Duncan Williams, a UC Berkeley associate professor of East Asian languages and cultures, was on his way to the Narita International Airport in Tokyo when a devastating earthquake shook Japan.
“My train nearly derailed in Chiba Prefecture, which is about 200 miles from Sendai, the epicenter,” he said in an e-mail.
In the days following the onset of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and ensuing catastrophic tsunami that hit the east coast of Japan last Friday, UC officials are working to ensure the safety of faculty like Williams – who was able to return to Berkeley this past weekend – as well as the potential relocation of students that are currently abroad.
According to a UC Office of the President statement released Friday, the UC has identified some 32 faculty, staff and researchers who were in Japan as well as about 80 students in the UC Education Abroad Program.
Mary McMahon, the UC Education Abroad Program regional director, said the students in Japan have been accounted for and are safe. A subsequent UCOP statement released Monday stated that the faculty, staff and researchers are also safe.
Another group of students was scheduled to begin their spring term in Japan on April 1. From this group, UC Berkeley sophomore Alex Hendricks said he is now unsure as to whether he will be able to depart.
“Basically, no decision by the university has been made either way as to whether I’ll even be allowed to go to Japan if I wanted to,” he said in an e-mail. “And at this point I’m vacillating between whether I’d even want to go if given the opportunity.”
McMahon said most programs will be moving forward, while those universities that have been affected – namely those in northern Japan – will either offer students the opportunity to study at another university in Japan or in another country. McMahon declined to name which universities had been affected.
Because universities were on spring break, most UC students abroad were relatively unaffected by the event and were either traveling in other parts of Europe and Asia or were at home with their families, said McMahon.
However, she added that roughly 15 students will be relocated to the UC Tokyo Study Center, where housing has been arranged to accommodate those that were residing in affected areas.
“Our first 48 hours were finding students, making sure they were safe and then relocating any that may be in a danger zone,” she said. “We are now turning our attention to try to look forward and see what can go on as normal and what we might need to adjust.”
UC spokesperson Lynn Tierney said issues affecting the entire country, such as a lack of water, limited housing and rolling blackouts, will also affect students, especially if they do not have constant power sources.
UC Berkeley graduate student Bart Watson was in Fuji City – about 84 miles southwest of Tokyo – for an Ultimate Frisbee tournament when the earthquake hit and said that travel following the tsunami was difficult because the country’s electric trains had stopped running due to the blackouts.
“We didn’t get much of the tsunami, luckily,” Watson said. “We stayed there for another day because no trains were running and eventually made it back to Tokyo … I saw panic behind. People were buying bread and water and there were super long gas lines.”
He said after traveling to Tokyo by car, he was able to return to Berkeley on Monday. Though there was little structural damage in Tokyo, there were aftershocks from the earthquake about once every hour, he said.
“We could still feel the earthquake (in Fuji City) pretty strongly and it was definitely the strongest I’ve ever felt,” he said.
Tierney said now that the UC has located all students, they are continuing to make plans to move forward.
“Our position is to try to … make sure they’re safe, make sure we get them to a safe place and then make decisions about continuing their education,” she said.