Massive earthquake hits Japan - Matt-Hughes.com Official Forums

NateR · #1 03-11-2011, 03:37 PM

Click the link to see several videos of the earthquake and the resulting tsunamis as they happened.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theenv...ke-and-tsunami

Quote:

An 8.9 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Northeast Japan spawned a ferocious tsunami that's caused massive destruction; flattening whole cities, starting raging fires, and killing hundreds. Nearly 88,000 people are reported missing, according to the official Kyodo news agency.

We've gathered some videos that show the scope of the disaster, and you can also see The Atlantic's collection of photos of the quake.

Footage of the tsunami quickly enveloping the city of Sendai, Japan. Officials say 200 to 300 bodies have been found in this city.

NateR · #2 03-11-2011, 03:49 PM

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03...strikes-japan/

Quote:

Hundreds of Bodies Found in Japan After Massive Tsunami Spawned by Earthquake

Japanese police say 200 to 300 bodies have been found in a northeastern coastal area where a massive earthquake spawned a ferocious tsunami Friday that swept away boats, cars and homes.

The magnitude 8.9 offshore quake -- the largest in Japan's history -- unleashed a 23-foot tsunami and was followed by more than 50 aftershocks for hours, many of them of more than magnitude 6.0.

The bodies found were in Sendai city, the closest major city to the epicenter, Japanese police said. Officials said another 110 were confirmed dead, with 350 people missing. Police also said 544 people were injured. The death toll was likely to continue climbing given the scale of Friday's disaster.

Tsunami waves generated by the massive quake hit Hawaii and northern California Friday morning. The first waves crashed into the Hawaii island of Kauai at 3:13 a.m. local time. Officials predicted they would experience waves up to 6 feet.

Alaska Emergency Management also reported a 5.1-foot wave at Shemya, 1.5-foot at Adak, and 1.6-foot at Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands. Shemya is 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage.

Emergency Management Specialist David Lee at Fort Richardson said there are no reports of damage and no significant damage expected on the coast of Alaska, although that could still depend on the surge in different areas.
The Alaska Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami warning for the coastal areas of Alaska from Attu to Amchitka Pass in the Aleutians and an advisory from Amchitka Pass along the West Coast to Oregon.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the 2:46 p.m. quake was a magnitude 8.9, the biggest earthquake to hit Japan since officials began keeping records in the late 1800s, and one of the biggest ever recorded in the world.

The quake struck at a depth of six miles, about 80 miles off the eastern coast, the agency said. The area is 240 miles northeast of Tokyo.

The Japanese government ordered thousands of residents near a nuclear power plant in Onahama city to evacuate because the plant's system was unable to cool the reactor. The reactor was not leaking radiation but its core remained hot even after a shutdown. The plant is 170 miles northeast of Tokyo.

Dozens of cities and villages along a 1,300-mile stretch of coastline were shaken by violent tremors that reached as far away as Tokyo, hundreds of miles from the epicenter.

"The earthquake has caused major damage in broad areas in northern Japan," Prime Minister Naoto Kan said at a news conference.

A passenger train with an unknown number of people aboard was unaccounted for Friday, Kyodo News reported. The East Japan Railway Co. train was running near Nobiru Station on the Senseki Line connecting Sendai to Ishinomaki when a massive quake hit, triggering a 33-foot tsunami, according to the station.

A Japanese coast guard official said a search is also under way for a ship carrying 80 dock workers that was swept away when a tsunami struck the northeastern coast. The vessel was washed away from a shipbuilding site in Miyagi prefecture (state). That's the area most affected by a massive offshore earthquake on Friday. The quake triggered the tsunami.

Trouble was also reported at two other nuclear plants as well, but there was no radiation leak at any.
Even for a country used to earthquakes, this one was of horrific proportions because of the tsunami that crashed ashore, swallowing everything in its path as it surged several miles inland before retreating. The apocalyptic images of surging water broadcast by Japanese TV networks resembled scenes from a Hollywood disaster movie.

Large fishing boats and other sea vessels rode high waves into the cities, slamming against overpasses or scraping under them and snapping power lines along the way. Upturned and partially submerged vehicles were seen bobbing in the water. Ships anchored in ports crashed against each other.

