Emergency Alerts

2014年9月11日 (木)

Last night we had a nice thunderstorm here in Sapporo.

I enjoy thunderstorms; I like to see the flashes of lightning and hear the sounds of the thunder. I think it’s exciting. Yesterday I spent almost an hour on the balcony and in the dining room looking out at the sky and waiting for lightning. It was fun.

I remember being a kid in America, sitting on the veranda with my family and looking at the sky during a thunderstorm. It’s a good memory.

However, at around 3:00 in the morning, my phone started ringing. It was an emergency alert from the City of Sapporo. It said there was a flash flood and landslide warning for my area. This is useful information, but I don’t live near any hills or rivers, and we are on the second floor of a concrete building, so I wasn’t worried. I went back to sleep.

But then, a few minutes later, my phone rang again! It was another, similar warning. I was annoyed – 〝We aren’t in any danger, and I want to sleep!”
So I turned off the emergency alert function on my phone. I was able to sleep through the night, but I heard from some of my students that their phones were ringing all night.

I think these warnings made a lot of people sleepy.