Japan earthquake

Le Commentateur

Watching BBC News at the moment... Some incredible images of the tsunami relentlessly moving inland on the low lying farmland....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12709850

:shock:

Apparently the force was 8.8 – about 100 times stronger than the Kobe quake of the mid-90s.

Crapaud

I'm watching it, just now, myself. Serious sh1t!

I'm getting the same sense of unreality that I felt watching the second plane fly into the World Trade Centre.

The Tsunami looks to be more serious than the earthquake itself.

The pictures are amazing: the ship caught in a whirlpool, an artic being pushed along the road, cars moving across the path of the approaching wavefront (the drivers must be kaking themselves, I would).

I wonder how it'll affect the other countries on the Pacific Rim?

OffTheBackAdam

6ft high tsunami reported in mid-ocean.
Look for 30-60ft waves hitting the Hawaian chain, it'll strip the veneer of civilisation off Pacific Atolls, large waves will strike the West Coast of the USA.

Le Commentateur

All that debris being carried at the front of the wave – even if it's just a few feet high, that can't be survivable.

Crapaud

I just saw a house bobbing along on the wavefront!. :shock:

shouldbeinbed

Terrible scenes, all the cars in the wave engulfing farmland look like dinky toys, the pictures don't give the sense of scale. The seaborne tsunami is taller than many of the islands in its path,

5th biggest quake in a century. Biggest nr Japan in 140 years 1000x the NZ one & aftershocks bigger than many main quakes (sky tv figs)

bexley5200

im watching it on sky live on 501 looks like there sending international aid god bless them

Cleat Eastwood

holy crap. I only got onto it from the warning on googles page. horrendously awesome.

sonny73

Really awful scenes, I feel for the people out there.

Sirius631

I'd expect a few more over the next couple of weeks. The moon will be at its closes point to the earth on the 12th March, so will exert its greatest gravitational force then.

donkykong

just been looking on usa eathquake data website, theres been a lot of quakes recently in that area, mainly 4-5 magnitude before the big one, the tsunami is a disaster in itself but had the main quake happened inland that would have been catastrophic.

god speed aid to the needy,

emx

OffTheBackAdam wrote:

Look for 30-60ft waves hitting the Hawaian chain, it'll strip the veneer of civilisation off Pacific Atolls, large waves will strike the West Coast of the USA.

any sign of those 60ft waves yet..?

ratsbeyfus

My brother lives near Tokyo with his family. He was inside a building when the quake hit and described the whole building as being 'lifted' - like when you drive over a speed hump. The school he works in is built on reclaimed land, and it sounds as if the soil has liquified.Scary stuff indeed.

DIESELDOG

i must say it is very bad. A friend was caught up in the last boxing day one, albeit not in the immediate area.

He described how the sea just disappeared and his sister was trying to rescue fish! Luckily he knew what had happened and got the both of them to safety before it hit.

Very scary stuff.

Love n hugs

DD

Cressers

Things just got a lot worse...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12720219

And I wonder if this earthquake will lead to further stresses being released elsewhere. Perhaps the overdue Great Tokyo Earthquake (the one that will prompt another global downturn, it's just a question of when rather than if...) has just been made more likely as a result?

DIESELDOG

Holy crap

No love n hugs this time

DD

OffTheBackAdam

Looks like the risk of major tsunami has receeded.
Now the problem's the nuclear power stations.
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/pg4uogOEUrU&quot; frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The "Money Shot" is at 47seconds.
It appears not to be one of the containment buildings (The cubes).

Crapaud

According to the BBC, 5 reactors have been put on a state of emergency!!! :shock:

Bunneh

I'm a pretty cold hearted sod most of the time but seeing those tiny cars with people in them, trying to get away along roads that were being swamped, I cried for them. Poor poor bastards.

DIESELDOG

Bunneh wrote:

I'm a pretty cold hearted sod most of the time but seeing those tiny cars with people in them, trying to get away along roads that were being swamped, I cried for them. Poor poor bastards.

+1

DD

Le Commentateur

ratsbeyfus wrote:

My brother lives near Tokyo with his family. He was inside a building when the quake hit and described the whole building as being 'lifted' - like when you drive over a speed hump. The school he works in is built on reclaimed land, and it sounds as if the soil has liquified.Scary stuff indeed.

In Tokyo itself the big building towers there are constructed with active suspensions allowing them to react to wave forces from quakes. The construction rules are very strict, as they should be. In China or anywhere else these would have come down:

http://video.l3.fbcdn.net/cfs-l3-snc6/8 ... a10add6400

ratsbeyfus

Yep, when I lived in Japan, I remember staying in a high rise hotel in Shinjuku in Tokyo - it was built on giant springs or something. You could feel it swaying slightly when you went to the top floors.

deptfordmarmoset

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011 ... mi.html?hp

Dragging the split-screen icon on that link starts to give an idea of the scale.

Le Commentateur

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5tBTTpHNF8

:?

OffTheBackAdam

Oh dear, a touch too much sun? :roll:

Crapaud

Le Commentateur wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5tBTTpHNF8

:?

It turns out that she's a troll lampooning the fundies. Follow the comments (page 4, I think). Very well done, and funny when you realize. Sick, but funny.

Her channel's now been closed.