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March 17, 2011

2 physics profs return from devastated Japan

Two Pitt faculty members had a spring break they won’t soon forget.

Nancy Naples and Vittorio Paolone, associate professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, were in Japan working on a research project studying neutrino oscillation when last Friday’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck.

The department confirmed that Naples, who could not be reached for comment, was back safely in Pittsburgh.

Paolone took his scheduled flight on United Airlines back to the United States on Sunday, not much worse for wear, but with a harrowing tale to tell.

He first felt tremors and was forced to evacuate the Ibaraki Prefecture lab where the Pitt researchers were working over spring break in the coastal town of Mito, about 125 kilometers north of Tokyo.

“I was on shift, as we call it, because the experiment is monitored 24 hours a day, and the control room started to shake,” Paolone told the University Times.

“The Japanese are used to earthquakes, and I’m from southern California so I knew what it was right way. We evacuated the lab quickly and went out into the parking lot.”

Paolone said he wasn’t frightened until the shaking ground made it impossible to stand, and parts of the building they had been in started to break off before their eyes.

“I didn’t panic, really, but as the shaking got worse and worse, we couldn’t stand up, so we were horizontal on the ground,” he said. “The first thing you think about with an earthquake in Japan is having a tsunami, and the tsunami alarms in the lab building did go off. We were lucky that, where I was anyway, about a half-kilometer from the coast, the water rose only two feet and never endangered the town,” Paolone said.

“I also was so impressed with the Japanese reaction. There was a calmness. They were very orderly. We were staying in a fairly good-sized town, where there was no heat, electricity or water, but I did not see any looting or have any fear of violence at all.”

Paolone said his trip to the Narita Airport in Tokyo took a lot of extra time because the earthquake damage left some roads impassable. “I actually left Saturday for my Sunday flight, figuring it would take a while. But the plane went off on schedule,” he said.

Paolone added that sometimes “physics experiments can be as boring as watching paint dry,” but the circumstances of this project made it quite memorable.

—Peter Hart


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