowded train station at the time of impact is immense
EVERYONE WHO lives in Tokyo has mentally rehearsed where they might be when the Big One strikes. Inside a public park, a modern office or safe tucked up in bed underneath a sturdy roof are the preferred locations.
Strolling around in one of the city’s underground shopping districts or jostling for space in crowded old buildings are not.
I found myself in the oldest section of creaking Shinagawa Station, one of Tokyo’s busiest train hubs, with my heavily pregnant partner.
The quake began not with a jolt but with an almost lazy undulating rocking motion that slowly built in intensity until the station’s roof rattled violently and glass fell onto the platform. A woman somewhere screamed, others clung to husbands, wives or children, or ran for the exits. I watched as one station attendant sprinted back and forth across the platform, waving his hands in a blind panic and shouting at commuters to stay away from the tracks. We stood frozen to the spot, hearts thumping violently and watching the roof, praying it wouldn’t fall on top of our heads.
As the shaking subsided and the terror of being buried beneath tonnes of steel and concrete faded, some people began crying. It had lasted two minutes. An almost palpable sense of relief filled the crowded station, like a single, giant sigh. Then everyone began pulling mobile phones out of bags and frantically calling family and friends to check whether they were okay – crashing the network.
"Kowakatta! [That was terrifying]," said one middle-aged woman. " Dame da to omotta. ," said another.
Hundreds of people walked around on wobbly legs, dazed, their schedules knocked off kilter, the technology that cushions life in this giant metropolis rendered almost useless. Trains had stopped, phone networks were down, the power supply flickered on and off. Some commuters began struggling to find public phones, buried in hard-to-find corners of train stations.
Others headed out into the sunlight for the long walk home. On the streets as we walked the four miles toward the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Yurakucho, hundreds of office workers crowded outside buildings wearing candy-coloured safety helmets, and glancing nervously toward the sky.
Fire engines and ambulances wailed; a siren sounded continuously from the local city office. Plumes of thick black smoke billowed from the direction of Tokyo Bay.
Salarymen crowded around TVs in the upmarket Ginza district, shaking their heads and watching live reports of a tsunami washing away cars, houses and maybe towns on the Pacific coast, a few hundred miles away.
The end of the world must look something like this, we told each other. But amid the apocalyptic scenes, dozens of people were already winding down, smoking nervously, sipping coffees in cafes and babbling to friends about what had happened.
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan occupies the 20th floor of an aging office building in the heart of Tokyo’s business district.
The elevators were out and we walked up the emergency stairs, stepping through fallen plaster. The quake had brought half the books in the dusty library to the floor, but at the reception centre the staff as usual were professionalism personified. Nobody could remember a quake like it, as there was nobody old enough. My exhausted partner was given a hastily made-up bed to lie down on and I looked at her, carrying our unborn half-Japanese son, and wondered how I would tell him about this day, and what were the most terrifying two minutes of my life.