Part I
On March 11, 2011, the most expensive natural disaster in history occurred. A 9.0-magnitude undersea earthquake, just 45 miles east of the Tohoku of the region of Japan (NewScientist), shook residents of Japan for a full 6 minutes (Asahi). It also largely affected Sendai, a large city of over 1 million residents, as popularly mentioned in the news. There were 7 foreshocks and 974 aftershocks, of which a combined total of 67 were significant, above 6.0 magnitude (US Geological Survey). This is one of the biggest disasters of my generation. The earthquake additionally triggered tsunamis, and damaged 3 nuclear reactors, making this a triple-threat disaster. The official destruction tolls so far are 13,232 deaths, 14,554 people missing, and 4,756 injured, 217,000 buildings damaged or destroyed, 4 dikes broken, 2,137 damaged road segments, 69 damaged bridges, and 148 landslides (Japan National Police Agency). To add to this chaos, 3 nuclear reactors exploded, but the cores remained intact, so the explosions were comparatively small to what they could have been.
The public is shocked. Everyone sees the destruction and hears the numbers on the news, and they are in awe. However I feel that the mainstream news can only do so much informing. I have a habit of taking popular situations and making them relevant to myself by putting them in context with my own life, and I find this an effective way to realize the true magnitude (no pun intended) and force of the situation at hand. For instance, let’s take one statistic from this information – there have been 69 bridges damaged in Japan by the earthquake and flooding. Next let’s take 3 local bridges – the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the San Mateo Bridge. The Bay Bridge’s daily traffic is about 252,000 vehicles, the Golden Gate Bridge has 118,000 vehicles, and the San Mateo Bridge has 96,000 vehicles (Department of Transportation). The combined total of vehicles on these bridges in an average day is 466,000. Assuming these bridges were damaged to the point that they were too unsafe to travel on, this would be 466,000 people (assuming one person per vehicle) who couldn’t get to work each day until the bridges were fixed. This alone is hard to imagine; even though it’s put into a local context, it is still such a huge number that it is difficult to fathom the damage it would do. It only gets worse when we take into account that 3 bridges is only 1/23 the amount of bridges damaged in Japan.
This is a very important issue because it involves human suffering, and especially because it is human suffering on a large scale. It is also a chance for the United States to prove that we are not as bad as the world thinks we are. If we could be the major country contributing to aid in Japan, it could change foreigners’ opinions of us, which would be good for public relations on a national level, and it could also open up some economic doors. It would also maintain the image that we like to have that we are defenders of the world to some extent, and that we help the downtrodden out of the kindness of our hearts.
Part II
So far, the United States Agency of International Development (USAID) and the United States Department of Defense (DOD) have provided almost $78 million in support in various direct aid methods, namely Urban Search and Rescue deployment, and a Disaster Assistance Response Team, with official nuclear experts to help with the fallout aspect (USAID):
The U.S. Ambassador declared an emergency which opened up an immediate funding of $100K from USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. They set up a Response Management Team in DC and sent a Disaster Assistance Response Team to Tokyo, which includes people with nuclear expertise from the Departments of Energy and Health and Human Services as well the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The NRC members are experts in boiling water nuclear reactors and are available to assist their Japanese counterparts. Two Urban Search and Rescue Teams (LA County and Fairfax County teams) which total 144 members plus 12 search and rescue canines and up to 45 metric tons of rescue equipment are also on the ground in Misawa, Japan and will begin searching at first light March 14. The Department of Defense has the USS Reagan on station off the coast of Japan and the USS Essex en route, and is currently using an air facility in Misawa as a forward operating base. The American Red Cross (ARC) International Services team is supporting the Japanese Red Cross Society (JRCS) to assess the impact, determine response efforts, and assist the people of Japan. (Examiner)
Additional financial aid has come from non-government sources and corporations. Japan has received about $161 million in aid from the United States, about ¾ being collected by the American Red Cross (USA Today). While this combined amount of $239 million sounds like a lot, I am ashamed that this is all the United States has collected over the entire month since the disaster. For the earthquake in Haiti, we raised $528 million, and for Hurricane Katrina, we raised $1 billion. But to be fair, I am sure we will collect much more money as time progresses. Also we have donated many non-monetary goods such as military personnel, food, recon aircraft, anti-radiation suits, and additional nuclear accident specialists; these things are definitely a step in the right direction.
