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Powerful Quake and Tsunami Devastate Northern Japan

TOKYO — Rescuers struggled to reach survivors on Saturday morning as Japan reeled after an earthquake and a tsunami struck in deadly tandem. The 8.9-magnitude earthquake set off a devastating tsunami that sent walls of water washing over coastal cities in the north. Concerns mounted over possible radiation leaks from two nuclear plants near the earthquake zone.

 

The death toll from the tsunami and earthquake, the strongest ever recorded in Japan, was in the hundreds, but Japanese news media quoted government officials as saying that it would almost certainly rise to more than 1,000. About 200 to 300 bodies were found along the waterline in Sendai, a port city in northeastern Japan and the closest major city to the epicenter.
Thousands of homes were destroyed, many roads were impassable, trains and buses were not running, and power and cellphones remained down. On Saturday morning, the JR rail company said that there were three trains missing in parts of two northern prefectures.
While the loss of life and property may yet be considerable, many lives were certainly saved by Japan’s extensive disaster preparedness and strict construction codes. Japan’s economy was spared a more devastating blow because the earthquake hit far from its industrial heartland.
Japanese officials on Saturday issued broad evacuation orders for people living in the vicinity of two separate nuclear power plants that had experienced breakdowns in their cooling systems as a result of the earthquake, and they warned that small amounts of radiation could leak from both plants.
On Friday, at 2:46 p.m. Tokyo time, the quake struck. First came the roar and rumble of the temblor, shaking skyscrapers, toppling furniture and buckling highways. Then waves as high as 30 feet rushed onto shore, whisking away cars and carrying blazing buildings toward factories, fields and highways.
By Saturday morning, Japan was filled with scenes of desperation, as stranded survivors called for help and rescuers searched for people buried in the rubble. Kazushige Itabashi, an official in Natori City, one of the areas hit hardest by the tsunami, said several districts in an area near Sendai’s airport were annihilated.
Rescuers found 870 people in one elementary school on Saturday morning and were trying to reach 1,200 people in the junior high school, closer to the water. There was no electricity and no water for people in shelters. According to a newspaper, the Mainichi Shimbun, about 600 people were on the roof of a public grade school, in Sendai City. By Saturday morning, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and firefighters had evacuated about 150 of them.
On the rooftop of Chuo Hospital in the city of Iwanuma, doctors and nurses were waving white flags and pink umbrellas, according to TV Asahi. On the floor of the roof, they wrote “Help” in English, and “Food” in Japanese. The reporter, observing the scene from a helicopter, said, “If anyone in the City Hall office is watching, please help them.”
The station also showed scenes of people stranded on a bridge, cut off by water on both sides near the mouth of the Abukuma River in Miyagi Prefecture.
People were frantically searching for their relatives. Fumiaki Yamato, 70, was in his second home in a mountain village outside of Sendai when the earthquake struck. He spoke from his car as he was driving toward Sendai trying to find the rest of his family. While it usually takes about an hour to drive to the city, parts of the road were impassable. “I’m getting worried,” he said as he pulled over to take a reporter’s call. “I don’t know how many hours it’s going to take.”
Japanese, accustomed to frequent earthquakes, were stunned by this one’s magnitude and the more than 100 aftershocks, many equivalent to major quakes.
“I never experienced such a strong earthquake in my life,” said Toshiaki Takahashi, 49, an official at Sendai City Hall. “I thought it would stop, but it just kept shaking and shaking, and getting stronger.”
Train service was shut down across central and northern Japan, including Tokyo, and air travel was severely disrupted.

 

Massive tsunami devastates Japan

Hundreds of people are dead after one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck Japan, triggering a devastating 10-metre-high tsunami along parts of the country's northeastern coastline.
The massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck on Friday afternoon local time, creating gigantic waves which swept away cars, boats, homes and people as the surging water overwhelmed coastal barriers.
Widespread fires burned out of control and Japan's nuclear industry was on alert as reactors shut down automatically as a safety precaution.
Millions of people are reported to be without electricity, airports are closed and public transport in Tokyo and other cities has come to a halt as Japan reels amid the twin devastations.
Police said 200 to 300 bodies have been found in the northeastern coastal city of Sendai where hundreds of buildings have collapsed. Japan's NHK television said the victims appeared to have drowned. 
Police said another 88 were confirmed killed and 349 were missing.
Thousands of people living near a nuclear plant in Fukushima prefecture were ordered to evacuate after the reactor developing a cooling fault. Officials said the move was a precaution and there was no evidence of leaking radiation.  
Meanwhile, countries around the Pacific basin are on tsunami alert amid warnings that a wall of water could completely wash over low-lying islands.
Ship swept away
Footage on NHK showed pictures of major tsunami damage in the north, with buildings being inundated by waves of water in Onahama city in Fukushima prefecture.

