Posted: 3/20/2011 4:43:21 PM EDT
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Long time lurker, first time poster in this section. I'm usually found most often in the Humidor, Team, General, or Indiana Hometown forum.
Some notes I thought you all would appreciate... My family and I are on Okinawa, removed from what's going on in Northwest Mainland somewhat. Due to the jetstream I'm not worried about radiation at all really, and given the type and distribution of the radiation I wouldn't be too worried in Tokyo right now. Nonetheless, we were affected by what happened up there, and could have been or could be moreso in the coming days. Some adjustments to the family preps/bugout/comm plans are in order. 1. Comm plan. Cell phones were out. Everybody's. My work phone (Docomo), my personal phone (Softbank), wife's Softbank, etc. Not reliable. Worthless. The number one prep adjustment I'm making right now is getting my mitts on the Japanese version of the "FRS" band radios. They aren't really that powerful, but they are better than a worthless cell phone. We ended up communicating by Facebook. I know that causes a collective gasp and subsequent sphincter pucker in the tinfoil hat portion of the community, but setting up a sterile profile for you and your loved ones is easy, and we were able to communicate beautifully through that medium. 2. Fuel tanks. Okinawa is 67 miles long. Not that big. I can rip the island with one tank. When I saw how easily we could be affected by supply chain/logistics disruptions in the short term, the family mandate is now that 1/2 tank of gas is considered an empty tank. A bicycle for myself is also in future plans. I could easily get to work and gather resources on a bike, and it is now senseless in my mind not to have one, with flat repair capabilites. 3. Pantry diversification/water storage. Much like many of you, we diversify our pantry so that we wouldn't get bored with eating rice and beans for the roughly 90 days we are set up for. Also, much like many of you we rotate out stock and use up things and replenish as needed. We were on the down side of the cycle, and we need some dried fruit and nuts dammit. Watch your rotations, overlap as needed. We have plenty of calories in there still, but I'm sure morale would be higher if we had some fruit for the oatmeal on day 90. Our water storage plan needs some beefing up. We have quite a bit on hand for the 5 or so days a typhoon might knock out service, but we need to store some more. I have plenty of space for this under the bathroom vanities, just need to get crackin. Current plan for longer than typhoon timeline depends on someone being home to fill up the bathtubs. Unsat. 4. EDC & BOB. I of course am well heeled, I will be stashing a small BOB at the wife unit's work. 5. The 5k. I need to start turning in these regularly on foot. In the absence of a bicycle in conjunction with clogged roadways, I'll be humping it around this distance to either the base my wife works on or to any number of named family rally points to meet wife and son. I know I can do it walking, but I need to be able to do it faster. A runner I am not, but I am in shape due to swimming every day and good hard Japanese Judo club practices twice a week. ETA on #5, I'm a terminal civilian so I'm not required to be in shape 
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| Thank you very much for sharing first hand experience. It's always extremely helpful from someone 'who's been there!' Hope all goes well with you and your family. My wife and I have been daily praying for you all in the affected areas. May GOD bless you with every step you take in His direction. |
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Do you have any explanation for why all of the cell phones were out?
Heavy call traffic? Or something else? The "physical plant" in Okinawa should not have been affected by the earthquake or tsunami, and it's hard to believe that service outages and/or overloads from Tokyo northward would have had any affect on the system in Okinawa. |
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They were out presumably due to overload. When I say out, they were dead. I have 2 phones from 2 different cell phone companies and I could not send or recieve calls.
ETA: The message that came up when I tried to call was "Please wait a while," and calls were immediately disconnected. If your comm plan relies heavily on cellular phones heed this warning, it happened to me/us. |
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Quoted:
They were out presumably due to overload. When I say out, they were dead. I have 2 phones from 2 different cell phone companies and I could not send or recieve calls. ETA: The message that came up when I tried to call was "Please wait a while," and calls were immediately disconnected. If your comm plan relies heavily on cellular phones heed this warning, it happened to me/us. What about texts? |
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No SMS (Docomo to Docomo messaging system) on my work phone. Did not attempt to text with my personal phone, as I had written the medium off at the time.