The highways to the worst-hit coastal areas were severely damaged and communications, including telephone lines, were snapped. Train services in northeastern Japan and in Tokyo, which normally serve 10 million people a day, were also suspended, leaving untold numbers stranded in stations or roaming the streets. Tokyo's Narita airport was closed indefinitely.

Waves of muddy waters flowed over farmland near the city of Sendai, carrying buildings, some on fire, inland as cars attempted to drive away. Sendai airport, north of Tokyo, was inundated with cars, trucks, buses and thick mud deposited over its runways. Fires spread through a section of the city, public broadcaster NHK reported.

More than 300 houses were washed away in Ofunato City alone. Television footage showed mangled debris, uprooted trees, upturned cars and shattered timber littering streets.

The tsunami roared over embankments, washing anything in its path inland before reversing directions and carrying the cars, homes and other debris out to sea. Flames shot from some of the houses, probably because of burst gas pipes.

"Our initial assessment indicates that there has already been enormous damage," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. "We will make maximum relief effort based on that assessment."

He said the Defense Ministry was sending troops to the quake-hit region. A utility aircraft and several helicopters were on the way.

A large fire erupted at the Cosmo oil refinery in Ichihara city in Chiba prefecture and burned out of control with 100-foot-high flames whipping into the sky.

From northeastern Japan's Miyagi prefecture, NHK showed footage of a large ship being swept away and ramming directly into a breakwater in Kesennuma city.

NHK said more than 4 million buildings were without power in Tokyo and its suburbs.

Also in Miyagi, a fire broke out in a turbine building of a nuclear power plant, but it was later extinguished, said Tohoku Electric Power Co. the company said.

A reactor area of a nearby plant was leaking water, the company said. But it was unclear if the leak was caused by tsunami water or something else. There were no reports of radioactive leaks at any of Japan's nuclear plants.

Jefferies International Limited, a global investment banking group, said it estimated overall losses to be about $10 billion.
A tsunami warning was extended to a number of Pacific, Southeast Asian and Latin American nations, including Japan, Russia, Indonesia, New Zealand and Chile. In the Philippines, authorities ordered an evacuation of coastal communities, but no unusual waves were reported.

Thousands of people fled their homes in Indonesia after officials warned of a tsunami up to 6 feet high. But waves of only 4 inches were measured. No big waves came to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory, either.

In downtown Tokyo, large buildings shook violently and workers poured into the street for safety. TV footage showed a large building on fire and bellowing smoke in the Odaiba district of Tokyo. The tremor bent the upper tip of the iconic Tokyo Tower, a 1,093-foot steel structure inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Footage on NHK from their Sendai office showed employees stumbling around and books and papers crashing from desks. It also showed a glass shelter at a bus stop in Tokyo completely smashed by the quake and a weeping woman nearby being comforted by another woman.

Several quakes had hit the same region in recent days, including a 7.3 magnitude one on Wednesday that caused no damage.
Hiroshi Sato, a disaster management official in northern Iwate prefecture, said officials were having trouble getting an overall picture of the destruction.

"We don't even know the extent of damage. Roads were badly damaged and cut off as tsunami washed away debris, cars and many other things," he said.

Dozens of fires were reported in northern prefectures of Fukushima, Sendai, Iwate and Ibaraki. Collapsed homes and landslides were also reported in Miyagi.

Japan's worst previous quake was in 1923 in Kanto, an 8.3-magnitude temblor that killed 143,000 people, according to USGS. A 7.2-magnitude quake in Kobe city in 1996 killed 6,400 people.

Japan lies on the "Ring of Fire" -- an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 percent of the world's quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 nations. A magnitude-8.8 temblor that shook central Chile last February also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03...#ixzz1GJIfpUoN

Looks like Hawaii and the West Coast have to start bracing for some tsunamis.

#3 03-11-2011, 04:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NateR

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03...strikes-japan/

Looks like Hawaii and the West Coast have to start bracing for some tsunamis.

So sad for all them people... My heart goes out to them.. I also want to go rescue Bj Penn from Hilo that has me worried!!

Llamafighter · #4 03-11-2011, 04:34 PM

The footage of the rolling water is unbelievable. The scars driving down the road and then suddenly swept away. terrifying.
My prayers are with the Japanese people. I hope that Hawaii avoid major damage.

Neezar · #5 03-11-2011, 04:37 PM

It is the SuperMoon causing this.

