9.0 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster hit Japan

[ColDayMan 663]

Widespread destruction from Japan earthquake, tsunamis

 

 

Tokyo (CNN) -- The most powerful earthquake to hit Japan in at least 100 years unleashed walls of water Friday that swept across rice fields, engulfing towns, dragging houses onto highways and tossing cars and boats like toys, apparently killing hundreds and forcing the evaucations of tens of thousands. Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the "enormously powerful" earthquake has caused "tremendous damage over a wide area."

 

The quake, which struck at 2:46 pm local time, sparked fires in at least 80 locations, Japan's Kyodo News Service reported, and prompted the U.S. National Weather Service to issue tsunami warnings for at least 50 countries and territories. Police in Miyagi Prefecture say between 200-300 have been found in the coastal city of Sendai alone, Japan's Kyodo News Agency reported late Friday. The death toll is likely to rise as there are few casualty counts yet from the worst-hit areas. Kyodo, citing Japan's defense forces, said 60,000 to 70,000 people were being evacuated to shelters in the Sendai area.

 

More below:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/11/japan.quake/index.html?hpt=T1&iref=BN1#

[ColDayMan 663]

First tsunami waves push into Hawaii

 

(CNN) -- Tsunami waves began rolling into Hawaii early Friday, with readings of between 6 and 7 feet reported in some areas following the giant earthquake that struck Japan. The waves "are not going to be a major damaging event" for Hawaii but will cause scattered damage, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

 

The waves of between 6 and 7 feet have been reported on the island of Maui, said center geophysicist Gerard Fryer, who said it was difficult to tell what will happen on all the islands. He said he had received no reports of damage but he will know more after sunrise. Waves of about 3 feet were reported on Hilo.

 

More below:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/11/tsunami/index.html?hpt=T1#

[KJP 9,168]

This is horrific.......

 

Tsunami Strikes Japan After 8.9-Magnitude Earthquake

[Hts121 1]

^Holy shite!

[CBC 0]

I looked this up after my cousin posted something about it on FB. Pretty amazing coincidence....even if it is from an astrologer...

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20110310/sc_space/willmarch19supermoontriggernaturaldisasters

 

Will March 19 'Supermoon' Trigger Natural Disasters?

 

On March 19, the moon will swing around Earth more closely than it has in the past 18 years, lighting up the night sky from just 221,567 miles (356,577 kilometers) away. On top of that, it will be full. And one astrologer believes it could inflict massive damage on the planet.

 

Richard Nolle, a noted astrologer who runs the website astropro.com, has famously termed the upcoming full moon at lunar perigee (the closest approach during its orbit) an "extreme supermoon."

 

When the moon goes super-extreme, Nolle says, chaos will ensue: Huge storms, earthquakes, volcanoes and other natural disasters can be expected to wreak havoc on Earth. (It should be noted that astrology is not a real science, but merely makes connections between astronomical and mystical events.).....

 

 

 

[KJP 9,168]

This is horrific too:

 

Tsunami in Japan 2011 - Amazing Video Footage of tsunami waves

[oakiehigh 15]

omg!

[KJP 9,168]

If you want to see where that was shot, click here:

 

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=yuriage,+Japan&ie=UTF8&hq=yuriage,+Japan&hnear=&radius=15000&ll=38.181647,140.943882&spn=0.009243,0.021973&t=h&z=16

[Hayward 0]

Wow, absolutely crazy and sad.  With so many phone cameras and youtube, I bet we are due for a lot more horrific videos.

[Robert Pence 0]

The "Supermoon" idea sounds far-fetched to me. I can grasp how gravitational effects from the moon's mass in perigee might have some small effect on geologic events on earth, but the phase of the moon is only a manifestation of how a shadow falls. The phase of the moon has no effect upon its mass.

[ClevelandOhio 1]

I just heard on the news of one American casualty. The man was trying to take pictures.

[KJP 9,168]

I just heard on the news of one American casualty. The man was trying to take pictures.

 

One man in America (Oregon). I'll bet that there are some Americans in Japan who were casualties of this.

[David 0]

Thank God no one in my family was a casualty. BOTH of my grandparents over there just beat cancer and I still have to check up on them after every earthquake. That country is cursed and Post-earthquake calls to Japan are costly.

[HHS78 0]

Wow, the building in the first pic doesn't even look real. It looks like a waterlogged model of a building or something. My thoughts are with everyone involved.

[Columbo 403]

As if the earthquake and tsunami weren't enough, Japan has some damaged nuclear power plants to worry about too...

