My wife, some of you may recall her hysteria over "the radiation", just called from Niigata, where she and the boys are visiting their grandparents and great-grandmother.
Anyway she told me that NHK just announced a severe weather alert for Tuesday afternoon, April 3rd.  I searched the Internet and found this
http://yokosonews.com/news/20120403...ing-storm/

[Weather Alert] Japan may experience typhoon-class spring storm tomorrow

JMA officials gave the warning that people should go home early tomorrow especially Hokuriku, Tokyo, Kanto and Tohoku area.

Be safe!!!

Thanks for the heads up, I'd have never of known!

Yeah thanks. I'm letting my friends know in Iwakuni and in the Kanto bases. People ought to secure or bring in loose items from the yard or balcony. I think the base is more attuned to giving cyclone warnings but they may not do warnings about high winds. I appreciate the heads up.

None of the weather reporting agencies I follow indicate that, let's see how it tuns out.

It's a little late for an April fools prank.....

Change-1

It just pop up elsewhere too potential 50 Knot winds where I'm at.

Welp, guess I wont be detailing the car or making a run to Upgarage tomorrow.

Seems like they should have had that warning on Sat. That was some wind!

Seems like they should have had that warning on Sat. That was some wind!

11:00 AM -- getting pretty windy here in Iwakuni. Along with heavy clouds & rain. Winds are quite as crazy as predicted, but I think it's still growing in intensity.

So is it going to be safe to get out and about? Like if I have to go off base?

Ikego winds are just kicking up. Clouds look mean but no rain yet. Will the mini mart stay open, does anyone know?

Oh..i take it back. it just cracked off!

Not much going on down here yet. Little windy but thats it.

Here's some additional information for Kanto-area bases:

http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific...y-1.173404

It's crazy here in Iwakuni now (almost 2 PM). Remember, we're supposed to get the winds a few hours before you. My wife called in a panic that our AFN satellite dish had blown down. About 2 bolts were holding it on our balcony. I dashed home & removed it, pulled all the pieces into the house to be reinstalled once the winds die down. On the way home, an oncoming motorcycle got blown into my lane; I could see him struggling to get back into his lane which took about 50 yards before he was able to do so. That coulda been tragic.

So I get to the gym, they have this huge Big Top tent out back which was set up for some major event. It's a tarp on a heavy steel frame held down with straps to 4 concrete blocks. Two of the straps broke, the darn thing went airborne lifting up the other 2 concrete blocks. It was a real hazard. Finally, some gym employees went out & cut off the tarp. The heavy steel legs of this tent are damaged beyond repair. I've got some pix which I'll upload later.

Loads of fun!

If for some reason you think gates will be closed, they won't be!! Why would they do that!?! We need people to get home! Stay safe everyone. Our trees in Ikego don't seem to be blown down as much as they were last saturday, so far.

Looks like all non-essential personnel are being told to go home. Stores are closing and it took me 25min to get from the high school to front gate.

Poor job of letting people know about this... We got the first warning 30 mins AFTER non essential personnel were to leave.

GREAT JOB.

Looking back they have known about this since early YESTERDAY morning... The info was not well desiminated.

Yokosuka mini-mart and gas station, 7 p.m

Gotta love it. My daughter went to the auto-port at 2:50 to buy something for school and it was closed. It's now 3:44 and she is still sitting in traffic!

Posted By Groovie on 04-03-2012 3:44 PM

Yokosuka mini-mart and gas station, 7 p.m

Gotta love it. My daughter went to the auto-port at 2:50 to buy something for school and it was closed. It's now 3:44 and she is still sitting in traffic!

I was at the autoport at 1500 and it wasn't closed. 

I got an email from my ombudsman with a 2 hour warning.... 15 minutes after that email there was a mad rush to get off base

You call that a storm?

Looks like all the "lessons learned" from the Big One last year have been seamlessly integrated into the base emergency notification procedures. NOT!!

Oh this place. One big clusterbutt!

Took us forever to back to Kawasaki from Shinagawa!

Thank you to this site and to toraenglish for posting this yesterday. Because of you, I was given enough time to prepare for this storm by going to the Commissary earlier today and picking my daughter up from school rather then letting her go to the Youth Center afterwards. Thank you so much!

Im really getting nervous..the wind is freaking me out big time! Im looking outside and the waves in the water are looking pretty strong.

