Hi Chris. I was in that earthquake in 1964 an indeed people did walk up the sides of the apartments they lived in.

To a certain extent the 1964 Niigata earthquake was predicted.

The uplift that occurred during the years before the magnitude 7.5 earthquake that struck Niigata, Japan. Uplift was measured by plotting changes in the benchmarks over the years. The data showed that there was both uplift and subsidence for several decades until the mid 1950's, when an episode of rapid uplift occurred at all stations. This activity stabilized by about 1960 and was then followed by several years of subsidence before the earthquake.

A friend of mine who was a graduate student of the University of Kyoto told me there was going to be a quake in Niigata. He didn’t know when, but he knew it was going to be soon. He knew it was going to be a large quake. He told me this about 6 months before the quake struck.

I have been watching the news on NHK TV. There has been quite a bit of damage in the area, but nothing like we had in the 1964 quake. That is one quake I will never forget. The quakes the first of which measured magnitude 6.8 and struck at 5:56 p.m. were centered near the city of Ojiya 12 miles beneath the earth's surface. Ojiya is about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo.

So far only one person in Ojiya has died at a hospital after being hit by falling rocks and suffering a broken neck. Objects that had fallen from shelves in Tokamachi injured at least 50 people. In Ojiya, at least five others were reported injured, and homes in other towns and cities had collapsed according to the Kyodo News.

Sewage and water mains burst and gas, power and telephone services were down in some areas, officials told Japanese media.

The tremors started around dinnertime and several homes were on fire.

Ojiya city official Ei Yoshizawa said building windows had shattered, walls had cracked and books and files on shelves had fallen.

Near Ojiya, trees and soil on a hillside sheared away, burying several cars on a road below, NHK said.

The jolt triggered an automatic safety device that halted most train services, according to media reports. Two coaches of a 10-car-long bullet train, Toki No. 325 super express that left Tokyo for Niigata, derailed between Urasa and Naganoka station on the Joetsu Shinkansen Line. The company I use to work for makes the systems used to shut off the electrical power to the trains.

In some areas the roads have buckled to the extent that traffic can still use them, but they have to slow down when they cross the areas of where there is buckling. In one area it looks as if the crack in the road is about an inch wide, but the road lifted up about 10 inches making it almost impossible for vehicles to cross it.

All of the expressways in Niigata Prefecture have been closed. Electric power supply has been completely suspended to some 250,000 households in extensive areas of Niigata Prefecture, including Ojiya and Kashiwazaki.

You have no problem knowing when they have some strong aftershocks. You can see everything moving and you find yourself wondering when is it going to stop?

I have some friends that live in that area, but I won’t bug them until things return to normal. Knowing Kenji as well as I do he will probably be there with the survey teams learning as much as they can about the quake. To some people this would be a job, but to Kenji it is his life. He says the only problem he has with his job is that in order to learn about big quakes you have to have big quakes. The more you do the more you learn. He has never found a substitute. He has been doing this for about 40 years now. Studying earthquakes is his passion and his life. He doesn’t know anything else. He is scared to death of earthquakes. I’ve been with him a couple of times when we had a quake. He turns white and stops breathing. He stays put until the shaking stops. He knows within a heartbeat if he has to go to work or not. He says he can tell by how long he holds his breath. He doesn’t want any publicity. He says it keeps you from doing your work. You have to stop and answer a lot of questions for which you have no answer.

He feels that earthquake prediction will never become reality. For some quakes in some areas, yes, but not for all quakes in all areas. There will always be the quakes that no one sees coming and this is why you prepare for them. If you prepare for them you don’t have to be to concerned about when and where the next major quake strikes.

There was a lot of superficial caused by this quake. There wasn’t the damage that was seen with the 1964 quake. The quake occurred a little after 1:00 in the afternoon. I had just left the train station when the quake struck. I heard it before I felt it. It sounder as if someone was beating on a bunch of big kettledrums. I could see the ground moving as if were water. When it was over I was standing in the middle of the street. No chance of getting ran over as every car was stopped with most of the drivers standing outside their vehicles watching the buildings swaying back and forth. It got deathly quiet after the quake stopped. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Then the screaming an crying started. It was as if someone was opening a water valve. It started softly then grew to a din you can not imagine. I saw a man come running out of an office building. He started running down the street. I saw some people trying to stop him. He just ran over them as if they weren’t even there. I have no idea as to what happened to him. It isn’t a quake I will ever forget. I can still see it in my minds eye as if it occurred yesterday. Take Care…Don in creepy town