#6 03-11-2011, 04:45 PM

(CNN) -- As the first light of dawn broke Friday in Hawaii, officials reported no significant damage from a series of tsunami waves that struck the islands after Japan's deadly earthquake.

The tsunami brought waves of about 6 feet to a harbor in Maui, authorities said, but other areas reported lower levels, including Honolulu at 2.2 feet and Hilo at 4.3.
The U.S. mainland, meanwhile, was seeing waves come onshore, from the coast of Washington to California.

Sailing vessels were knocked loose from their moorings at a marina in Santra Cruz, California. Several were swamped.

Tsunami waves strike Japan

Buildings, windows damaged in Japan

Witness deals with quake terror

Quake causes ceiling to collapse No significant damage had been reported in Hawaii almost three hours after the first waves arrived, but officials said they would know more after sunrise and then would make a decision on whether evacuees could return to their homes.

Sensors on the southern side of the island of Hawaii, sometimes called the "Big Island," were wet, indicating ocean water had come at least 100 feet ashore, officials said.

CNN affiliate Hawaii News Now broadcast images of fish washed up by the tsunami on Maui.

Kerry Gershaneck of the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard told Hawaii News Now that the operation planned to open once officials gave the "all clear."

Businessman Charlie Leonard, who lives on the 19th floor of a condo on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, said Hawaiians took this tsunami more seriously than they did last year following an earthquake in Chile.

"You could hear a pin drop in Waikiki," Leonard said.

"It came home to people," he said, referring to the devastation in Japan. "I think everybody's grateful" that damage does not appear to be major.

Honolulu is about 6,859 miles (11,038 kilometers) from the location of the February 2010 Chile earthquake. Sendai, Japan -- located near the epicenter of Friday's quake -- is 3,782 miles (6,086 kilometers) away.

Leonard and a business partner operate a waste and recycling business and had to move about 50 trucks late Thursday.

Geraldine DeConte, owner of Hilo Harry's Taxi, told CNN there was a small surge of water onto land, but conditions were "pretty moderate. It's no big thing." Her business, fortunately, is on higher ground.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center predicted the waves, which came in about every 15 minutes, "are not going to be a major damaging event" for Hawaii, but will cause scattered damage, particularly to harbors and coastal facilities.

It appeared the state's residents had heeded calls to move away from the coast. Honolulu officials told residents to "be aware that inundation effects could continue for several hours."

"We called this one right," center geophysicist Gerard Fryer said. "This evacuation was necessary."

Tsunami demolishes Japan's north coast

CNN reporter: This quake was different

The moment the quake struck Japan

Quake rocks Japan supermarket Waves of between 6 and 7 feet were reported at Kahului harbor in Maui, Fryer said, adding that it was difficult to tell what would happen on all the islands. "We have significant energy bouncing around the Hawaiian Islands."

Fryer said the waves are rolling in about 15 minutes apart. Forecasters said some areas may see waves of up to 9 feet.

A tsunami warning was still in effect after 8 a.m. (11 a.m. ET).

Communities along much of the U.S. West Coast were under tsunami warnings, too.

The National Weather Service said the waves would hit Oregon and California.

In California, tsunami wave heights could reach 7 feet at Port San Luis Harbor and 4 feet in Morro Bay. Santa Monica could see 2.8 feet.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee says he feels "confident we will not be hurt by this."

He expected the city to get waves 1 to 2 feet higher than normal. Extra precautions have been taken in case the situation worsens, but he said he has not had reason to call for evacuations.

"I ask the public to remain calm," Lee said.

He said he will be calling Japan's consul-general in San Francisco to offer any assistance to that country.

The first impact in Hawaii was felt shortly after 3:07 a.m. (8:07 a.m. ET), according to Hawaii State Civil Defense, which issued a tsunami warning.

Tidal gauge readings on the southern side of the Hawaiian island of Kauai were "somewhat encouraging," CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano said.

Hawaii Public Radio news director Bill Dorman told CNN some roads were closed as a precaution.

Hawaiian emergency officials reminded residents that tsunami evacuation maps can be found in front of their telephone directories.

Chief Petty Officer Kurt Fredrickson in Honolulu told CNN the U.S. Coast Guard has been working with local port authorities and harbor masters to get the word to all mariners to get out to sea.

The Coast Guard prepared for the worst-case scenario, Frederickson said. "We are moving our assets out to sea. We are moving our aircraft to more suitable locations."

