Major Earthquake Hits Japan

Breaking News..... About 2½ hours ago, a little before 1:00 a.m. EST, a major earthquake, measuring 8.4 on the Richter scale hit northern Japan.

From what I'm seeing on the tv news, it looks like a good deal of damage has been done.

Geeez.... it is now being reported that the quake measured 8.9 on the Richter scale. That makes it one of the strongest quakes in recorded history.

There has already been MAJOR damage done by a tsunami .... buildings, cars, boats, etc. have been washed away by a wave estimated to be 13 feet high. The tsunami is expected to reach the west coast of the U.S., basically thousands of miles away, later this morning.

I woke up this morning at 4AM for work, and heard the news on the radio. They only said approximately 40 people dead, and moved on to the next story. By the time I got to work, they were talking about the worst earthquake in Japan's history, potential nuclear plant meltdowns, and tsunamis heading towards the west coast of the U.S.

I just woke up and am hearing about this quake. That's horrible and an incredibly powerful one too. Am I hearing correctly, so far 40 deaths? Unlike tornadoes, quakes don't give any warning. It's really scary.


TIS

CNN Reporting 200-300 bodies found.

God help them. What a horror this is. It makes our flooding here seem like nothing in comparison.

I heard the shaking lasted more than 5 minutes. That's extremely long. One minute of shaking seems like an eternity. I can only imagine.

It's amazing how strong these are. Our local news is saying it'll even hit here (on a very very minor scale) around 8:30 a.m. They say it'll be just a riptide and/or undertow. The only precaution they will do is have people (surfers/swimmers) evacuate the water.

I still can't get over the 5 minutes of shaking.

TIS

5 MINUTES!!! That's sick.

The news videos are incredible. The power of moving water is unimaginable. Prayers for those poor folks who got caught.

This will be remembered as one of the worst ever. The video is unbelievable.

Ive been watching the coverage on the news channels, tragic .

RIP..

This is terrible, but I can't deny the footage is impressive. It looks like you're watching a movie like the day after tomorrow..

Last reports saying that there is a complete train missing and also a boat with 100 passengers...

I feel really bad for them. Hope most are doing okay.

I heard there was a 6. aftershock AND that aftershocks can continue for years.



TIS

There was just an explosion at a Japanese nuclear power plant. This doesn't sound good.

This is just a sickening disaster that seems to get worse. I have a co-worker who is vacationing in Hawaii - I hope she is safe.

Who says nuclear power is "clean energy"?

It IS clean energy. Until something goes wrong.

I am sure that Japan's nuclear power plants were state-of-the-art as is those that are powering much of Europe.

Problem is a disaster of THIS magnitude can never be foreseen or prepared for enough.

Per the Nuclear Energy Institute:

"Nuclear energy is America’s largest source of clean-air, carbon-free electricity, producing no greenhouse gases or air pollutants. The industry’s commitment to the environment extends to protecting wildlife and their habitats."

They say, the probability of a nuclear power plant disaster is 1 in 10,000 years. There have been three within the last 30 years.

You're right. These things can't be foreseen, which doesn't mean they don't happen.

That entire Pacific Ring of Fire region is always in danger of erupting in disaster. I remember my geology professors back in college talking about how it would only be a matter of time until a monumental earthquake struck the region in the Pacific outside of Japan. I doubt anyone would ever predict an 8.9 and possibly 10,000 casualties, but geologists have been waiting for this one for quite some time.

There is no doubt in my mind that a "big one" will hit the west coast of the U.S. or Canada within the next century.

My 13th birthday saw the big Alaska quake ... it hit 9.2 on the Richter scale in Anchorage. That was about three times more powerful than the quake that just hit Japan, and there was a quake in 1960, down in Chile, that was three times more powerful than the Alaska quake, and possibly the largest one ever recorded (was 9.5 on the Richter scale).

Can anyone say 2012?

Earthquakes happen all the time in various parts of the world. There hasn't been one yet that's destroyed the entire planet, although a series of natural disasters strung close together could do the trick.

The big issue of 2012 may likely be a massive solar flare...something from which we have virtually NO protection.

I always have that in the back of my mind and tend to freak out if I think about it too much. Nothing to do really except live live as usual...

My cousin and his family live in Tokyo. Thank God they weren't hurt.

The Japanese reactor crisis has an unfortunate parallel with the World Trade Center towers:

The WTC architects took into account that the towers were in proximity to three major airports. So they designed the towers to withstand a direct hit by a 747. But they didn't take into account the effect of fires caused by full fuel loads on the floors' bracing. Evidently Japanese architects built the reactors to withstand a major earthquake. But it looks like they didn't take into account that a 8.9 quake would disable all of the reactors' auxilliary generators, leaving no means to operate pumps to cool the reactor cores.

I saw a video on Yahoo! News yesterday of the tsunami impact. The water just washed onto shore and literally plowed through everything in its path as if nothing were there at all. Cars were carried off by the water as if they were Hot Wheels.

My heart goes out to all those suffering through this.

1000 bodies wash up on shore.

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20110312/AS.Japan.Earthquake/

The footage of this horrible disaster is simply heartbreaking. I haven't seen it in print, but did anyone see on the news the 4 month old baby that was rescued 3 days after and by her appearance seems ok? How amazing.


TIS

Heartbreaking is the right word. And I did the see story about the 4 month old baby. Truly amazing.

This stuff is nuts. More and more bodies are found each time I turn on the television. Another power plant reactor just exploded too.

