The 8.9 magnitude earthquake slammed JAPAN 11 MARCH 2011

 

TOKYO — The death toll was expected to top 1,000 after a magnitude 8.9 earthquake slammed Japan's northeast coast Friday afternoon, unleashing a 23-foot tsunami that swept people, boats, cars, buildings and tons of debris miles inland — and prompted a "nuclear emergency."  

 

In Japan, police said 200 to 300 bodies were found in Sendai, the coastal city closest to the epicenter. Hundreds more were missing and around 1,000 people were injured.

In one of the worst-hit residential areas, people buried under rubble could be heard calling out "Help" and "When are we going to be rescued?", the Kyodo news agency reported hours after the quake and tsunami. Rescuers were having a hard time reaching areas due to destroyed roads.

Japanese nuclear officials say radiation levels inside a nuclear power plant have surged to 1,000 times their normal levels after the cooling system failed in the wake of the tsunami unleashed by Japan’s biggest recorded earthquake.

 

 

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday that the temperatures of its No.1 and No.2 reactors at the plant in question, called the Fukushima Daini nuclear power station are rising, and it has lost control over pressure in the reactors, according to Dow Jones Newswire. 

 

 

The tsunami killed hundreds of people as it carried away ships, cars and homes, and triggered widespread fires that burned out of control.

Hours after the tsunami struck Japan, the waves washed ashore the U.S. West Coast, where evacuations were ordered from California to Washington but little damage was sustained. The entire Pacific had been put on alert — including coastal areas of South America, Canada and Alaska — but waves were not as bad as expected.
The magnitude-8.9 offshore quake triggered a 23-foot tsunami and was followed for hours by more than 50 aftershocks, many of them more than magnitude 6.0. Then, in the early hours of Saturday, a magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck the central, mountainous part of the country — far from the original quake’s epicenter. It was not immediately clear if this latest quake was related.

 

Dozens of aftershocks have rattled Japan’s northeast since today’s magnitude 8.9 temblor, but the most recent quake was in an entirely different location.

Airlines canceled dozens of flights between U.S. and Tokyo after the earthquake clogged two major airports. Passengers as well as airline employees were unable to get to the airport because the earthquake halted railway lines. Delta Air Lines canceled 29 trips from Narita and Haneda airports, Bloomberg News reported.

The latest quake hit early Saturday at a depth of six miles, about 105 miles north of Tokyo.

It caused buildings in Tokyo to sway. There were no immediate reports of damage.

In northeastern Japan, the area around a nuclear power plant was evacuated after the reactor’s cooling system failed and pressure began building inside.

Japan said radiation levels surged outside the nuclear plant, expands area subject to evacuation.

Police said 200 to 300 bodies were found in the northeastern coastal city of Sendai, the city in Miyagi prefecture, or state, closest to the epicenter. Another 137 were confirmed killed, with 531 people missing. Police also said 627 people were injured.

The magnitude-8.9 offshore quake unleashed a 23-foot tsunami and was followed for hours by more than 50 aftershocks, many of them of more than magnitude 6.0.

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. A large section of Kesennuma, a town of 70,000 people in Miyagi, burned furiously into the night with no apparent hope of being extinguished, public broadcaster NHK said.

Koto Fujikawa, 28, was riding a monorail when the quake hit and had to later pick her way along narrow, elevated tracks to the nearest station.

“I thought I was going to die,” Fujikawa, who works for a marketing company, said. “It felt like the whole structure was collapsing.”

Scientists said the quake ranked as the fifth-largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, last month.

“The energy radiated by this quake is nearly equal to one month’s worth of energy consumption” in the United States, U.S. Geological Survey Scientist Brian Atwater told the Associated Press.

As night fell and temperatures hovered just above freezing, tens of thousands of people remained stranded in Tokyo, where the rail network was still down. The streets were jammed with cars, buses and trucks trying to get out of the city.

