JAPAN'S DEVASTATION AFTER EARTHQUAKE, TSUNAMI

March 12, 2011 at 12:01a.m.

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Area residents scrambled to contact friends in Japan after that nation’s most powerful reported earthquake struck offshore Friday near the northeastern coastal city of Sendai.

None had learned of any injuries or deaths.

The magnitude-8.9 quake, felt hundreds of miles away in Tokyo, was followed by a 23-foot tsunami and more than 50 aftershocks, some more than magnitude 6.0, Japanese officials reported.

Paul Sracic, a Youngstown State University political-science professor who recently spent a year in Japan as a Fulbright scholar, said he e-mailed almost everybody he knows and so far has heard back from three colleagues, all of whom are unhurt.

“Unfortunately, I haven’t heard back from anyone I e-mailed in Sendai,” said Sracic, who once gave a talk in Sendai at Tohoku University’s Association for American Studies.

One of Sracic’s colleagues at Sophia University in Tokyo said it was the most severe earthquake he had experienced.

Sracic said earthquakes are common in Japan and that he felt two while he was in Tokyo teaching at Sophia and Tokyo universities from August 2009 to July 2010.

Because there are so many earthquakes, the nation is very well-prepared, he said.

Everyone has an emergency backpack by their door containing food, water and money. Their rooms have posted instructions on what to do and where to go in the event of an earthquake and where the gas shutoff valve is.

“One of the main things they worry about is fires,” he said.

Also, Sracic said there is a large map at most major intersections in Tokyo showing people where the nearest open area is away from tall buildings. He said where he lived in the center of Tokyo, his open area was the soccer field at a local high school.

”If the death toll is less than expected, I believe it will be because Japan is so well-prepared,” he said.

Like Sracic, Eric Planey, vice president of international business attraction for the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, spent a year living and working in Japan.

“Thankfully, nobody I personally know was injured,” he said.

Planey worked in the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Otemachi Building in the central business district of Tokyo, where he said many of his former colleagues were stranded as public transportation was shut down after the earthquake.

“Some of my former colleagues said the building rocked forever,” Planey said.

He said some people walked five to six hours to get home, while others waited for public transportation to start again.

Despite the possibility of the tsunami sending dangerous waves toward Hawaii, some area vacationers still managed to get to their location, albeit later than expected.

Vicki Stankewich, owner of Howland Travel, 5200 E. Market St., said her travel agency sent four people on their way to Hawaii on Friday, though they were temporarily delayed three hours on their Cleveland-Chicago-Hawaii American Airlines flight.

Mary Ann Dwyer, who owns Tippecanoe Travel Services, 2959 Canfield Road, said she doesn’t have clients in Hawaii or Japan but has dealt with vacationers in natural disasters before, such as Hurricane Wilma in Cancun in 2005.

“It’s kind of nerve-racking when you have somebody over there in that situation,” she said.