It's official. A nuclear plant disaster.

I am hearing there's a fourth fire that just started at one of these plants. OMG!! How horrible.


TIS

Yeah it really looks bad . Our planet isn't doing very well right now.

It's a local disaster. No need to exaggerate as this is terrible enough.

Best footage I've seen so far.

This is the kind of feel good story that hits me right in the heart strings. It shows dogs are really loyal...even to each other. The healthy dog could have went somewhere trying to help himself, but he wouldn't leave his injured friend.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2011/03/17/moos.tsunami.dogs.follow.cnn?hpt=C2

These poor, poor people .

Another strong quake rattles tsunami-ravaged Japan

By CARA RUBINSKY, Associated Press Cara Rubinsky

TOKYO – A magnitude-7.4 aftershock rattled Japan on Thursday night, knocking out power across a large swath of the northern part of the country nearly a month after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that flattened the northeastern coast.

Japan's meteorological agency issued a tsunami warning but canceled it about 90 minutes later. Officials said power was out in all of three northern prefectures (states) and in parts of two others.

There were no immediate reports of serious injuries or damage. The aftershock was the strongest since the March 11 megaquake and tsunami that killed some 25,000 people, tore apart hundreds of thousands of homes and caused an ongoing crisis at a nuclear power plant.

The operator of the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant said there was no immediate sign of new problems caused by the aftershock, and Japan's nuclear safety agency says workers there retreated to a quake-resistant shelter in the complex. None were injured. The crisis there started when the tsunami knocked out cooling systems. Workers have not been able to restore them.

Thursday's quake knocked out several power lines at the Onagawa nuclear power plant north of Sendai, which has been shut down since the tsunami. One remaining line was supplying power to the plant and radiation monitoring devices detected no abnormalities. The plant's spent fuel pools briefly lost cooling capacity but an emergency diesel generator quickly kicked in.

Officials said the aftershock hit 30 miles (50 kilometers) under the water and off the coast of Miyagi prefecture. The U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., later downgraded it to 7.1.

Buildings as far away as Tokyo shook for about a minute.

The quake struck at 11:32 p.m. local time. Moments beforehand, residents in the western Tokyo suburb of Fuchu were warned on a neighborhood public address system of an imminent quake.

In Ichinoseki, inland from Japan's eastern coast, buildings shook violently, knocking items from shelves and toppling furniture, but there was no heavy damage to the buildings themselves. Immediately after the quake, all power was cut. The city went dark, but cars drove around normally and people assembled in the streets despite the late hour.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan huddled with staff members in his office shortly afterward, according to deputy Cabinet spokesman Noriyuki Shikata.

A separate government emergency response team met shortly after midnight to monitor any reports of damage and urged firefighters, police and other emergency personnel to aid those in need.

Paul Caruso, a geophysicist at USGS, said the quake struck at about the same location and depth as last month's huge one.

Another USGS geophysicist, Don Blakeman, said it was the strongest aftershock since March 11, although several aftershocks on that day were bigger.

The USGS said the aftershock struck off the eastern coast 40 miles (65 kilometers) from Sendai and 70 miles (115 kilometers) from Fukushima. It was about 205 miles (330 kilometers) from Tokyo.

____

Associated Press writers Jay Alabaster in Ichinoseki, Japan; Malcolm Foster, Ryan Nakashima and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Colleen Slevin in Denver, Colorado, contributed to this report.

They are really getting it in spades.
I remember about 20 or so years ago the conventional wisdom was that Japan would take over the U.S. economy. Never happened. Now their economy is in the tank and all these disasters will set them back further.

Of course it depends on where it's centered but I can tell you a 7. anything earthquake is considerably large and can be felt miles and miles away from its center.

What I always find amazing is, you can have a large aftershock that isn't considered another earthquake but rather an aftershock from a previous earthquake. Not only that, but aftershocks can come years later from the original quake. Some years back we had a fairly large quake (6. something I think) and later in the news they said it was an aftershock from the Whittier which was in 1987. Go figure.


I assume since they labeled this latest Japan an earthquake that it is separate from the original. Either way, poor Japan. I feel very badly for that country.

TIS

Those poor folks must be a nervous wreck. I felt a quake once and it wasn't much, just a little shake, in Exeter,PA. Our concern was the Berwick Nuke Plant about 30 miles away. Nothing happened, but it does make you spooked.

Back in '85 New York had a tiny one, like a 4 on the Richter Scale. The house started shaking at like four in the morning. It was still enough to freak us all out, though.

Another 7.1 aftershock and another tsunami warning today .

My cousin in Tokyo says things are far worse than what's being reported here. Says power blackouts make riding trains unreliable. His office building, right near the Ginza, has a major structural crack, and the owner simply plastered over it.

Japanese are highly disciplined people, as attest the civility and stoicism they've shown in the face of this horrible calamity. But, part of their solidarity may be the deliberate suppression of worse news in the interest of not losing face.

Life imitates art.

What if the radiation flowing into Japan's coastal and deep water oceans actually creates a Godzilla? That sounds way out there, but just give it a thought.

Japanese gov't today upped the reactor crisis to Level 7 (from Level 5), which is the highest on the international scale, equivalent to Chernobyl--or worse. Gov't denies it was hiding anything, says it took them a month to assess the damage.

Yeah, sure...

(Oli: did you ever see "Gojira," the Japanese original? Much better than "Godzilla."