Earthquake Diary 41

Wednesday, March 30
Yesterday I went out and walked along the east side of the subway line from Yaotome to Dainohara and then I returned home along the west side.

I was quite surprised by the amount of damage that I saw. It was much worse than around my area. In addition to the increased destruction, I noticed that there were colored notices taped to many of the houses. The green papers said that they building had been inspected and that the city said it was safe. The yellow papers indicated that there were problems and that only limited entrance was allow. The red ones said that the building was too severely damaged to allow anyone to enter. I was shocked by the number of red papers that I saw. I will have pictures of these when I get caught up with posting my photos.

The subway seemed to only be damaged at the stations. There were large work crews at each.

Another thing that I noticed was that more and more of the minor damage that could be considered a safety hazard is being repaired. Large cracks in the road or sidewalk are being smoothed out with asphalt.

In Yaotome, I saw a group form the Osaka Gas company working on the line under the sidewalk. They are apparently finding more damage than they expected. Also one of our contacts told us that they have to be careful about how many new houses come on line each day. It there are too many, it could overwhelm the distribution system, causing more damage and/or outages.