The Sendai disaster reminds us caring for loved ones comes first. Over thousands of years our species has learned how to survive on this deadly planet. This is my story of learning from the disaster. In the back of mind was, what about my family along the Oregon and Washington coasts? How do we plan for what we don’t expect?

The story begins over 30 years ago when we hosted exchange student Yukie Miyata from northern Japan. We’ve stayed in touch through Facebook while she teaches in Canada.

Suddenly Facebook friends asked if she was OK. Just before the earthquake, she’d posted from Japan when she arrived to see her mother, father and sister. 

Twenty-four hours later a friend reported, “Just talked to Yukie via Skype, they are all safe, a little shaken.” Does all of my family have Skype?

She posted after the Internet came back on briefly. “People are panicking here.”

Her terse comments described people standing in long lines to stock up on food. Roads and railroads were closed. Aftershocks rattled them daily. Worse quakes were predicted. “I feel like I’m shaking all the time. I’m scared.” Yukie, where are you?

  As we waited for her next post, nuclear fears mounted. I talked with a nuclear engineer who worked in a boiler reactor similar to ones in Fukushima. He emailed me background websites from the nuclear regulatory commission, nrc.gov/japan/faqs, and the nuclear engineering institute, nei.cachefly.net.

Both sites constantly clarified the confusing, inevitably inaccurate, unfolding information from reports about evacuation zones, radiation levels, plant designs, etc. There is no danger for my family right now. What about Yukie?

He said US plants shouldn’t explode from contained hydrogen because vents would release it into the air. They have more backup systems to cool reactors and spent fuel rods during a station blackout.

Two days later, Sandi Doughton in the Seattle Times reported Washington’s Hanford boiler reactor was better designed. The engineer confirmed the article’s perspective. Our Hanford plant is safer.

By midweek Yukie’s story had appeared on her local Canadian television station. She was in Morioka, and satellite maps showed is 120 miles north of Sendai and 66 miles west of the coastline. She is relatively safe.

She was caring for her family while feeling 30 shocks per day. Garbage had to be kept at home because trucks had no gasoline to haul it away. She picked up a few fresh vegetables from once empty shelves. A sign read, ‘Take only what you need.’

Yukie said, “People are taking only what they need, because they know other people need more.” Would we act as respectfully?

She received cash from tellers in overcoats because heat and lighting were turned down. Signs everywhere read, “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

She didn’t feel they needed to apologize. “They didn’t cause the earthquake.” Would we apologize?

She posted a photograph of herself with a smile underneath a white cap, pink turtleneck and grey overcoat. Her right hand signaled thumbs up.

Her future is uncertain. The hospital can only provide a week’s supply of epilepsy medication for her sister. The Canadian Embassy said she couldn’t take her parents to Canada without visas. She doesn’t know when she’ll return to Canada.

She showed a picture of a cherry tree preserved in a square in downtown Morioka because it had cracked a boulder. She wrote, “Our people are strong like this cherry tree.”