61896    It sounds as though all disasters are the acts of God, and "the government is not to blame."

61897    If this earthquake had indeed been something greater than expected, doesn't it mean the method to make such forecast might have been flawed?

61898    Human intelligence should have its own limit.

61899    In that regard, there could have been a prediction that did not underestimate nature.

61900    If we comment on that prediction, what shocked many people was that after persistently hearing that "because there are so many earthquakes in this country, Japan has the best quake-resistant structures in the world," their faith in their safety had been badly shaken.

61901    In particular, the collapsed elevating structures for expressways which had been supposedly able to withstand the magnitude equivalent to that for the Great Kanto Earthquake as well as the fallen bridges for the bullet trains which had been the creme de la creme this engineering giant had to offer further increased the nation's fear and anxiety.

61902    The Los Angeles Earthquake in January of last year destroyed expressways and devastated that region.

61903    While the government sent a group of researchers to the US and prepared a report in February, it concluded that, "there is no lesson to be learned and the structures in Japan are safe," pointing out that America has weak standards.

61904    We wonder if they had been overconfident?

61905    We hope that issue of earthquake-resistance will be re-examined with extreme care and addressed urgently.

61906    It is eerie that there has been a series of substantial earthquakes lately.

61907    There have been four earthquakes within a short span of time: the Kushiro-oki Earthquake in January of the year before last, the Hokkaido Nansei-oki Earthquake in July of the same year, the Hokkaido Toho-oki Earthquake in October last year, followed by the Sanriku-haruka-oki Earthquake two months later.

61908    Under these circumstances, some seismologists pointed out that, "the quiet period for earthquakes has ended and it is possible that the active period has begun," but there has been no evidence of proactive anti-earthquake measures taken by the government being alarmed by the situation.

61909    We wonder if there was a negligence among those involved as none of those four quakes struck overpopulated cities and, in addition, all of the epicenters were far away from land.

61910    The forecast for the active period for earthquakes is being substantiated in an ominous way.