Pictures Of Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Devastation

[Mad Scientist]

My wife and I have relatives in Japan, mostly in Tokyo and Okinawa. My ex-wife has family in Yamagata, just west of the Sendai epicenter. We've been in contact with them all since the quake hit and thankfully they're all ok.

I remember experiencing a small quake in the fishing village of Sakata in Yamagata prefecture, which is west of Sendai back in the 90's. The house shook for a little bit but the ground felt like we were standing on a giant bowl of jelly that wobbled for about 5 minutes after the shaking stopped. Nothing like the quakes we experienced growing up in SoCal.

Plus my wife reminded me that we have friends in Sendai. A Japanese couple were living here in Pennsylvania while he was attending a University near Harrisburg. When he graduated he and his wife bought a house in Sendai about a year ago. We haven't heard from them but we're hoping and praying they're they're ok.

I've actually been to the fishing village of Sendai before. My former father-in-law and I booked a half day fishing boat there back in 1988.

It's not like you haven't seen enough but here they are:

Japan Hit By Massive Earthquake and Tsunami >> TotallyCoolPix

The Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Aftermath >> TotallyCoolPix

 

[Zoom-boing]

Here's before and after pictures. Utter, total destruction.

* Note: Hover over each satellite photo to view the devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami. Just have your cursor on the pic and move the black line from one side to the other to see the before and after pics.

ABC News - Japan Earthquake: before and after


According to the USGS, the earthquake shifted Japan 8 feet.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/af...ocId=CNG.bd57fdfbae452af0d2b556455b5b59ec.191

 

[waltky]

Food and water scarce in disaster area...

Japanese Struggling to Find Food and Water in Disaster Area
March 12, 2011 - Officials with Japan's nuclear safety agency said early Sunday morning there is an emergency at another nuclear reactor at a quake-hit power plant. The agency says the cooling system at the number three reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant is offline and could possibly explode, following Saturday's blast at the plant's number one reactor.

Reports quoting government officials say up to 160 people may have been exposed to radiation. Meanwhile, residents in the country's northeast are struggling to find food and clean water. Aftershocks continued to hit northeastern Japan Sunday, several days after a 8.9-magnitude earthquake and resulting 10-meter-high tsunami devastated the coastline.

VOA Correspondent Steve Herman is near the power plant. He says locals are complaining that the authorities are not giving them accurate information about the situation fast enough. "One of the things the authorities are trying to do is not have any panic spreading among people, but information about what is happening is coming out of Tokyo not Fukushima," he said.

Herman says authorities still have not determined how much damage the country's coastline communities have suffered. "Japan just has countless little farming communities and fishing communites. And it is these fishing communities that have really taken the horrible hit up and down the northeastern Pacific coast. There is obviously just hundreds, if not thousands, of these types of towns and villages that have been totally or partly destroyed," he said.

The final death toll could range from the thousands to tens of thousands, depending on how many of these communities are gone. VOA reporters managed to travel to Fukushima by plane, but many airports, roads and railways remain flooded or damaged throughout Japan.

Herman says that because of this, people are scrambling to find basic necessities, even in inland areas such as Fukushima. "People are just trying to find clean water. Food supplies are running out. In the convenience stores, there are no rice balls left. There is no bottled water left. We are facing a really serious situation in the days ahead for these people that are living in areas that were only moderately damaged," he said. Overall, analysts say Japan could have fared much worse in the disaster.

Tokyo has invested billions of dollars into making the country as earthquake-proof as possible. Architects specially design high-rise buildings to flex in a quake. Tsunami warning signs and large seawalls line the Japanese coast. Even schoolchildren practice drills on what to do during an earthquake. However in the end, analysts say that no amount of human preparedness is foolproof against the power of nature.

Source

See also:

Expert: Nuclear Radiation Could Spread Far Beyond Japan
March 13, 2011 - An American nuclear expert says radiation from Japan could spread across the Pacific and reach the United States if a complete meltdown occurs at a Japanese nuclear facility damaged as a result of last week’s earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

Nuclear expert Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund says Japan’s nuclear crisis is in a critical phase. "One of the [Japanese] reactors has had half the core exposed already. This is the one they are now flooding with seawater in a desperate effort to prevent a complete meltdown." Cirincione spoke on the Fox News Sunday television program. He said the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Japan’s northeast coast is one of at least three nuclear facilities at risk.

Japan has evacuated civilians from areas surrounding the troubled plant, but Cirincione says radiation could spread far beyond Japan if efforts to contain the crisis fail. "The worst-case scenario is that the fuel rods fuse together - temperatures get so hot that [they] melt together into a radioactive molten mass that busts through the containment mechanisms. So they spew radioactivity into the ground, into the air, into the water. Some of that radioactivity could carry in the atmosphere to the west coast of the United States."

