UMaine Staff, Faculty Experts Available to Discuss Japan Earthquake, Tsunami and Possible Financial Impact
Contacts: Alice Kelley, (207) 866-3422, (207) 745-6785 or akelley@maine.edu; Paul Myer, (207) 581-3756; Keiko Myer, (207) 581-2697
ORONO — Several University of Maine faculty and staff members are available Friday for media interviews about the 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan and resulting tsunami, the possible financial impacts of the natural disaster on one of the world’s largest economies and the ripple effects that may be felt internationally.
Alice Kelley, an associate research professor in UMaine’s Climate Change Institute, says a UMaine instrument picked up waves about 14 minutes after the event in Japan. Real-time records of seismograms can be viewed by visiting this website and then choosing ORNO in the station scroll box below the graph.
UMaine business and marketing professor Paul Myer of the Maine Business School and his Japanese wife Keiko, who also works at UMaine, are available to discuss their communications with family members in the Tokyo area. Keiko Myer has spoken to her family by cell phone and says they are getting much of their information from outside the country because many of Japan’s communication and telephone systems have been incapacitated by the destruction. Her family is safe, she says.
Paul Myer, who is scheduled to visit Japan May 15 with 20 UMaine MBA students and has lived and worked in Japan, says the devastation is certain to affect markets beyond Japan.
“When the world’s third largest economy comes to a standstill, it’s going to have an effect,” he says. “How long it’s going to take them to get in a mode of normalcy is going to be problematic. It is going to affect economies around the world. It’s potentially going to affect the distribution of oil, as well.”
The nation has sustained a great deal of devastation and must focus on the health and safety of its people, then the extensive repairs and rebuilding on the country’s infrastructure, including communications and power generation.