I have a friend from Sendai. His mother and father live in Miyagi prefecture. They are alive, and he says they have a large pantry due to his mother's gardening hobby, so they are helping friends and neighbors right now with food. |
| No worries, thanks to all of you. I never thought I would have something of relevance for the SF. Hopefully I can go back to lurking. I have learned many, many valuable lessons from all of you, and I'm always coming back and measuring my thinking about preps with postings here. |
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Quoted: No SMS (Docomo to Docomo messaging system) on my work phone. Did not attempt to text with my personal phone, as I had written the medium off at the time. I have a friend from Sendai. His mother and father live in Miyagi prefecture. They are alive, and he says they have a large pantry due to his mother's gardening hobby, so they are helping friends and neighbors right now with food. Sending SMS can work even when the cell phone system is overloaded, since text messages are transmitted on the control channel (which is used for administrative stuff such as registering a phone with a cell tower etc.), which rarely clogs, not on the traffic channels (which carry the voice data and clog much more easily). Thanks for sharing your lessons learned, and good luck! |
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Quoted:
Our water storage plan needs some beefing up. We have quite a bit on hand for the 5 or so days a typhoon might knock out service, but we need to store some more. I have plenty of space for this under the bathroom vanities, just need to get crackin. Current plan for longer than typhoon timeline depends on someone being home to fill up the bathtubs. Unsat. Lots of houses in Oki have cisterns on the roof, is that not an option? |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
Our water storage plan needs some beefing up. We have quite a bit on hand for the 5 or so days a typhoon might knock out service, but we need to store some more. I have plenty of space for this under the bathroom vanities, just need to get crackin. Current plan for longer than typhoon timeline depends on someone being home to fill up the bathtubs. Unsat. Lots of houses in Oki have cisterns on the roof, is that not an option? Off base apartment. A lot of those cisterns also depend on a water delivery service, somehting I could see easily disrupted here if something happened. We are DOD affiliated, so if it came down to brass tacks, we could probably rely on base field water purification units, but I prefer to have that as a plan C. |
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Did it effect your land lines (phone)? I guess the internet was OK if you could use FB. Parents couldn't call in, we couldn't call out except for SKYPE which is a vOIP service as far as that evening. I don't know if NTT was overloaded or whether they shut down to everybody but emergency services. One of the Costies that we have here teaching our HAZWOPER course said his wife got a call through, but their unit (NSFPST) tried a recall that didn't go through, his wife ended up letting their unit know everybody was accounted for. 2T2_Crash (member here, on Oki) had cell service. Desdurdesu had local service but could not contact Tokyo or parts North. |
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Quoted:
They were out presumably due to overload. When I say out, they were dead. I have 2 phones from 2 different cell phone companies and I could not send or recieve calls. ETA: The message that came up when I tried to call was "Please wait a while," and calls were immediately disconnected. If your comm plan relies heavily on cellular phones heed this warning, it happened to me/us. I live on the east coast and was in northern West Virgina on 9/11. Cell service was nonexistent into or out of the metro area.Prepare as if phones do not exist. Excellent post. |
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Good straight forward advice chico...thanks for sharing your experience.
A mountain bike with "city" tires is my main get around back up in an emergency. I have little faith that in a real emergency a BOV will have any use. In every disaster footage Ive watched gridlock and low/no fuel was a problem. I also recently purchased a HAM radio for the sole purpose of having backup COM since I beleive cell phones will be dead in an emergency...and it seems smart resourceful good types of people use these radios, so it may also be a way to make some good quality friends in an emergency. Stay safe brother! |
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Good straight forward advice chico...thanks for sharing your experience. A mountain bike with "city" tires is my main get around back up in an emergency. I have little faith that in a real emergency a BOV will have any use. In every disaster footage Ive watched gridlock and low/no fuel was a problem. I also recently purchased a HAM radio for the sole purpose of having backup COM since I beleive cell phones will be dead in an emergency...and it seems smart resourceful good types of people use these radios, so it may also be a way to make some good quality friends in an emergency. Stay safe brother! HAM is illegal here. They have 3 bands with no license requirements. The strongest of these is 5 hot watts  It's better than nothing. Traffic is horrible on Oki anyway, so a cycling I will go. I could easily make it to work more quickly on a bike than in my car every morning. I'm thinking about stashing my car at work (fenced in Marine Corps facility) and riding every day.
