A road construction job that would have taken months in America has been finished in less than a week in Japan. The 9.0 magnitude March 11th earthquake demolished a stretch of the Great Kanto Highway in Naka, leaving a 150 meter crater-like crack. Construction workers and engineers arrived at the damaged highway on March 17th, and by March 23rd, it looked like the road never even had a pothole.
Many workers in Japan returned to their jobs the day after the
earthquake and tsunami. Crews from the NEXCO repair company arrived at the damaged highway six days after the disaster and just six days later, the road was open to traffic. The astonishing speed of reconstruction is being used to highlight Japan’s strength and ability to recover. It’s no secret that the nation is home to some of the world’s best engineers, and the repairs at the Great Kanto Highway are certainly proof.
Via Dvice and Daily Mail
Image complied from AP photographs
It seems quite unlikely to me.
Not so much, actually–if you look at all of the “after” pics that were released, they are all of an almost completely different section of the road than the “before” pics. Notice how the sign and radio tower in the first pic are barely visible in the distance in the second pic; all of the damage that was repaired is (seemingly intentionally) off in the distance where it’s impossible to tell what sort of repair job was done. While the speedy repair would be an inspiring story, the fact that the pics come from the local gov’t agency responsible for the repairs and that they don’t let you actually look at the repairs makes it likely that it’s just an attempt to make it seem like more progress is being made than is warranted.
Just shows that “we will” is a lot stronger than “we can’t”
Just goes to show that “we will” is much stronger than “we can’t”
we need to hire the japanese to come clean up these messy roads in the us
An honest journalist would have taken the two photographs from the same location. Look closely to notice that the road was not damaged further down the road where the “after” photo was taken.
@Quixote and @ethicalhomes – I think you are mistaken. They are not “radio towers” they are high-tension power line towers. I think the cropping the two photos is unfortunate. I would like to see the complete frames of the “before” and “after” images, I think the location would be more clear. @Jessica, may we please have some pointers to the original images?
@ethicalhomes – What nonsense. The sing in the background of the after is the sign in the background of the before. Not the sign in the fore.
You can also tell by the position of the trees on both sides of the road that both photos were taken from around the same area.
Here are the two photos overlaid using the trees on the right as a guide.
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/4239/japroad.jpg
Is it just me or have the leafs on the trees changed rather remarkably in the photos? Like, they pictures were taken at different times of the year.
I call b.s.
I thought these looked pretty good. No cropping.
http://www.autoblog.com/2011/03/24/japanese-repair-quake-ravaged-road-in-just-six-days/
Link to uncropped photos…looks real to me.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1369307/Japan-tsunami-earthquake-Road-repaired-SIX-days-destroyed.html
Impressive work indeed! This shows a how well a strong society can adapt and cope with disasters. Had it been in the US, we would’ve spent 2 years and couple of million dollars trying to figure out as to why our early warning system that we spent billions of dollars installed around the globe failed to perform. And spend 3 more years and couple of more million dollars in court litigation with the contractor.
I am the one who was skeptical in the first place, but if you look closely to the photos linked you can see in the second one that the tarmac has been patched in roughly the same spot where the slide’s boundary is.
If you look at the embankment on the right you can see that “before” there was presence of grass, and “after” it looks like a brand-new slope.
For what I can see, now, I say: Japan builders rule. Well done!
(I can’t imagine this sort of response in my country. Italy, btw…)
ethicalhomes go check out the photo on the other website. This photo is taken from exact same location. You can see the sign you mentioned in the photos which are posted to another websites.
http://www.e-nexco.co.jp/english/technology/construction.html
This is the construction company’s official web.
This is not fake picture at all!!!
Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo amazing!
Only Hitler would do such a misleading propaganda shot. And do you see on the before pic how the road and the ground merge in an ecstatic embrace of earthquake orgasm? Godwin 34!
To the people wwho think these photos were two different locations, I urge you to take a closer look at landmarks. The too signs in the distance match up. Those two trees in the distance likewise match up in both photos. So do the trees on the right.
@Ethical Homes If anybody has worked on roads you’ll know what fresh asphalt and paint looks like. That is all 100% freshly laid asphalt. The edging hasn’t even cured yet. That stretch of road has been undeniably fixed in 6 days.
Was it the entire highway destroyed? Was it just a stretch of a few hundred meteres? If it is the latter, 6 days is very easy to attain even leaning on shovels and sipping coffee all day for a 1000m stretch.
BS. The foliage is definitely different.
commenting from Japan.
It’s real.
http://news020.blog13.fc2.com/blog-entry-1384.html
And it’s not surprising matter at all.
Every end of the year, to use up our tax money, so many streets are being under constructions, usually they finish whole street during the night when we are not on the street.
So sometimes, you woke up and open your apartment door and find a totally new street in front of you….
IT IS VERY SAD TO SEE UN ETHICAL AMERICAN PEOPLE FULL OF HATE…. WE CAN ONLY HOPE MR FALSE GURU THAT YOU WILL BE PERSONALLY HIT BY A TORNADO ARE A DIVINE CATASTROPHE TO CLEAN THE WORLD OF BIAISED AND AGGRESSIVE PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE.
Viva Japan We Will Fuck Deeply America Very Soon…
@pilottage, go way you troll, there is no food for you here.
a bow to those workers that did this quickly. The pictures are from roughly the same location, I think. The color of the trees concerned me, until I decided that one was taken near sunset which added the orange cast to the trees. And some bushes were removed during the repair. The repair was for 150 meters, but the depth of the damage to the under-the-road-base would have been a major repair.
@ethicalhomes
They are quite clearly the same place and the same time of year.
I think your comments reveal more about your own inherent racism and the failure and cynism of your society than it does about the Japanese.
Repairing a road overnight is no biggy in Japan – and the monies to do it don’t go missing either
Very impressive and very Japanese, not surprised at all.
And to the skeptics the pictures are the same location if you look clearly, and also the color of the new asphalt like others had mentioned,
FFS, it is obviously the same area. They have cleared foliage on the right and shored up the hillside. Trees and signs in the distance are the same. The difference in the foliage colour I could almost categorically say is from the white balance setting on the camera or (possibly) different time day. In any event, the white levels are clearly not matched in the second photo as it has a blue/cyan caste.
Having lived and worked in Japan, I have no problems believing this was done in 6 days.
The internet seems to breed morons who like to call out “fake” when the don’t have the cognitive capacity to take on board simply presented facts.