Chiba Prefecture

Here's some more old news regarding the effect of the earthquake in Chiba Prefecture. One of the scariest incidents was the fuel depot that caught on fire. A friend of mine lives in Chiba in the next city over from where my wife and I lived when I first moved here. She said she was able to see the smoke clouds from her home. The following picture is of the fuel depot after it cooled down and was safe enough for people to get close to it...

A lot of the populated area of Chiba, including Tokyo Disney Land, has been built up on wetlands. To build up the land, the ground was made more stable by injecting sand into its lower layers. Since the area was still very close to the water table, this building up process was disturbed by the earthquake and cause an unusual phenomenon where the ground itself took on the properties of water. In a few places, you could see sidewalks or rows of hedges next to the street bobbing up and down as if it were a boat floating on water.

Because of the shifting of the land, the foundations of many houses became tipped to one side or another. Now a lot of homeowners are having to go trough the trouble of resetting their house on a level foundation. The property values dropped dramatically as well, causing a lot of worries for people invested in a home there.

Speaking of Tokyo Disney, a friend of a friend was there when the earthquake happened. Of course all of the rides stopped immediately. The people that were on the rides had to take the little service routes to get out of the attractions. For fear of further disaster, Disney customers were not allowed to leave the premises. In addition to that, since the stability of the buildings was uncertain, the people had to stay outdoors until about 3:00am the next morning when they were allowed to leave. It has taken Disney several months, but they finally reopened.