TSUNAMI ALERT UPDATE!

Chasplaya
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Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:39 pm

NZ Civil defence has been watching closely and has issued a Marine Tsunami Advisory, only warning boaties and people not to go on beaches. Apparently unusual wave patterns developing but nothing significant nor expected. A 20cm wave hit part of NZ earlier today in a place that doesn't normally get tidal events. But that's nothing to what the poor Japanese are getting

The live feed from Japan does not look good, the quake was bad enough but it is the Tsunami they say is causing worst damage, they anticipate they may have up to 1000 deaths. I think the Japanese USAR team just recently left after assisting here they will have no respite it seems.

Living on the Pacific Rim is maybe not the best place to be. News reports also talk of some of the pacific Island that are only a metre or so above sea level being in extreme danger


AndyT
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Fri Mar 11, 2011 4:17 pm

We were awake and on alert until 5am Hawaii time this morning. We had waves from 2 to 8 feet around the state. Since Hawaii is relatively small chunk of land, tsunami waves have a tendency to hit us with less force than you would normally expect. Which takes more damage, a needle sticking up or a brick wall? Most of the force flows around us to keep on moving. I hear California was hit and lots of boats were destroyed.

We pray that no more lives be lost in this disaster and that God have mercy on His children.


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neverfoundthetime
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Fri Mar 11, 2011 7:11 pm

When you hear 8.9 on the Richter Scale, you sit up and listen. This is the 5th biggest number called on that scale in my life time. So I've been following events since Andy posted the alert earlier. He and others here have been directly effected. Its amazing that comparatively few people lost their lives in Japan(can it ever be seen as few?) in what has been a double whammy, quake and tsunami of massive proportions. Apparently its only down to Japan's readiness and building standards that this figure is not much higher. I know that the Japanese islands sit on the meeting point of two tectonic plates (which is why they are there) and I know the workings: north America and Europe are backing away from each other at the rate of a cm or so per year (has it seemed faster to you recently? :-) ). What I didn't realise until German TV informed me just now is that there can huge movements in just one go too. Apparently in 1920, some parts of the coast around Tokyo started 1 meter below sea level and ended up 3 meters above in one bump! Unbelievable forces.


sbutler
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Fri Mar 11, 2011 7:15 pm

I flew to a coastal village this morning, (Dillingham) and while we were there, the company canceled another flight to the Aleutians because of the Tsunami warning to all of the Aleutian Islands and Western Alaska. So its hitting up here as well. Not much in the way of waves right now, so I don't know if anything will come of it or not.


Scott


Chasplaya
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Fri Mar 11, 2011 7:42 pm

The quake was 8000 times stronger than the magnitude 6.3 quake which struck Christchurch on February 22.

The toll is rising by the minute numerous reports coming in state to expect over a 1000.

6000 NZ'ers in Japan, 20 so far reported unaccounted for


AndyT
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Sat Mar 12, 2011 12:28 am

Hawaii lost a few houses, somewhere around 200 boats, 5 or 6 dock systems in marinas and a major road. That does not include misc damages to homes and other structures. No lives lost as we have been prepared for this. Evacuations were done swiftly.

The loss of the road tripped me out. The wave actually lifted the road up and smashed it into pieces, leaving it scattered around like a child's toy blocks. Massive chunks of concrete and asphalt destroyed in moments.


AndyT
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Sun Mar 13, 2011 2:59 pm

It's beyond understanding. We can only grieve and pray.

SENDAI, Japan >> The estimated death toll from Japan's disasters climbed past 10,000 Sunday as authorities raced to combat the threat of multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns and hundreds of thousands of people struggled to find food and water. The prime minister said it was the nation's worst crisis since World War II.

Nuclear plant operators worked frantically to try to keep temperatures down in several reactors crippled by the earthquake and tsunami, 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.

Near-freezing temperatures compounded the misery of survivors along hundreds of miles of the northeastern coast battered by the tsunami that smashed inland with breathtaking fury. Rescuers pulled bodies from mud-covered jumbles of wrecked houses, shattered tree trunks, twisted cars and tangled power lines while survivors examined the ruined remains.

One rare bit of good news was the rescue of a 60-year-old man swept away by the tsunami who clung to the roof of his house for two days until a military vessel spotted him waving a red cloth about 10 miles offshore.

The death toll surged because of a report from Miyagi, one of the three hardest hit states. The police chief told disaster relief officials more than 10,000 people were killed, police spokesman Go Sugawara told The Associated Press. That was an estimate — only 400 people have been confirmed dead in Miyagi, which has a population of 2.3 million.

According to officials, more than 1,400 people were confirmed dead — including 200 people whose bodies were found Sunday along the coast — and more than 1,000 were missing in Friday's disasters. Another 1,700 were injured.

For Japan, one of the world's leading economies with ultramodern infrastructure, the disasters plunged ordinary life into nearly unimaginable deprivation.

Hundreds of thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers that were cut off from rescuers, aid and electricity. At least 1.4 million households had gone without water since the quake struck and some 1.9 million households were without electricity.

While the government doubled the number of soldiers deployed in the aid effort to 100,000 and sent 120,000 blankets, 120,000 bottles of water and 29,000 gallons of gasoline plus food to the affected areas, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said electricity would take days to restore. In the meantime, he said, electricity would be rationed with rolling blackouts to several cities, including Tokyo.

"This is Japan's most severe crisis since the war ended 65 years ago," Kan told reporters, adding that Japan's future would be decided by its response.

