GREAT EARTHQUAKES HAVE STARTED TODAY AS 8.9 HITS JAPAN WITH MASSIVE TSUNAMI
MAR 11 2011
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 as far as Hawaii, Alaska and
the Oregon coast 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.
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