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A ship carrying 100 people was swept away by the tsunami, Kyodo news agency reported.
The initial quake at 2:46pm was followed by a series of powerful aftershocks, including a 7.4-magnitude one about 30 minutes later. 
A 6.6-magnitude earthquake struck the central and mountanous part of Japan early on Saturday.
Japan, which sits on the highly active "Ring of Fire," an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones that stretches around the Pacific Rim, is one of the most earthquake-ready nations in the world.
Many of its buildings are considered quake-proof while emergency services, citizens and schoolchildren regularly participate in earthquake drills.
"Japan is very well equipped to deal both with the initial tremors caused by an earthquake: buildings are systematically built with allowances for sway so that they are less likely to fall down," said Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett.
"Also coastal cities have long had tsunami protection measures in place."
PM address
Japan's prime minister addressed the nation after the earthquake, saying major damage had been done but that help is on the way.
In a televised address, Naoto Kan said the government was making "every effort possible" to minimise damage.
"The earthquake has caused major damage in broad areas in northern Japan," he said.
"Some of the nuclear power plants in the region have automatically shut down, but there is no leakage of radioactive materials to the environment."
Shortly after the quake struck, the tsunami hit Sendai airport in the north-east.

Powerful quake, tsunami kills hundreds in Japan

TOKYO – For more than two terrifying, seemingly endless minutes Friday, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan shook apart homes and buildings, cracked open highways and unnerved even those who have learned to live with swaying skyscrapers. Then came a devastating tsunami that slammed into northeastern Japan and killed hundreds of people.
The violent wall of water swept away houses, cars and ships. Fires burned out of control. Power to a cooling system at a nuclear power plant was knocked out, forcing thousands to flee. A boat was caught in the vortex of a whirlpool at sea.
The death toll rose steadily throughout the day, but the true extent of the disaster was not known because roads to the worst-hit areas were washed away or blocked by debris and airports were closed.
After dawn Saturday, the scale of destruction became clearer.
Aerial scenes of the town of Ofunato showed homes and warehouses in ruins. Sludge and high water spread over acres of land, with people seeking refuge on roofs of partially submerged buildings. At one school, a large white "SOS" had been spelled out in English.

The earthquake in Japan showed once again how far humankind is from controlling our environment

It could have been much worse, but even in a nation that prides itself on being prepared for earthquakes, the 8.9 magnitude temblor that battered Japan was plenty bad enough.
The ingenuity and resilience of mankind faced off against the awesome destructive force of nature - and, of course, humanity got much the worst of it.
The number of lives lost was much smaller than on other days when the Earth's gigantic tectonic plates have shifted miles below the surface.
Deaths may well be measured in the thousands, but not in the hundreds of thousands, as in Haiti last year or in the South Asian tsunami the day after Christmas 2004.
But that is only limited consolation as one of the world's most advanced societies has taken a battering that is a stark reminder both of how powerless even the vast accomplishments of our species can be and of how critical to survival disaster planning is.
The force of the earthquake crumpled buildings, ignited fires, tore up roads, shut trains and plunged Japan into a full-scale nuclear emergency because of damage done to reactors.
Whatever quakeproofing was done on those plants, it plainly wasn't good enough. Not when five reactors at two power plants had technicians and emergency teams scrambling to avert the possibility of a fuel core meltdown.
Long-term, the nuclear industry is likely to suffer an enormous setback and face reasonable demands - both here in our backyard and around the world - for reassurance that, no, it can't happen here.
Tokyo, 240 miles from the epicenter, proved the wisdom of foresight. There, skyscrapers swayed "like trees in the breeze," bemused witnesses told news organizations. They are supposed to sway visibly. They give a little and maintain their structural integrity. They are monuments of human genius.
But worse was coming. The grinding, shifting continental plates tore a gash 186 miles long in the ocean floor and threw a maelstrom of water in every direction - a dreaded tsunami.
This time, mankind was as ready as it could be. Warnings flashed around the Pacific Rim 10 minutes after the temblor. That was fast, amazingly fast. But not fast enough to prepare the nearby Japanese coast.
A seemingly endless mass of water 30 feet high crashed onto the land minutes later, tossing ships and houses, trucks and cars. The land became the sea, and the roaring, rushing ocean carried away all, even burning houses.
And the stunning destruction was there for all the world to see, live on television. Nature has had more spectacularly destructive days, but never one that played out in real time for so many millions of viewers.
What's left now is rescues where they can be made, an enormous cleanup and a reckoning with the supremely destructive power concealed not in the massive core of the Earth, but in nature's tiniest particles.
Cause for awe, indeed, and cause for prayer.

Devgiri express train have sudden increase of available births

All of a sudden it started showing high number of available berths, I remember few weeks ago when I checked, this train used to have a high waiting list similar to other trains lying between HYDERABAD-MUMBAI , it is because of Telangana issue at Andhra pradesh.
From hyd to nanded whole B2 coach was empty only one two passengers were travelling , as i came yesterday morning, train arrived at  8th march ,3 am morning ,it got delayed by 8 hrs which would have  to arrive on 7th march  at 7 pm evening.
it got delayed as  local train near Medchal got fire through shortcircuit  .