Japan’s ambassador in Washington, Ichiro Fujisaki, acknowledged potential dangers, but said no complete nuclear meltdown appears imminent. "It is true that part of [the] fuel rod may have been deformed or melting. But it is not a situation where [the] core reactor, the substantial part of [the] reactor, is melting down." The ambassador spoke on NBC’s Meet the Press. Also appearing on the program was the head of the U.S. Nuclear Energy Institute, Marvin Furtel, who praised Japan’s response to the nuclear crisis. Furtel said a meltdown at a nuclear power plant does not always result in a massive release of radiation, as America’s own history shows.

"At Three Mile Island [in Pennsylvania], which was the worst accident we ever had, about half of the core melted, so about 50 percent. It resulted in no [radiation] releases off-site that threatened anybody. So, you can have fuel melt, and if the rest of your safety systems, your containment, works and you manage to keep the reactor under control, the dangers for public health and safety are really minimal."

Some U.S. legislators are suggesting heightened scrutiny of America’s nuclear energy program in the wake of Japan’s crisis. Independent Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman says new nuclear facility construction should be placed on hold pending a full assessment of potential risks. But the Senate’s top Republican, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, says it would be a mistake to make domestic energy decisions based on fears surrounding a tragedy in another nation.

Source

 

[LaRueJC56]

I just heard and saw the Swing Girls, which was filmed in the Yamagata prefecture. Is there any way to find out what happened to them or where they would normally be?

 

[Big Black Dog]

My heart goes out to these people. Their lives have been changed forever. Mother Nature, and God, can be an awesome force at times.

 

[hendrickL]

I really feel sorry about what happened in Japan, too many people, lives, and even economy were affected. I even heard that Japan is ramping up production in the wake of the 9.0 March 11 earthquake, and major factory-to-dealer rewards are on the way from Toyota and Nissan to move the anticipated inventory wave. Whether it is cash, rates of interest or lease incentives, the Japanese automakers are set to push inventory out the door in the United States, writes Automotive News. The incentive plans have come on the tails of less than impressive sales numbers in early May, largely due to Japan's March 11 9.0 earthquakes. I read this here: Toyota and Nissan fire up the incentive engine again, cardealexpert.com/news-information.

 

[waltky]

possum thinks mebbe dey could use it to build another island to put another airport on...

Town's dilemma: Mountains of tsunami debris, no place to put it
Before officials in Minamisanriku, Japan, can begin rebuilding from the March 11 tsunami, they must first dispose of what remains of their coastal town: an estimated 650,000 to 700,000 tons of wreckage that they have nowhere to put.

It’s a monumental challenge, and one being faced by communities along hundreds of miles of Japan’s battered northeastern coast. The debris covers an estimated 10 square kilometers (a little less than 4 square miles, or three times the size of New York’s Central Park) of the fishing town, one of Japan’s hardest hit communities. It comes in all shapes and sizes: cars, refrigerators, wood, steel, air conditioners, concrete rubble, clothes, broken glass and countless other forms. Town officials, who estimate it will cost about $27.4 million to remove it, have plans to burn as much of the debris as possible and recycle what they can.

But since Japan has little landfill space left, the rest may eventually be shipped overseas. The New York Times reported on June 3 that the government of Miyagi prefecture, which includes Minamisanriku, also plans to use land adjacent to Matsushima, a group of islands considered one of “the three most beautiful places” in Japan, as a dump. Officials are planning to build five incinerators in Miyagi prefecture, in which Minamisanriku is located. But the one that the town will use in Motoyoshi, in nearby Kesennuma city, won't be operational until the summer or fall of 2012. That puts the companies in charge of the cleanup in a quandary.

"The debris storage space will be used up soon. Unless we secure other space to dump the debris, we may have to stop the cleanup," said Takashi Abe of Abei Construction, one of the 20 companies hired to collect the rubble from Minamisanriku. "That's the biggest issue we're facing right now." The cleanup began in late March, but initially the pace was slow, as the crews also were searching for bodies in the town, where 900 people died or vanished.

"While we were cleaning up the debris, we were also looking for those (missing) people, so we had to do it delicately," said Akira Saijo, head of the town office's construction division, which is overseeing the debris removal. "The pace of cleaning it up was slow until the end of May." Abe, whose company is cleaning one of three sectors of the town, said all of the cleanup crews alone are employing about 100 excavators and up to 70 trucks, said Abe. Enough debris to fill 500 large trucks is cleared daily, he said, but in some areas removal has just begun. The garbage is divided into "burnable and nonburnable," with the latter being split into various types, such as plastic, iron and vinyl, Abe said. Materials like steel and concrete will be recycled. Other companies are handling the disposal of vehicles.

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