 

 

Explosion at Japan nuke plant, disaster toll rises

Mar 12, 10:36 AM EST

By ERIC TALMADGE and YURI KAGEYAMA

Associated Press

 

IWAKI, Japan (AP) -- An explosion at a nuclear power station Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, but a radiation leak was decreasing despite fears of a meltdown from damage caused by a powerful earthquake and tsunami, officials said.

 

Government spokesman Yukio Edano said the explosion destroyed the exterior walls of the building where the reactor is placed, but not the actual metal housing enveloping the reactor.

 

That was welcome news for a country suffering from Friday's double disaster that pulverized the northeastern coast, leaving at least 574 people dead by official count.

 

The scale of destruction was not yet known, but there were grim signs that the death toll could soar.  One report said four whole trains had disappeared Friday and still not been located.  Local media reports said at least 1,300 people may have been killed.

 

READ MORE: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_JAPAN_EARTHQUAKE?SITE=OHCOL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[Columbo 403]

Japan races to save lives, stop nuclear crisis

Military, volunteers search for survivors, deliver food and water after devastating quake, tsunami

NBC, msnbc.com and news services

 

SENDAI, Japan — Japan struggled Monday to prevent a nuclear catastrophe and to deliver food and water to hundreds of thousands of people, three days after a massive earthquake and tsunami crippled the nation with what the prime minister described as its worst crisis since World War II.

 

The death toll from Friday's disaster was likely to exceed 10,000 as whole villages and towns were wiped off the map by a wall of water, leaving in its wake an international humanitarian effort of epic proportions.

 

Nuclear plant operators worked frantically to try to keep temperatures down in several troubled reactors, wrecking at least two by dumping sea water into them in last-ditch efforts to avoid meltdowns.  Officials warned of a second explosion but said it would not pose a health threat.

 

MORE: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42058349/ns/world_news-asia-pacific/

[Eigth and State 0]

 

  "The phase of the moon has no effect upon its mass."

 

  The phase of the moon DOES correlate with the tides, with the highest tide occuring during a full moon.   

 

    I think it was back in 1994 when some climatologist predicted another New Madrid earthquake based on the fact that the 1811 New Madrid earthquake occured during a particularly high tide. The theory makes sense, but the USGS says that the correlation between earthquakes and tides is between small and zero.

 

    Incidently, 12-16-2011 is the 200 year anniversary of the 1811 New Madrid earthquake.

[CBC 0]

^ explanation of the moon phases gravitational pull on the tides (and every thing else)

 

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/time/tides.html

 

Hmmm, I am shining up my tinfoil hat....

 

Seriously though, what a nightmare for those people. I hope they get that reactor under control, a meltdown would just make this  disaster that much worse.

[David 0]

I think HAARP along with the illuminati and masons are in on it. We've known for years that they control the weather. Nihonjins refuse to import as much as they export so world leaders are angry at them. How to I make a proper tin-foil hat, maybe there's a youtube video on it?

[David 0]

My grandma sent me a picture of the view outside the balcony of their condo right after the quake. The neighborhood looked like 9/11! There was all this debris and smoke coming from another high-rise. I'm really worried about them :( I'm a little  worried about the U.S. too. SanFran is over-due for another big one like 1906. I hope this heightens awareness and cities/counties update their disaster plans.

[Hts121 1]

Its weird.... up until the disaster in Thailand, I barely knew what a tsunami was.  After watching all of these videos, I don't know if there is a more destructive force occuring by nature.

[Hootenany 46]

Its weird.... up until the disaster in Thailand, I barely knew what a tsunami was.  After watching all of these videos, I don't know if there is a more destructive force occuring by nature.

 

Volcano.

 

The videos are truly amazing though.  The power of the water is unimaginable.  It's so deceptive too.  We think, "Only a 6 foot wave?  Shoot, the disaster movie had a 300 foot wave and they survived that!"  I challenge anyone to try to walk through a fast moving stream or river that's any more than a foot deep.  It's an extremely powerful force.

 

The thing that scares me the most about this situation is that Japan was arguably the country MOST prepared for an earthquake and tsunami of this size and the destruction and loss of life is still massive.  Do we even have tsunami warnings / evacuations on the West coast?  Would people know what to do?

[CBC 0]

^Bingo Hootenany. The west coast would be toast. The Tsunami warning system they had was light years ahead of anything we have in the states.

