Working in an earthquake-prone school

Not too long ago, there was a fairly substantial earthquake up in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, which I found out about first through worried friends and relatives. While it was quite far from me and caused relatively little in the way of property damage or human casualties, it did provide me with the jumping-off point for exploring the sometimes-unnerving reality of living in a country where earthquakes are a regular occurrence and entire cities occasionally leveled by them. I am still, as I was then, mostly unconcerned about my own particular lifestyle being affected by these quakes, but two things have occurred lately that are enough to give me pause.

The first is an aftershock in the same area hit by the earthquake from a few months ago. While it didn’t take any lives, it’s somewhat unnerving because this aftershock was actually stronger than the initial earthquake, and (as the TV show I was watching so helpfully stressed) would cause rather complete and catastrophic damage to pretty much any building not up to modern earthquake-resistant building codes. So, imagine my surprise when I read an article the next day, which in its cheerfully alarmist fashion, pointed out that most school buildings in Osaka prefecture were built between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, and that city and prefectural school boards had been dragging their heels about fixing the problem since at least the Kobe earthquake thirteen and a half years ago. So, as it turns out, the school I work in is not safe in the event of a major earthquake. Great.

Luckily, said exposé, coupled with still lingering images from the Chinese earthquakes earlier this year (where school buildings simply collapsed on top of the schoolchildren inside), seems to have motivated cities all around Osaka to actually do something about it. This includes, as luck would have it, my school. Well, sort of.

Matsubara is not a very large city compared to the other cities of Osaka Prefecture, but it still has seven junior high schools, fifteen elementary schools, and a few nursery schools run by the city board of education. As you can imagine, this means that bringing all of these schools up to modern earthquake resistance standards is quite the arduous (and expensive) undertaking. And between a chronically under-funded budget and not wanting to play favorites with any of the schools, this means that each school gets to have a bit of it brought up to code at a time.

In my case, this means that one particular section of the main school building has been spending the summer break getting its concrete superstructure reinforced by metal rods, having concrete overhangs taken down from above the first-floor entrances, and having lots and lots of holes dug and/or drilled into it in order to accomplish this. So, in spite of my relatively quiet summer break, it has actually been punctuated at regular intervals by the sound of jackhammering. (I know it’s for a good purpose and all, but could they try keeping it down a bit?) They also removed sections of floor at ground level, in order to reinforce that too. The final stage involves attaching a large number of angled reinforcing columns to the outside of the building, which turns the school into what looks kind of like a gigantic Erector set (y’know… like Legos, but metal plates with screws and gears and such), In short, that particular part of the school is a gigantic mess right now, and I wonder whether they’ll actually finish it in time for classes to start up again (back at my college, they certainly never did, though Japan prides itself on punctuality so I don’t really know).

Of course, the reinforcement method, while effective and (relatively) inexpensive, also has the upshot of making the reinforced structure slightly… unappealing from a visual standpoint. Since it is a standard Japanese-style junior high school, that’s not necessarily going to detract from its original appearance, but it’s certainly quite apparent, especially considering that the rest of the school has yet to undergo this transformation. But then again, I suppose that all things considered, a safe building is much more appealing in terms of survival, no matter what its particular looks happen to be. Not that these reinforcements will do me much good. The first part of the main building they’re doing at my school houses the home ec, science, and computer classrooms, none of which have much in common with my current job. They will eventually progress to the rest of the building, but who knows where I’ll be working by the time they finish everything… it could take years.

So, with all that going on in the midst of my summer vacation, I’m rather hoping that things calm down at least a little bit before classes start again. And hoping and praying that we don’t get any major earthquakes in Osaka while I’m teaching. I just need to remember my mantra, “I like hot springs. I like hot springs. I like hot springs” As long as Japan has those, I can put up (mostly) with the worries that seismic instability’s other, more negative aspects create. Now, where’d I leave that safety helmet…?