The city has set up 33 shelters in city hall, on university campuses and in government offices, but many planned to spend the night at 24-hour cafes and hotels.
The government ordered thousands of residents near a nuclear power plant in the city of Onahama to move back at least two miles from the plant. The reactor was not leaking radiation but its core remained hot even after a shutdown. The plant is 170 miles northeast of Tokyo.
The Defense Ministry said it had dispatched dozens of troops trained to deal with chemical disaster to the plant in case of radiation leak.
Trouble was reported at two other nuclear plants as well, but there was no radiation leak at either of them.
Japan’s coast guard said it was searching for 80 dock workers on a ship that was swept away from a shipyard in Miyagi.
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 on Japanese TV of powerful, debris-filled waves, uncontrolled fires and a ship caught in a massive whirlpool resembled scenes from a Hollywood disaster movie.
Large fishing boats and other vessels rode high waves ashore, slamming against overpasses or scraping under them and snapping power lines along the way. Upturned and partially submerged cars bobbed in the water. Ships anchored in ports crashed against each other.
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 homes, probably because of burst gas pipes.
Waves of muddy waters flowed over farmland near Sendai, carrying buildings, some of them ablaze. Drivers attempted to flee. Sendai airport was inundated with thick, muddy debris that included cars, trucks, buses and even light planes.
Highways to the worst-hit coastal areas buckled. Telephone lines snapped. Train service in northeastern Japan and in Tokyo, which normally serve 10 million people a day, were suspended, leaving untold numbers stranded in stations or roaming the streets. Tokyo’s Narita airport was closed indefinitely.
In one town alone on the northeastern coast, Minami-soma, some 1,800 houses were destroyed or badly ravaged, a Defense Ministry spokeswoman said.
President Barack Obama said the U.S. “stands ready to help” Japan.
Jesse Johnson, a native of Nevada who lives in Chiba, north of Tokyo, was eating at a sushi restaurant with his wife when the quake hit.
“At first it didn’t feel unusual, but then it went on and on. So I got myself and my wife under the table,” he told The Associated Press. “I’ve lived in Japan for 10 years, and I’ve never felt anything like this before. The aftershocks keep coming. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t know whether it’s me shaking or an earthquake.”
NHK said more than 4 million buildings were without power in Tokyo and its suburbs.
A large fire erupted at the Cosmo oil refinery in the city of Ichihara and burned out of control with 100-foot flames whipping into the sky.
“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 hardest-hit region. A utility aircraft and several helicopters were on the way.

Also in Miyagi prefecture, a fire broke out in a turbine building of a nuclear power plant, but it was later extinguished, said Tohoku Electric Power Co.
A reactor area of a nearby plant was leaking water, the company said. But it was unclear if the leak was caused by the tsunami or something else. There were no reports of radioactive leaks at any of Japan’s nuclear plants.
Jefferies International Ltd., a global investment banking group, estimated overall losses of about $10 billion.
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.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the 2:46 p.m. quake was magnitude 8.9, the biggest to hit Japan since record-keeping began 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. Several quakes hit the same region in recent days, including one measured at magnitude 7.3 on Wednesday that caused no damage.
A tsunami warning was extended to a number of areas in the Pacific, Southeast Asia and Latin America, 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 fled 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.
The first waves hit Hawaii about 9 a.m. EST. A tsunami about 7 feet high was recorded on Maui and a wave at least 3 feet high was recorded on Oahu and Kauai. Officials warned that the waves would continue and could get larger.

Japan’s worst previous quake was a magnitude 8.3 temblor in 1923 in Kanto that killed 143,000 people, according to USGS. A 7.2-magnitude quake in Kobe in 1995 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% 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 in February 2010 also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.
Associated Press writers Jay Alabaster, Mari Yamaguchi, Tomoko A. Hosaka and Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo; Jaymes Song in Honolulu and Mark Niesse in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.

helicopter footage

                                                        shaking view in japan shopping mall