 

Article in the Atllantic on Japan's preparedness.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/03/why-japan-was-ready/72429/#

 

  Why Japan Was Ready By Max Fisher Nature is unstoppable, as Friday's earthquake demonstrated, but few nations have ever been quite as well prepared

 

Residents of Sendai line up at a water dispensation center set up at a school yard. By Kyodo/Reuters.

When 60-year-old Hiromitsu Shinkawa found himself clinging to to the roof of his home, bobbing ten miles from shore in the open Pacific, where he had been swept by the tsunami following Friday's earthquake, he had every reason to expect that his fate, after 48 hours adrift, was probably sealed. So when sailors on a passing Japanese ship spotted Shinkawa, sent about a dozen rescuers to scoop him up, then wrapped him in a heavy yellow blanket and whisked him onto a nearby destroyer, where he was declared to be in good condition, the incident probably looked to many weary Japanese like a small miracle amid a much greater disaster....

 

 

[Gramarye 163]

It would depend on where on our West Coast something like that hit.  Keep in mind that Japan's population is extremely concentrated on the coasts.  Yes, the U.S. has many people living near the West Coast, too, but it really is hard to appreciate just how densely concentrated Japan's population was near its coastline.  We are blessed to be a large country with significant coastline and significant interior space as well.  Even on the West Coast, we have many long stretches of nearly uninhabited coastline.  Obviously, if an 8.9 hits right off Los Angeles or San Francisco or Seattle, we're in trouble, too, though.

 

Also, people still often have trouble grasping logarithmic scales: an 8.9 earthquake is an <a href="http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2011/03/14/the-measure-of-an-earthquake/">absolutely mindboggling number</a> compared to even just an 8.4, let alone a 7.9 or 6.9.  Also, as noted in that article, even the logarithmic scale only measures the amplitude of the waves traveling out from the epicenter, not the energy released.  The energy released also increases geometrically with amplitude, which means the actual destructive power of a quake increases at a doubly geometric rate, so a 2.0 increase in magnitude actually releases about 1000 times more energy, not 100 times more, than one 2.0 points smaller on the Richter.  This thing was a monster.  It's the kind of thing that makes one glad that usually, America "only" has to deal with hurricanes and tornadoes, though of course, our Pacific Rim states are on the "Ring of Fire" as well.

[X 1,015]

How bad the damage would be depends not just on the warning systems, but on how much of the population and infrastructure of the region is in the kind of low lying coastal lands that would be vulnerable.  I don't know for sure, but a quick look around Google Earth makes it look like the west coast is less vulnerable than Japan in this regard, though damage would still be substantial, I'm sure.

[originaljbw 81]

Do we even have tsunami warnings / evacuations on the West coast?  Would people know what to do?

At least in the Pacific NW, yes! Although I lived inland from the coast, I know there were tsunami drills at the beginning of every summer. Additionally, these signs are posted at the entrances to every beach I've ever visited.

 

Fortunately, the elevation rises pretty rapidly along most of the coast, so excluding the 150 foot end-of-the-world tsunami most people would know what to do.

[David 0]

D@mn right. Hundreds of thousands of people were homeless in SanFrancisco in 1906. That was only a 7.8-8.4

[KJP 9,168]

 

Seriously though, what a nightmare for those people. I hope they get that reactor under control, a meltdown would just make this  disaster that much worse.

 

Try three reactors.... A third one is having problems cooling its core, but it doesn't seem as dire as the situations at the other two.

[Gramarye 163]

I think our infrastructure is tougher now than then; an 8.0 near SanFran would still cause significant damage, but not as much as the 1906 one.  Well, more damage in dollars, maybe, simply because there's more there now to damage, but less damage in lives lost, which is the bigger concern.

[CBC 0]

 

Seriously though, what a nightmare for those people. I hope they get that reactor under control, a meltdown would just make this  disaster that much worse.

 

Try three reactors.... A third one is having problems cooling its core, but it doesn't seem as dire as the situations at the other two.

 

Yeah, I should have said reactors/plant good catch.

 

I read somewhere today that they said the quake moved the whole main island of Japan 5 ft. wow.

 

 

[David 0]

Yeah, I suppose your right. Back in 1906 buildings were more prone to catch on fire. What caused a lot of damage and lives was that coupled with the fact that buildings were right next to each other causing a chain reaction but then again, they didn't have as much utility infrastructure back then. Economic damage is going to be huge no matter what. I can't believe the death toll in Japan, it's insane. 

[Eigth and State 0]

 

They are reporting that the axis of the earth has shifted 10 cm.

[David 0]

which way did the axis shift? I want to be closer to the equator.

