Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, Now nuclear danger (Videos)

As I write this, it is Friday, March 11, 2011 at 9:30pm EST in Toronto. It is Saturday, 11:30am in Japan. Reuters is reporting what the Japanese nation has woken up to: devastation along the northeastern coast, fires raging, parts of some cities underwater and a death toll that could be at least 1,000 people.

Nuclear problems

Officials have started mass evacuation about two nuclear power plants after cooling system failures led to a radiation leak from a reactor at one location. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Onahama city, about 270 kilometres northeast of Tokyo, was the scene of a dangerous event when a cooling system shut down due to a loss in power. The loss of cooling saw radiation levels inside one of its reactors to rise to 1,000 times normal. A monitoring device outside the plant apparently detected radiation eight times higher than normal and an evacuation zone was expanded from three kilometres around the plant to 10 kilometres.

A backup generator failed after power was cut to the plant due to the quake. The primary cooling system stopped supplying water to the plant’s 460-megawatt No. 1 reactor. An official said that a less-effective secondary system was being used to try and cool the reactor and that an emergency cooling system remained intact if required to prevent a reactor meltdown.

The cities

It was reported by the Jiji news agency on Saturday that one-third of the northeastern Japanese city of Kesennuma was under water and its population of 74,000 was dealing with widespread fires.

The town of Kamaishi was hit by the tsunami which swept aside everything tossing boats, cars and trucks like toys.

Costs

It is too early to tell what the potential cost of the disaster will be. The Daily Mirror has said repairing the damage will be a financial blow to the already weak Japanese economy. There was an immediate impact on insurance companies around the world who saw their stocks fall.

As a note of history, The Kobe earthquake of 1995 caused $102.5 billion in damage and was supposedly the most expensive natural disaster in history.

Elsewhere

Reuters said the tsunami "grazed" the coasts of the United States and Mexico. "Grazed" nevertheless didn’t mean without force. Crescent City, near the California border with Oregon, had about 35 boats and most of the harbor docks damaged, where waves were more than 6 feet. Santa Cruz sustained about $2 million in damages to docks and vessels. The port of Brookings-Harbor, the busiest recreation port on the Oregon coast, was largely destroyed. It was reported that the surge apparently pulled some boats out to sea, about a dozen sank and boats were everywhere, scattered about or sitting on top of one another.

Hawaii seems to have escaped unscathed. Canada’s British Columbia reported minimal waves. South America is preparing for the worse by shutting down its ports and evacuating coastal areas.

Russia Today – Mar 11/2011

Japan’s Chernobyl? Radiation pressure fears at Fukushima plant

NHK World – Mar 11/2011

Tsunami Strikes Japan After 8.9-Magnitude Earthquake

(Commentary in what language?) [Great footage of the tsunami coming into a town. Good lord, what would you do? What could you do other than run for your life? Yes, there’s the water, but it is littered with so much debris, it is just mowing down everything in its path.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4coi8rgULZ4

March 11/2011

8.8 Earthquake struck Japan triggering a Tsunami Alert LAST MINUTE

Commentary in Japanese. [Amazing footage of the tsunami. Check out the guy standing on the back of a flatbed truck. Is he not trying to escape because he’s trapped there?]

Associated Press – Mar 11/2011

Hundreds Killed in Tsunami After 8.9 Japan Quake

A ferocious tsunami spawned by one of the largest earthquakes on record slammed Japan’s eastern coast Friday, killing hundreds of people as it swept away ships, cars and homes (March 11)

References

Wikipedia: 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami

FYI: In researching the videos for this article, I ran across two videos purporting to show alien spacecraft flying over the tsunami with the tagline, "Did aliens cause the tsunami?" Ah, I decided to not include them. 🙂

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