Japanese Lessons

Here in this sprawling megalopolis, the world's biggest, citizens know the not-too-distant future could bring history's most expensive natural disaster, a trillion-dollar catastrophe that likely will be triggered by an earthquake and perhaps compounded by flooding and fires.

Officials forecast a death toll of anywhere from 4,000 to 150,000, depending on the quake's strength and location.

Though earthquakes cause more insomnia for emergency planners here than killer storms, Tokyo has plenty in common with New Orleans. In particular, much of Japan's most important city lies well below sea level, and to defend it, Tokyoites depend as much on levees -- about 180 miles of them -- as New Orleanians.



Indeed, the Japanese are so convinced of impending disaster that they have for two decades seriously debated moving the central government's functions out of the capital to a safer spot. The government regularly puts citizens through disaster drills.

And yet just like the lower reaches of the Mississippi River, Tokyo Bay pumps economic life into the country, and so demands a major population center on its flank. The fact that it's an even more dangerous place to build than New Orleans is simply a problem the Japanese have decided to solve. As best they can, anyway.

from the Times Picayune