The threat of a tsunami prompted the U.S. National Weather Service to issue a warning for at least 50 countries or territories around the Pacific after the 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck Japan on Friday. The warning for Guam was later lifted.

Warnings also were in effect for coastal areas of California and Oregon from Point Concepcion, California, to the Oregon-Washington border, according to the U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. An advisory was in effect for Washington.

A warning also was in effect for Alaska, from Amchitka Pass to Attu, and in Canada's British Columbia.

President Barack Obama said he instructed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be prepared to help Hawaii and other U.S. regions "that could be affected" by the disaster.

CNN iReporter Ken Papagno, who lives on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, recorded sirens that sounded throughout the island.

Hawaii had a tsunami scare in February 2010 after an 8.9-magnitude earthquake hit Chile. A warning cancellation occurred nearly two hours after the first waves came ashore. Coast Guard crews said they had found no significant damage to ports or waterways as a result of the tsunami, ending a significant evacuation to higher ground.

Tyburn · #7 03-11-2011, 06:59 PM

The overall situation in earthquake and tsunami-ravaged Japan is still unclear this morning but authorities fear more than 1,000 people may have died in yesterday's disaster.

A devastating tsunami triggered by Japan' biggest earthquake on record caused massive destruction as a wall of water up to 10 metres tall tore inland, destroying everything in its path.

TV footage showed the huge tide of brown water sweeping countless numbers of cars, boats and buildings, some of them on fire, inland in the worst-hit area of Sendai, 400 kilometres north of Tokyo.

Domestic media said the death toll was expected to exceed 1,000, most of whom appeared to have drowned. There were reports of 200 to 300 bodies being found on a beach at Sendai.

Friday's quake was the biggest ever recorded in Japan, striking with a magnitude of 8.9 off the north-east coast, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The quake sparked a Pacific-wide tsunami warning and a surge rolled across the Pacific at 800 kilometres per hour - as fast as a jetliner - before hitting Hawaii and the US West Coast this morning.

Thousands of people were ordered to evacuate coastal areas in the states of California, Oregon and Washington, but there were no reports of major damage.

The biggest waves of more than two metres were recorded near California's Crescent City.

The alert has since been lifted in most parts, including the Philippines, Australia and China.

This morning another strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.6 hit north-western Japan, the NHK TV station reported.

In other developments this morning:

•Thousands of residents were evacuated from an area around a nuclear plant after radiation levels rose in the reactor, but no radiation leak was detected.
•A passenger train with an unknown number of people aboard is unaccounted for in a tsunami-hit part of the coast.
•
•A major explosion has hit a petrochemical plant in Sendai.
•A dam has burst in north-eastern Fukushima prefecture, sweeping away many homes.

Underscoring grave concerns about the Fukushima plant some 240 km north of Tokyo, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US Air Force had delivered coolant to avert a rise in the temperature of the facility's nuclear rods.

The unfolding disaster has prompted offers of help from dozens of countries.

China said rescuers were ready to help with quake relief while President Barack Obama told Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan the United State would assist in any way. Australia has also offered its assistance.

Boats, cars and trucks were tossed around like toys in the water after a small tsunami hit the town of Kamaichi in northern Japan. An overpass, location unknown, appeared to have collapsed and cars were turning around and speeding away.

Japanese politicians pushed for an emergency budget to fund relief efforts after Mr Kan asked them to "save the country", Kyodo news agency reported. Japan is already the most heavily indebted major economy in the world, meaning any funding efforts would be closely scrutinised by financial markets.

Even in a nation accustomed to earthquakes, the devastation was shocking.

"A big area of Sendai city near the coast, is flooded. We are hearing that people who were evacuated are stranded," said Rie Sugimoto, a reporter for NHK television in Sendai.

"About 140 people, including children, were rushed to an elementary school and are on the rooftop but they are surrounded by water and have nowhere else to go."

Japan has prided itself on its speedy tsunami warning system, which has been upgraded several times since its inception in 1952, including after a 7.8 magnitude quake triggered a 30-metre high wave before a warning was given.

The country has also built countless breakwaters and floodgates to protect ports and coastal areas, although experts said they might not have been enough to prevent disasters such as what happened on Friday.

Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano told people to stay in safe places as the cold deepened into the night. "Please help each other and act calmly," he told a news conference.

