TAWOMG - Wrath of God

Dear Friends,

I'm currently reading "Wrath of God" by Edward Paice. It was a present from my brother when we met in Rome in January. It is about Lisbon's earthquake in November 1755. Experts estimate that its magnitude might have been around 9,0 degrees in the Richter scale. At that time it was one of the most devastating quakes on record. A tsunami, two powerful aftershocks and a big fire that lasted for a week followed it. 80% of Lisbon was destroyed. Estimations are that between 30.000 and 40.000 people perished in the disaster. The Royal Family was spared by chance: that morning they were at Belém, not at the Paço da Ribeira, the royal palace. The palace, as the whole neighbourhood by the Tagus River, collapsed due to the shake, was flooded by the tsunami and then caught by the fire. Nothing remained of it.

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The book is very well documented and reports vividly what happened that day and how some real people, most of them British citizens living in the Portuguese capital, coped with the events and survived. In 1755 Lisbon was the fourth largest European city and Portugal one of the richest kingdoms (mostly thanks to Brazilian gold). It was also a deeply catholic country. In face of tragedy, many believed that doomsday had come and their reaction was to pray for God's mercy.

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Just seven months before Lisbon had opened its new opera house. It was the largest, finest and richest in the whole of Europe. It was one of the megalomaniac projects ordered by late King Dom João V. Nothing of it was left. From all material losses, this is the one that shocks me most. Portugal was never again capable of building anything similar to it. Lisbon, though, was rebuilt under the plans of Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo (later created Marquis of Pombal) and gained a new and modern urban design.

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Although time, place and technology are completely different, "Wrath of God" helps to figure out what happened in Japan last week. The Japanese earthquake was also of magnitude 9,0 in the Richter scale, in a costal area, followed by a tsunami and many aftershocks. In the eighteenth century the news of the disaster took weeks or even months to be known in different parts of the world. Today everywhere in the globe we can see live TV images of the catastrophe unfolding. Another big difference is the present threat of an atomic disaster, depending on what happens in Fukushima

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When I read on the papers about Fukushima my first thought is an obvious one: what they tell is probably only part of the truth, masked by some lies. That is not to blame the Japanese government - any government in any place would probably behave so in a similar situation. Will we ever know all that went wrong in the nuclear plant and the real risk involved? Let's hope that the worst can be avoided, but official news is a bad indicator of what is really going on.

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I also remember a book that I read three years ago, after visiting Tokio. I wrote about it in the second posting of this blog. It is Alex Kerr's book "Dogs and Demons - The Fall of Modern Japan". One of the chapters is about Japan's nuclear plants. What Kerr describes is almost unbelievable. When you read the book you get the impression that, should one day the Japanese nuclear plants be under a serious threat, the situation would most probably go out of control. Again, let's just hope that in the present situation the Japanese experts will be able to avoid a nuclear disaster and what Kerr writes in his book does not apply to Fukushima.

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The earthquake that hit Japan last week is a powerful reminder that, in fact, neither safety nor security does actually exist. Those are an aspiration of our time, but in fact they will never be absolute. You never know when an earthquake, a car accident, a plane crash, a stroke, a kangaroo jumping in front of your car or any other event may happen and change it all.

Wish you a safe week,

Maurício