[KJP 9,168]

CNN is conveying news from Japan news network NHK that another explosion at the #2 reactor where the rods were exposed and has cracked the containment vessel. All but the most essential personnel were ordered to evacuate for the first time in this crisis.

[westerninterloper 24]

It would depend on where on our West Coast something like that hit.  Keep in mind that Japan's population is extremely concentrated on the coasts.  Yes, the U.S. has many people living near the West Coast, too, but it really is hard to appreciate just how densely concentrated Japan's population was near its coastline.  We are blessed to be a large country with significant coastline and significant interior space as well.  Even on the West Coast, we have many long stretches of nearly uninhabited coastline.  Obviously, if an 8.9 hits right off Los Angeles or San Francisco or Seattle, we're in trouble, too, though.

 

Also, people still often have trouble grasping logarithmic scales: an 8.9 earthquake is an <a href="http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2011/03/14/the-measure-of-an-earthquake/">absolutely mindboggling number</a> compared to even just an 8.4, let alone a 7.9 or 6.9.  Also, as noted in that article, even the logarithmic scale only measures the amplitude of the waves traveling out from the epicenter, not the energy released.  The energy released also increases geometrically with amplitude, which means the actual destructive power of a quake increases at a doubly geometric rate, so a 2.0 increase in magnitude actually releases about 1000 times more energy, not 100 times more, than one 2.0 points smaller on the Richter.  This thing was a monster.  It's the kind of thing that makes one glad that usually, America "only" has to deal with hurricanes and tornadoes, though of course, our Pacific Rim states are on the "Ring of Fire" as well.

 

I have been watching Japanese newscasts, and one showed how much of the damage was in very low, reclaimed land along the coast. Granted, the land may have been reclaimed slowly over decades, or even hundreds of years. That's not the case with some of the smaller cities on rivers, but it's very interesting to see before and after pictures; the 'after' pictures showing the rounded valleys suggests that these kinds of tsunami have been a persistent event. A lot of the Japanese newscasters remarked at how this strong of an earthquake was never predicted to happen, but I caught another geologist who rattled off huge earthquakes and tsunami in that region for many centuries. He remarked that the biggest problem is that people forget and rebuild in vulnerable areas, with predicable results. I'd bet that should our technological society persist for the next couple of hundred years, people will be able to see images of this destruction, and make sure that homes are not built in such vulnerable areas in the future. I hope.

[Hayward 0]

 

 

Worst tsunami footage I've seen yet.  One shot, it's coming right at you close up.  The next you see it rushing down a city street.  Finally, you see people in tears.  A whole city destroyed in a matter of minutes.  It's just unimaginable.  I simply cannot comprehend walking outside into my city one minute, and then turning around and seeing it destroyed.  I try to pretend all those buildings are empty, but I know it's not true.  Absolutely horrific.

[Columbo 403]

Thanks for posting that video NorthAndre.  I've been looking for something on YouTube that matched the tsunami footage I've been seeing on the news channels.  This is it. 

 

What's even more chilling about the scale of devastation is that Japan was probably the most well-prepared modern nation for a major earthquake/tsunami event.  And this still happened.  Despite all the preparations, warning systems, evacuation plans and vast array of protective seawalls - this still happened.  Maybe this was a "once in a lifetime" event.  Or maybe we continually underestimate the worst that nature can throw at us. 

 

MSNBC SLIDESHOW: Aerial Photos of Japan before and after the earthquake, tsunami

 

MSNBC SLIDESHOW: Photos of the aftermath in Japan

 

[KJP 9,168]

NorthAndre, they had a little bit of that on CNN this evening, but nothing from the second half of that video. Both halves were amazing. If I personally witnessed that, or was in the water and survived, I would have nightmares for the rest of my life.

 

Or maybe we continually underestimate the worst that nature can throw at us. 

 

 

Which means that we overestimate ourselves in the face of Mother Nature. Humans aren't stupid, just arrogant.

[jmecklenborg 579]

How much time was there between the earthquake and the tsunami?  I get the impression that it was less than a half hour, as it doesn't appear that the message was widely heard.  You still see people driving around as the water pours over the sea wall.

 

[jmecklenborg 579]

Listening to the radio tonight, an expert claimed that the waste stored at the plant was likely dispersed by these explosions.  So even if the reactor shells aren't breached by the meltdowns, much more radiation has likely been released already than they are admitting.

 

Nuclear Reactor Explosion at Fukushima, Japan March 12, 2011 Tsunami Earthquake Aftershocks