In Tokyo, residents who had earlier fled swaying buildings jammed the streets trying to make their way home after much of the city's public transportation was halted.

Many subways in Tokyo later resumed operation but trains did not run. People who decided not to walk home slept in office buildings.

"I was unable stay on my feet because of the violent shaking. The aftershocks gave us no reprieve. Then the tsunamis came when we tried to run for cover. It was the strongest quake I experienced," a woman with a baby on her back told television in northern Japan.

Fires across the coast

The quake, the most powerful since Japan started keeping records 140 years ago, sparked at least 80 fires in cities and towns along the coast, Kyodo said.

Other Japanese nuclear power plants and oil refineries were shut down and one refinery was ablaze. Television footage showed an intense fire in the waterfront area near Sendai.

Auto plants, electronics factories and refineries shut, roads buckled and power to millions of homes and businesses was knocked out. Several airports, including Tokyo's Narita, were closed and rail services halted. All ports were shut.

The central bank said it would cut short a two-day policy review scheduled for next week to one day on Monday and promised to do its utmost to ensure financial market stability.

The disaster occurred as the world's third-largest economy had been showing signs of reviving from an economic contraction in the final quarter of last year. The disaster raised the prospect of major disruptions for many key businesses and a massive repair bill running into tens of billions of dollars.

The powerful earthquake that struck off the coast of Japan on Friday triggered tsunami warnings around the Pacific Rim, including in Hawaii and on the West Coast of the United States, but most of the destructive flooding appeared to have occurred in Japan itself, in the area nearest the quake’s epicenter.

Experts said that this pattern was not unusual. With this earthquake as with others, essentially two tsunamis are generated — one that hits the local coastline, often within minutes, and another can travel for thousands of miles in the opposite direction, some of its energy dissipating as it spreads across the open ocean.

With the local tsunami, the first wave is usually the most destructive, said Eric Geist, a scientist with the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. “Between the earthquake and the Japanese coast there is not a huge amount of variation” in the seafloor, he said. “So for the local tsunami, the energy mainly depends on the earthquake parameters.”

With far-off tsunamis, though, some of the energy dissipates as the wave spreads outward, like a ripple from a rock thrown into a pond. Coastal features can also reduce some of the energy as the wave runs up on land. But coastal features can also cause secondary effects that amplify the forces, so that the second or third tsunami wave is often the most severe.

“Once the first wave hits the coastline, it gets very complicated,” Mr. Geist said. “There are reflected waves, scattered waves that propagate up and down the coastline.”

Reports from Sendai, Japan, the city closest to the quake, suggest that wave heights reached more than 12 feet above normal as the first tsunami wave struck.

In North America, the worst waves — worse even than in Hawaii — were forecast for the California-Oregon border, with heights of more than 8 feet above normal sea level. The reason for this, Mr. Geist said, is that there is a feature in the sea floor — a cliff-like rise called the Mendocino fracture, which runs east-west — that serves to guide the tsunami waves toward the area, concentrating them.

The West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center forecast waves of about 7 feet for Brookings, Ore., for example, an area affected by the Mendocino fracture, but in Eureka, Calif., about 100 miles south, the prediction was for a little more than a foot.

But tsunami experts warned that predicting wave heights was difficult, and that because of the complicated interactions as wave after wave struck the coast, the full effect of the tsunami would not be known until about a day after the earthquake.

“Tsunamis are rare events,” said Paul Huang, a seismologist with the tsunami warning center. “And calibrating the big events is hard. You have no data.”

The 8.9 magnitude earthquake on Friday, the largest ever recorded in Japan, occurred in a subduction zone, where one of the earth’s tectonic plates is sliding beneath another. In this case, the Pacific plate is sliding beneath the Eurasian plate, which the Japanese island of Honshu sits on, at a rate of slightly more than 3 inches per year.

At the actual boundary between the two plates, stresses build up that are held in check by friction. At some point, said Ross S. Stein, a geophysicist with the geological service, “the stress overwhelms that friction,” and an earthquake occurs.

In a subduction earthquake, parts of the fault zone are uplifted, while others dip down. “It’s almost like you took a rug and kind of popped it and watched a ripple roll through it,” Mr. Stein said.

If the quake occurs under water, as this one did, the up-and-down movement displaces an enormous amount of water, triggering the tsunami.