In Rikuzentakata, a port city of over 20,000 virtually wiped out by the tsunami, Etsuko Koyama escaped the water rushing through the third floor of her home but lost her grip on her daughter's hand and has not found her.

"I haven't given up hope yet," Koyama told public broadcaster NHK, wiping tears from her eyes. "I saved myself, but I couldn't save my daughter."

A young man described what ran through his mind before he escaped in a separate rescue. "I thought to myself, ah, this is how I will die," Tatsuro Ishikawa, his face bruised and cut, told NHK as he sat in striped hospital pajamas.

Japanese officials raised their estimate Sunday of the quake's magnitude to 9.0, a notch above the U.S. Geological Survey's reading of 8.9. Either way, it was the strongest quake ever recorded in Japan, which lies on a seismically active arc. A volcano on the southern island of Kyushu — hundreds of miles from the quake' epicenter — also resumed spewing ash and rock Sunday after a couple of quiet weeks, Japan's weather agency said.

Dozens of countries have offered assistance. Two U.S. aircraft carrier groups were off Japan's coast and ready to help. Helicopters were flying from one of the carriers, the USS Ronald Reagan, delivering food and water in Miyagi.

Two other U.S. rescue teams of 72 personnel each and rescue dogs arrived Sunday, as did a five-dog team from Singapore.

Still, large areas of the countryside remained surrounded by water and unreachable. Fuel stations were closed, though at some, cars waited in lines hundreds of vehicles long.

The United States and a several countries in Europe urged their citizens to avoid travel to Japan. France took the added step of suggesting people leave Tokyo in case radiation reached the city.

Community after community traced the vast extent of the devastation.

In the town of Minamisanrikucho, 10,000 people — nearly two-thirds of the population — have not been heard from since the tsunami wiped it out, a government spokesman said. NHK showed only a couple concrete structures still standing, and the bottom three floors of those buildings gutted. One of the few standing was a hospital, and a worker told NHK that hospital staff rescued about a third of the patients.

In the hard-hit port city of Sendai, firefighters with wooden picks dug through a devastated neighborhood. One of them yelled: "A corpse." Inside a house, he had found the body of a gray-haired woman under a blanket.

A few minutes later, the firefighters spotted another — that of a man in black fleece jacket and pants, crumpled in a partial fetal position at the bottom of a wooden stairwell. From outside, while the top of the house seemed almost untouched, the first floor where the body was had been inundated. A minivan lay embedded in one outer wall, which had been ripped away, pulverized beside a mangled bicycle.

The man's neighbor, 24-year-old Ayumi Osuga, dug through the remains of her own house, her white mittens covered by dark mud.

Osuga said she had been practicing origami, the Japanese art of folding paper into figures, with her three children when the quake stuck. She recalled her husband's shouted warning from outside: "'GET OUT OF THERE NOW!"'

She gathered her children — aged 2 to 6 — and fled in her car to higher ground with her husband. They spent the night in a hilltop home belonging to her husband's family about 12 miles (20 kilometers) away.

"My family, my children. We are lucky to be alive," she said.

"I have come to realize what is important in life," Osuga said, nervously flicking ashes from a cigarette onto the rubble at her feet as a giant column of black smoke billowed in the distance.

As night fell and temperatures dropped to freezing in Sendai, people who had slept in underpasses or offices the past two nights gathered for warmth in community centers, schools and City Hall.

At a large refinery on the outskirts of the city, 100-foot-high bright orange flames rose in the air, spitting out dark plumes of smoke. The facility has been burning since Friday. The fire's roar could be heard from afar. Smoke burned the eyes and throat, and a gaseous stench hung in the air.

In the small town of Tagajo, also near Sendai, dazed residents roamed streets cluttered with smashed cars, broken homes and twisted metal.

Residents said the water surged in and quickly rose higher than the first floor of buildings. At Sengen General Hospital, the staff worked feverishly to haul bedridden patients up the stairs one at a time. With the halls now dark, those who can leave have gone to the local community center.

"There is still no water or power, and we've got some very sick people in here," said hospital official Ikuro Matsumoto.

Police cars drove slowly through the town and warned residents through loudspeakers to seek higher ground, but most simply stood by and watched them pass.

In the town of Iwaki, there was no electricity, stores were closed and residents left as food and fuel supplies dwindled. Local police took in about 90 people and gave them blankets and rice balls, but there was no sign of government or military aid trucks.


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neverfoundthetime
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Sun Mar 13, 2011 4:23 pm

Did I say double whammy?
Make that a triple, all-time biggest natural disaster in Japan compounded with an exploding nuclear reactor and subsequent melt-down with dodgy situations at two (!) other nuclear plants. Japan's national debt was 200% of GDP (America's is 100%).... it will now get even worse! The death toll will be in excess of 10'000.


AndyT
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Sun Mar 13, 2011 6:26 pm

I can not even begin to imagine the horror that Japan must bee feeling right now...

I just got word that a volcano just exploded in Kyushu Japan. It is spewing lava and ash over a mile in the air.

I'm starting to wonder if the country will still be there tomorrow. The earthquake moved the entire nation of Japan 8 FEET closer to the US.


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neverfoundthetime
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Mon Mar 14, 2011 8:23 am

Didn't catch anything about a volcano but did see this video which defies belief.

Looks like you'll have to copy paste the link...
http://gizmodo.com/#!5781566


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