The Shaking

Chapter Twelve

Oh! This is a strong one! Tsuki thought as the panicked crowd swirling around her were thrown sprawling to the ground. Cars on the Grand Parade road running parallel to the gardens slammed on their brakes but some of them couldn't avoid shunting each other with crumping thuds. Rattled by the trembling lawn she'd fallen on to Tsuki's vision was blurred, but she could see pieces of stucco falling from the stately Georgian frontages of the seaside hotels on the other side of the parade, and hear only too well the crunching, rending, sickening sounds of destruction.

Japan being such a seismically active group of islands prone to being struck by strong earthquakes, every citizen had bousai disaster preparedness training drilled into them from an early age. Once Tsuki got over her initial shock she remembered exactly how to react: In her case this meant staying on the garden's lawn curled up with her arms and handbag shielding her head until the tremors were over.

After what could be no more than a minute the earthquake ceased. The immediate silence was broken by the moans of people in distress, the keening of activated car alarms, and the clatter of still falling debris. In the aftermath Tsuki expected to hear the shrill blowing of police whistles as the immaculately uniformed officers began to attract the attention of those nearby and bark orders at them; but those sounds were absent, for this was not Japan. Nor was there the electronic whooping of street corner public address loudspeakers issuing advice. She remembered being told the UK had very little in the way of organised civil defence; how very neglectful of the government! she thought.

"Ishi?" Tsuki called out to her friend in Japanese. "Are you OK?"

"Yes, I think so! Wow, that was powerful! Look at all the damage and the dust in the air! What are we going to do?"

"We must do what we can do to help these people." Tsuki gestured around her to where some of the stunned, silenced crowd were beginning to rise, slowly and sometimes painfully to their feet. "We should call for help and give first aid."

"Good idea!" Ishi replied.

A distant male voice shouting interrupted their conversation. "Hey! The tide's going out!" The girls looked round to the source of the bewildered cry. The man was right; the sea was swiftly retreating from its current high water level.

Dame! Both Tsuki and Ishi knew what the phenomenon meant was coming, and obviously so did some of the gaijin. Those who understood the danger the receding sea foretold ran off along the streets leading inland, some of the aimlessly confused herd following them. The rest of the gathering stayed put, collectively gawping at the unprecedented spectacle and waiting to be told what to do.

Didn't these people understand the imminent danger they were in? Did they not know what they must do in these circumstances? Tsuki's observant vision noted the lack of blue and white tsunami evacuation route signs; obviously there was no contingency plan in operation here. She felt torn in a way only a Japanese could understand; on the one hand she was a stranger here, it would not be the done thing to speak out of turn, or worse cause a needless panic in which people might be injured. However she could not remain silent and allow casualties to occur as a result. In the end Tsuki's public spirited ethos gained the upper hand.

"Ishi, we have to warn them!"

"Hai!"

Two faint, high pitched young female voices rose above the crowd's uncertain murmuring. "WARNING! GREAT DANGER! TSUNAMI IS COMING! PLEASE, YOU MUST ALL GO INLAND AT ONCE!" Slowly, like a fire catching hold along the length of a flat sheet of paper, the understanding spread and a human tide began to flow inland toward the town centre. With remarkable speed and calmness the gardens, beach, and the pier emptied of people, leaving Tsuki and Ishi among the last to go. They set off after the nervous crowd, anxiously looking behind them all the while for the expected wave.