My community service project was directly aimed at helping out Japan with these hard times. I did two projects this year – one was my Eagle Scout project, which was not relevant to much, so I decided not to write about it. The second project I did was that I helped Kyung with her art show. I helped her with planning, setting up meetings with the artists, and other logistics. The art show was all her idea and initial planning, I just helped with some of the later planning and execution. I had 3 pieces of my photography in the show, so I helped organize how the other photographers and I would present our work. I helped to find a place that would print for relatively cheap, and we got several prints of each piece, and then mounted everyone’s work on poster boards, with all of one person’s work on one poster board. We made art prints $5 each and photo prints $10, because photo prints were more expensive for us to print. It ended up being more money towards the cause. I spent $120 on prints, but only asked for $50 back for reimbursements, because I was getting a paycheck soon. We also made a lot of money from the bake sale, and our donation jars tactically placed around the show. We weren’t really planning on selling the original art pieces, just prints – but someone offered to buy one of Kyung’s pieces for $100, and another girl’s piece sold for $50, so those made up a considerable chunk of our proceeds. In total we made about $1200. About $100-150 went to reimburse people for baking supplies or printing costs, but the rest we sent to the Red Cross. It was not much compared to how much was donated to the Red Cross in total, but we did what we could, and I think we did pretty well for a two-day student art show.
In terms of how my community service related to things we’ve learned this year, a lot of the cost planning was very economic. We had to plan and balance our budget, and get some additional funds approved by her parents. Some of the social dynamics were interesting as well – Kyung had the final word on things, which we all accepted, but some people got upset at the way some things were going, and I had to calm Kyung down at some points to make sure nothing bad happened, and I worked to keep people happy and involved with the show. I would say that towards the end of the show I was some sort of vice president, if we were to put it into a hierarchy metaphor in government terms. Kyung checked over a lot of choices with me, and we changed some of her plans to streamline the event and make everything go more smoothly than originally planned.
Part III
There is not an easy answer for what needs to be done to make this situation better. The United States is doing what we can with our bad economy, but it is not enough. I would have rather that we not send thousands of military troops to Japan, because I think it’s a pointless expense. Japan has a strong military, and an active police force, so I feel that we could use the money to pay for the troops elsewhere, like for food, water, more excavation vehicles, or anything else that could provide aid for Japan. Other countries are providing a lot of aid collectively, but individually, most of them are providing one or two things, like money and food, or just money. I think if all the first-world countries gave as much as we did, and promoted aid as much as we do, Japan would have much more of a smooth recovery.
Though I had already designed and managed my Eagle project, I learned new things from this project as well. These two projects were different in that with my Eagle one, I called all the shots and designed the entire thing myself, which was a lot more work. I was also barely motivated to do it at all. With this art show, I wasn’t nearly as stressed as I was for my Eagle project because I wasn’t in charge, but I still had a role in planning and execution. It was hard to make decisions while making sure everyone was okay with them and that we were all on the same page about everything. The dynamics of the projects were different in that in the art show, our goal was to make money, not to build something. We had to come up with prices for everything. We didn’t really have a budget cap on the art show, as our parents were usually helpful in providing financial support, at least until we could pay them back. For both projects, we had to cut costs as much as we could to keep the price affordable. I was much more satisfied with the art show than I was with my eagle project. It was a lot more satisfying for me to see everything work out, and let some people take over other jobs, like making the baked goods, and getting their work to us. We also had to get hundreds of people to come to the event, so we printed and put up posters for hours, as well as put the show in a couple local news publications. For my project, all I had to do was announce it at a meeting, because I only needed a few people there. At the art show, we also had to deal mainly with adults, which wasn’t really a big difference. One thing I enjoyed the most about the art show was that when it was finally happening, we could all sit back and watch people come through, and could look at our project in action without doing physical labor. I had a great time doing the art show, and it was for a great cause; I was very happy with it. We even got a request to have a booth at some event in the future, so that will be enjoyable too. I’m not sure quite what it is because I haven’t talked to the person who proposed it, but for the next one, it will be fewer artists, but more art pieces per artist, so there may be an opportunity for each of us to get our names out as artists.
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