Phoenix337,

Glad to be of assistance and that you were able to prepare. We have to take care of each other. I learned March 11th 2011 that you can't depend on the folks in charge. We have to take charge of our safety and well-being ourselves. That means working together and getting out good info to each other.

By the way, the results from the Yen 15,000 radiation soil tests my wife insisted on for my garden are in, but that's for another post. It's not pretty, by the way.

toraenglish, where do you all live? I see why your wife insist on things like this!

My "radiation hysterical" wife just informed me that a tornado warning was just issued for Kanagawa Prefecture.

My across-the-road neighbor has a basement. If I hear a freight train- I'm headin there!

GM1shoney,

My wife and two sons took the train back from Niigata and arrived this morning, so she's giving me reports as she hears them on television. Nice to have a native speaker in the house.

We live on the top of a little mountain on the Hayama/Zushi border, a few blocks from a high school. If you're heading towards Ikego, the half-block before the 7/11 has a road heading up towards our place. We bought the land and built the house in 2007

Looks like all the "lessons learned" from the Big One last year have been seamlessly integrated into the base emergency notification procedures. NOT!!

Thaiguy,

I disagree. I think they have come along way since the last major incident. We have a notification system at work, which also integrates into personal emails as well.

I dont know if everyone took the time to fill it in, and get themselves registered into the system properly, but I was notified in a good amount of time.

As they put out information, I was emailed, at my work email, and personal email from 1 blast. Also I received a notification pop up at work.

So I give them 2 thumbs up for the progress they have made.

Now does it have room to expand and improve?

Yes.

How?

Well like I have said previously, at town hall meetings, and online, the vision is not to inform the service members, its to inform the community. The community means DEPENDENTS, contractors, employees at different locations throughout the base, etc..

How many dependents were notified ahead of time? Not many.

How many employees were notified, that dont sit behind a computer non stop like I do? Not many.

So there is definitely room to improve the notification procedures.

When I went to pick up Julia this afternoon, the employees at the daycare, had no clue the base sent a notification. They told me, that typically they are the last to know when information is released. Which got me thinking. How many other entities are left in the dark, clueless to what is happening with their surroundings?

How would I suggest improving?

I would suggest developing a notification system which informs anyone that subscribes to a feed. Will there be faults? Yes, because its a volunteer status to get everyone who wants to receive notifications into that system.

When the base realizes that Facebook is not the end all, they will realize to invest additional funding into other alternative means.

Not everyone has a facebook account. Those that do, probably dont regularly go to the bases official channels, to see, hmmm what is the base got to tell us today. So if it doesnt immediately appear on their wall, when they login, then chances are they wont see that notification.

How to fix that?

You need another alternative method, to inform people.

You create a system, which has a method for people to subscribe to different areas.

Lets say Sasebo, Yokosuka, Iwakuni, Okinawa..

They can put in their official emails, there cell phone emails, etc. You have to make this available to everyone, which to some degree causes a minor risk, but the risk involves those with editor access, and what they are releasing to the public.

No different than what is being released via facebook channels.

The goal is dissemination of real world disaster information, to who it matters, and getting it to them in a fast. Giving the ability for someone to place their cell phone emails, like docomo, au, etc.. That provides everyone the maximum chance to know about things ahead of schedule.

It also provides contractors, civilians, dependents, etc, to all have the ability to stay informed before things happen.

The key with subscription is to divide the methods.

When I mentioned above about each base, thats exactly that. If an editor was to post something, they can specify ALL OF JAPAN, (which you would want to limit who has that access, to possibly only USFJ), but then you have CFAY commands (YOKOSUKA, IKEGO, NEGISHI), or even just yokosuka, or just ikego.

The idea would be to disseminate the information to the accurate crowd that subscribed to which feeds they want to be informed about.

Personally I dont think this is that difficult to implement. The problem is, myself getting everyone on the same page, to utilize such a system.

First someone has to create it.

Second, USFJ needs to enforce it.

The goal is to help protect our service members, dependents, and civilian community living abroad in Japan.

When people start to think less about themselves, and think more about, how can we utilize technology to protect our personnel, things can improve in the right direction.

Sorry I wrote a book..

If this hypothetical system included all email addresses that people voluntarily provide (such as dependents, contractors, etc.) PLUS had a cell phone texting capability, that would reach just about 100% of their target audience.

How/Where do you sign up for advance weather warnings?

I guess that was winter's last gasp. It is a calm & beautiful spring day in Iwakuni. :-)