Tsunami-hit towns forgot warnings from ancestors

[Viva_La_Revolution]

MIYAKO, Japan (AP) -- Modern sea walls failed to protect coastal towns from Japan's destructive tsunami last month. But in the hamlet of Aneyoshi, a single centuries-old tablet saved the day.

"High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants," the stone slab reads. "Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point."

It was advice the dozen or so households of Aneyoshi heeded, and their homes emerged unscathed from a disaster that flattened low-lying communities elsewhere and killed thousands along Japan's northeastern shore.

Hundreds of such markers dot the coastline, some more than 600 years old. Collectively they form a crude warning system for Japan, whose long coasts along major fault lines have made it a repeated target of earthquakes and tsunamis over the centuries.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_JAPAN_EARTHQUAKE_WARNINGS_IN_STONE?SECTION=HOME&SITE=AP&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[freshwest]

1. And they made the effort to warn their descendants.

I hope this won't be taken as a slap against those who built in lower places. Sometimes that is all the land that is left for people.

[aquart]

2. They tried their best to warn them.

I had no idea these markers existed.

[jpgray]

3. Hmm. Where's our stone like that from the GIlded Age? The Depression?

[hobbit709]

4. It's like the people in dry areas

that build below the debris line on the riverbank.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Or like the people who build on barrier Islands in the Gulf.

Why the hell do they think those 2 inch above sea level spits of sand are called ..."barrier" islands?

Some people wanted to sue the state when Katrina washed half of one of the spits ( and the houses on it)
completely away, leaving 2 islands where there used to be one.