1923 Tokyo Earthquake

On the morning of September 1st 1923, a devastating earthquake hit the Kanto Plain in Japan and caused massive destruction and deaths in Tokyo and Yokohama. This was one of the worst earthquake in Japan history and world's worst disasters.It had a magnitude of 7.9 to 8.4 on the Richter scale and was recorded as far away as in Berkeley in California, the Lake District in England and in Hawaii. It is also called the Great Kanto Earthquake because the Kantō region is a geographical area of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. This quakes epicenter was located in the South of Tokyo near Oshima island in Sagami Bay. Oshima is composed of volcanic rock and lava so people there didn't experience any extreme shaking. But on the other hand, Tokyo and Yokohama is built on softer soil so there was a lot more ground shaking and damage. Number of aftershocks occurred within the epicenter between the coast of Sagami Bay and southern Boso Peninsula. The Pacific and Eurasian Plate caused a convergent plate boundary collision, which means the plates were beneath one another and collided.

The earthquake struck at 11.58am local time in Tokyo just when people were preparing lunch on wood burning stoves. When it struck these stoves toppled over and they started some uncontrollable fires. That is why this is also called the Great Tokyo Fire of 1923. The firestorms burned about 381,000 of the 694,000 houses that were completely destroyed by the earthquake. Due to a typhoon striking Japan the fires spread very quickly and became firestorms in some cities. Cities were reduced to rubble and ashes with the Yokohama seaport suffering the worst damages, 90% of all the homes were destroyed and damaged. Landslides swept away all houses on the mountains; approximately 900 people were killed because of these landslides. A tsunami of about 30 feet hit the shores of Oshima Island, homes were flattened and nearly 150 people died of the tsunami. At the railway station in a village west of Odawara, a mountainside collapsed, pushing a passenger train with over 100 people downhill into the sea along with the entire train structure and the village itself. More than 1.9 million people were homeless and 60% of the city's population was left homeless. There were more than 142,000 people died and approximately 37,000 went missing including all the tsunamis, firestorms and landslides that took place. The fires were the biggest causes of deaths.

At nearly the same time as the earthquake struck, a typhoon hit the Tokyo Bay. Altogether, the typhoon and earthquake caused 99,300 deaths, 43,476 missing and 103,733 seriously injured. In the beginning of 1960, every September 1 was designated as 'Disaster Prevention Day' to remind people how important preparation was and because September and October are in the typhoon season. Tokyo is located near a fault line, which on average causes a major earthquake to hit every 70 years. Every year on this day, Japan schools in Japan take a moment of silence at the actual moment the earthquake hit in memory of the lives that have been lost during this earthquake.

Over the next two days there were about 1500 aftershocks. It is a smaller magnitude of earthquake right after the main one. The temporary houses were built two weeks later. A small park in Sumida was a memorial place; an open space area in which 30,000 people were killed by one single firestorm. After the earthquake, they organized a reconstruction plan of Tokyo with modern roads, trains and public services. Following the destructive damage the earthquake made, the government considered to move the capital to another place. Places for the proposed new capital were also discussed.

CSI:Pompeii

In the city of Pompeii, Italy, was a volcano, Mount Vesuvius. Two thousand years ago people did not know this volcano was active. This volcano was inactive for 1500 years and was brought back to live. On the last day of Pompeii,27th August 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius started smoking, but people didn't care and took no notice of it at all. Everyone was just doing their own job and thought that the smoke coming out from the mountain didn't mean anything.

When the volcano started erupting, the ashes rose fifteen kilometers up into the sky, blocking the whole sky and the sun, and it suddenly turned pitch dark. At first people did not know it was a volcano erupting because they had no idea what a volcano was, so they just watched in astonishment; but also fear. Just after a few minutes people started panicking and was very frightened. While the ashes started to rise, it also started to freeze and turned into pumice. Pumice are little small stone pebbles; one hundred million tonnes of pumice dropped down from the volcano, which caused a lot of injuries and killed many people. The pumice that landed on roofs caused some houses to collapse, which caused some people to die. A bunch of people gathered onto the beach to see what was actually happening.

Suddenly two enormous clouds of poisonous gas, 5 times hotter than boiling water, gushed down the mountain. One surging towards the beach, and the other down to Pompeii. The hot gas is so boiling hot that doesn't only kill people standing on the beach but made their brains and bones boil and turned into charcoal. The gas which went towards Pompeii didn't reach the main part of the city, but because there is so much of the toxic smoke, people die of suffocation. 300 men and women who were on boats and close enough for the other island also immediately suffocated and died. These dead bodies were found on boats.

7 hours later all the houses and streets are deserted, not leaving even one person alive. Now if you visit Pompeii, you will see all the ruins 2000 years ago.