Video of Shaking from the 6 September 2018 Earthquake in Hokkaido

            I finally got around to cropping (both in length and size - some details are not needed nor desired to be shared) of the shaking from the 6 September 2018 earthquake in Hokkaido. 

It's interesting that Yuba (closest on the bed) awakened before detectable shaking. He awakens at time stamp 03:08:12 (lower right corner) and the shaking starts at 03:08:17 (which is when I awaken). (I know the official time of the earthquake is 3:08AM but not to the second. However, the epicenter is only about 35 kilometers away from us so it most likely didn't take the earthquake waves much time to reach us.) It appears either the earthquake started too softly for humans to detect 5 seconds before the shaking, or, uh, I dunno - somehow, Yuba detected the earthquake before the shaking started, by five seconds. As soon as he realized he didn't like the experience, he shot off the bed, leaving every cat (and human) to fend for himself. (Bonkers was awake at the start of the video and was quite surprised at the earthquake - he was between our pillows. I don't know why he was awake other than he's an old cat and perhaps awakens in the middle of the night for not particular reason. Or particular reasons he doesn't see fit to share with us.)

The camera moves during the earthquake due to the shaking (and gives you a great view of my leg, if that's what constitutes a great view (I'm not of that opinion myself)).

You can see a few things fall over in the bedroom - they were balanced precariously apparently - including my cell phone (which survived the 30 cm drop to the floor without any damage) and my fan (which also survived).

Lots of my books fell over downstairs, and a few figures Naomi had on a shelf fell over upstairs. My books survived without issue (a pun sneaked in!) and so did Naomi's figures (except for one broken crystal figure, and one that is still missing, most likely behind a bookshelf).

We only experienced minor, trivial damage and were lucky. Other than stress, we were not harmed. The cats were also unharmed by the earthquake except for Yuba who suffered a huge amount of stress for some reason. It took him days to calm down.

Power lasted until about 3:30 in the morning when cascading failures in Hokkaido's electric system brought down the entire island (other than those who had generators or other means of local power - we had neither).

Last I heard, 41 people died due to the earthquake, most of them due to landslides near the epicenter. Several hundred were injured. Hokkaido's power has been restored but not fully in the sense consumption is very close to capacity - the power company continues to run commercials urging people to conserve power. With colder weather on its way, electric power consumption will go up, so the power company and the government is quite worried...

This video is from our only security camera (which we used to spy on our cats - we don't want them to make long distance calls when we're not there - this particular camera is in the bedroom to spy on Yuba, who likes to sleep on the bed a lot - that was a long digression) - which was recording at the time of the earthquake. When there's no visible (eg, to humans) light, it automatically records in grayscale infrared. The green rectangles you see are the camera indicating where it has detected motion.

[25 September 2018] When I uploaded this, Flickr set it to private, so no one could see it. (I didn't realize no one could see this until I noticed zero views on the video. I had to use a browser I never used before so I could check Flickr without being signed into it.) Other than my leg sticking out of the blanket, there's nothing really private about this video... If someone objects to my bare leg, I will be happy to change the "safety" level of this video.

Some rights reserved

Taken on: September 24, 2018

Tags:

6 September 2018

Edited

24 September 2018

Grayscale

Infrared

Earthquake

Bed

Animal

Cat

Bonkers

Yuba

Naomi

Family

Shake

Night

Large

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Sets appears in: • Cats • Animals more » • Around the House • Japan • Hokkaido • Kitahiroshima/北広島 • Naomi • Grayscale • Bonkers • Yuba • Video • Large Image • Natural Disaster • Topical • Infrared • Family • Old Edited « less

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