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Massive Earthquake Rocks Japan

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What appears to be the fifth largest earthquake since 1900 “with a magnitude of 8.9 rocked Japan Friday afternoon“:

. . . forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes, triggering a 10-meter tsunami that violently swept away cars and other objects in its paths and shutting down phone lines and transportation in most parts of the country. leaving at least five people dead.

The quake was originally reported at a magnitude of 7.9 but was later upgraded to 8.9. That makes it the fifth largest recorded world-wide since 1900, according to the U.S. Geological Service, larger than the 7.9-magnitude Great Kanto Earthquake that devastated Tokyo in 1923 or the 6.8 magnitude quake that hit Kobe in 1995.

The quake caused mass panic around Tokyo, where workers evacuated their buildings and power was cut off at 4.1 million households in Tokyo and neighboring prefectures.

I am watching images of the destruction on TV and it’s just overwhelming.  We’re hearing warnings of a possible tsunami in Hawai’i and even here on the California coast.  Given that I’m writing this just before 1 AM PST, by the time many of you read this, we’ll have a better picture of the damage — and the reality of the tsunami.

More here.

Comments

  1. I hope this is just another scare. I just called a friend and she was unaware of it until I told her. She’s a block a way from the beach.

    Funny thing is I met her during jury duty last year and we became great friends, and was one of the few I told I was gay. And she’s conservative, too. I got to pick the time frame to do my jury duty and I picked a random time. I told her that and she told me ‘i believe in fate and i don’t think this was a coincidence.’ i bet she’s believe that more than ever right now, or will, if she’s not too busy freaking out. When I did tell her she was going ‘OH GOD! OH MY GOD!’

  2. Blaster, which beach is she near? Make sure she checks the latest warnings; they’re saying the tsunami will hit at about 8 AM PST. Maybe she should just wake up before 7:30 to be prepared.

    I have no way to gage if they’re just being overcautious or if people have real reason to be concerned.

    Best thing to do is to pay attention to what local authorities are saying.

    They’ve just upgraded tsunami watches to warnings on the West Coast.

  4. Stay safe west coasters.

    Oblig black humor* “Well there goes the President’s birth certificate, washed out to sea.”

    *’black humor’ is in no way meant to be offensive.

  6. Sorry, TGC,

    I won’t speak for Dan, but as a man from my home town said, “If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent Texas and live in Hell”

    😉 I’ll take Ohio, winters and all.

  7. The Tsunami generated 3 to 6 ft waves in Hawaii. That’s good news for the west coast…. With a caveat. The shape and slope of the coast line can either reduce the effect, or amplify it. Though i was studying seismology when I was a geology major, I quit the program (calc buried me) before we covered Tsunamis in dept.

  13. I dunno, TL. Just can’t wrap my head around the kind of thinking it takes to mix spaghetti with chili. That, and there’s no sweet tea. That’s just criminal.

    “If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent Texas and live in Hell”

    Temperature-wise, that would be Laredo during the Summer. Still a nice city to visit (sans Los Zetas).

  14. Not to make light of this terrible event and the great loss of life:
    The President has just announced he is sending in FEMA to help out
    the Japanese………INFO: I am in New Orleans.

  15. The company I work for has an office in Yokosuka. I hope all my fellow co-workers made it through with no casualties. Hopefully the waves won’t be catastrophic on the West Coast. I’m with you TGC per chili. Spaghetti in chili just ain’t right. A woman at church is from Cincinnati and has promised to make their famous and unique chili for me to sample.

  16. There is something I can not help but ponder. Many, many people in California knowingly live between the San Andreas Fault and the tsunami landing zone coast amidst great tinder for fires and high winds to spread the flames and weak substrata that shears and slides as mud and ….. they worry about man-made global warming as the beast to be slain.

    What is so appealing about the sun and sand to make people so delusional about their fragility? Shouldn’t pumping rivers from far afar to get sufficient water be a clue about as subtle as the neck on a giraffe?

    My heart goes out to all people in all tragedies. In a material society, the loss to natural disaster always seems greater than when a peasant’s hut is leveled. But, in all likelihood the peasant is far more resilient.

  18. The President has just announced he is sending in FEMA to help out
    the Japanese………INFO: I am in New Orleans.

    Thing is that Emergency Mangement, disaster mangment and Mass Casualty Incident management is hard. There’s gonna be fuck ups. The important thing is to realize the fuck ups, minimize them (if possible) and learn from them. Also, a media that amplifies the fuck ups and reports gossip as news doesn’t help.

  20. Whether “unshakable bond” was good word choice or bad really depends on how it sounds when translated more or less literally to Japanese.

    I’m sure the irony was intentional and meant to sound inspiring, but I would hope that someone ran the phrase past a native Japanese speaker before Obama used it in a public statement.