zac72blazer how is Misawa these days? I've gotten random bits and pieces through the DODDS grapevine, but we haven't seen too much on AFN. |
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Quoted:
They were out presumably due to overload. When I say out, they were dead. I have 2 phones from 2 different cell phone companies and I could not send or recieve calls. ETA: The message that came up when I tried to call was "Please wait a while," and calls were immediately disconnected. If your comm plan relies heavily on cellular phones heed this warning, it happened to me/us. A note on cell phones. I was in Nothern Virginia on 09/11/01 (next to the Pentagon actually) and although no significant damage was done to cell phone and land-line infrastructure both where useless within minutes after the attack at the Pentagon. User overload had shut down both for a few hours. I do not know how far the "overload" extended. Thank you for your post chicobrownbear. Good luck to you and your family. |
| The phones are back to normal, power is not fully up, talks of rolling black outs, quote from base commander ("we are 200 coffee pots from being over out limit") The new 200 mi of limits area puts a damper on our humanitarin effort. Evac flights started yesterday. Fuel is limited to 10 gal and you must be on a quarter tank or less. Fresh food and fuel out in town are scarce. |
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Thanks for the post, OP. It's always good to see real-world reports. Do look into texting if this happens again, however. There's a good chance you may be able to text when you cannot get a call through. My BIL and his family live on Okinawa near Kadena AFB. I spoke to him on the Friday morning (US time) after the quake via Skype. For anyone who doesn't have Skype, it's free and if your Internet is still up it's a viable means of commo via voice, video calling, or instant text messaging. |
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Quoted:
A mountain bike with "city" tires is my main get around back up in an emergency. I have little faith that in a real emergency a BOV will have any use. In every disaster footage Ive watched gridlock and low/no fuel was a problem. Mine too. I bought a rack and panniers for mine so I could increase the carrying load. Unfortunately my MTB has disc brakes so I can't carry as much. Hell, if it worked for the Viet Cong, it can work for me. |
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This article ran in our Sunday paper and sums up what we should be striving for in terms of working togethr after an event, but which I doubt would happen here in most of the US
HADENYA, Japan — The colossal wave that swept away this tiny fishing hamlet also washed out nearby bridges, phone lines and cellphone service, leaving survivors shivering and dazed and completely cut off at a hilltop community center. Almost as soon as the waters receded, villagers divided tasks along gender lines, and men went scavenging for firewood and gas. With no time to mourn for their missing loved ones, they were immediately thrust into the struggle to stay alive in the frigid winter cold, amid a hushed, apocalyptic landscape of wrecked homes, crushed vehicles and stranded boats. They had scant food and fuel and no news from the outside world — not even the scope of the devastation. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/asia/24isolated.html?_r=1&ref=martinfackler |
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Lived on Okinawa from 1967 to 1972. Went through many typhoons during that period. Lived off-base - Awase in an old house overlooking Buckner Bay that had 16 inch thick walls. It's gone now, but it weathered a lot and was better built that a lot of the houses up there now.
We always had several 5-gallon water jugs around and enough sterno to cook meals for several days. Our hibachi got a workout as well. Most of the food we could get then on base was of the canned variety. We had a stash of K rations (before MREs) and had small banana and madarin orange trees in the back yard. Never had any problem with commo - our land lines back then were old military ones from the 1950s and were indestructible. We had walkie-talkies that worked very well on the small island then. Base had code for emergencies that was broadcast on TV channel and radio - my Dad had a vehicle card that allowed him to be out on the road during typhoons as he was the navy communications station commander. Used to see Okinawans "looting" from damaged stores, but figured they had been Americanized. rongorongo |
