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Documentation and Support.
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And here's the flipside of human "ingenuity" regarding the Japanese earthquake.
Daily Mail: Is the Japanese earthquake the latest natural disaster to have been caused by a 'supermoon'?The powerful tsunami that today slammed into Japan's eastern coast comes just two days after warnings that the movement of the moon could trigger unpredictable events on Earth.
Astrologers predicted that on March 19 - a week tomorrow - the so-called 'supermoon' will be closer to Earth than at any time since 1992, just 221,567 miles away, and that its gravitational pull will bring chaos to Earth. -
Some damage in Santa Cruz near the Bay Area but mostly it was just large (nothing too huge) waves fucking up the local marina.
My thoughts go out to those WCers in Japan. -
my boyfriend works at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which is located on sea cliffs in San Diego. Stepped out this morning to see the tsunami, but saw nothing (apparently the wave was 9" tall). That marks the second time he's survived a tsunami warning while working on sea cliffs.
Anyway:
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My husband was stuck in a train during the earthquakes around 3am central us time. It would figure the first time he gets to fulfill his wish to go to Tokyo something like this would happen. As far as the Japanese coping with the events, I'm just gonna cut and paste what he saw... It may not be in terms of structural building or mechanics, but i can pretty much say that if this happened in my neck of the woods, we would never have been so... calm.
Before my phone dies, I want to tell you a short story.
A series of large earthquakes hit Tokyo while I was riding a train. At first it was fun, but turned pretty serious around 7-8 pm when the temperature dropped quickly and there was no hope of taking a train or bus or cab. I've been wandering around the area for about 6 hours and finally settled down in a nice train waiting booth. With about 20 people packed in here and the doors closed, it warmed up nicely. Well, for those in seats, that is. As manners would have it, it was mostly the elderly and women in the seats. After about 30 minutes of a young girl and boy crying to their dad that it was cold, action was taken. A small group of older women went downstairs and somehow procured a large amount of boxes. As they came in, many were perplexed. I, however, was on the same page. As one of the women began breaking down one of the boxes, I took the rest and followed suit. We made a nice barrier from the cold ground and walls for those sitting on the ground. That was the beginning.
A blind man was brought in by another one of these angelic women. They placed two broken down boxed across a gap in the seats to give him a place to sit. Afterwards, two other older women left. I assumed they needed to go to the bathroom..... One came back with a bag full of these awesome little heat strips that stick to your body/clothes! The other returned shortly with chocolates and passed them out.
That's it for now, but I'm sure as the night goes on and grows colder, there will be more that unfolds.
Last I heard he was being called back to the base on Okinawa, so i know he's still ok. But still my heart goes out to everyone over there who are having problems i can only hope I'll never face. -
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CommentAuthorWilliam George
- CommentTimeMar 12th 2011
Man, as if shit isn't bad enough for them up there;An explosion at a nuclear power station destroyed a building housing the reactor amid fears that it was close to a disastrous meltdown after being hit by a powerful earthquake and tsunami.
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The reactor core itself seems to be still intact, there's still a chance they can get this thing cooled down before it goes pop.
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Yesterday, well before the blast, they were saying that the backup generator had been knocked out so there were only batteries powering the cooling system. No matter optimally they ran, they would have died after 8 hours, probably sooner. Even without the blast the reactor has been without cooling for well over 24 hours. With the blast (plus the evac order for everyone 15 miles around Fukushima) I'm really, really nervous. Right now they (Japanese leaders) are saying on a scale of 1-7, 7= Chernobyl 5= Three Mile Island & this is about a 4. I continue to be freaked because they're saying that *now* and government officials always play down the impact of an event that has happened (and usually overstate the danger of a possible event, but I'm fine with that). We've only come to understand just how bad Three Mile Island was in the last several years.
Anyone know the state of the oil refinery fires? -
Move your cursor over the pics to reveal the extent of the tsunami damage.
Japan Earthquake: before and after -
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CommentAuthorGreasemonkey
- CommentTimeMar 13th 2011
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Good friend got caught by the earthquake in Tokyo during Japanese class
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CommentAuthorMagicSword!
- CommentTimeMar 13th 2011
Hey, thanks for asking after me. I'm absolutely fine, my internet has been out for the last three days so it was tough to let people know I was ok, but I'm feeling incredibly lucky and grateful that that was my only problem. I'm in Sapporo on Hokkaido, the North island, and it was only about magnitude three by the time it hit us. Like Flabyo's friend said, we thought it was a small thing at first until the news started to come in. The Eastern and Southern coasts of Hokkaido got hit by the Tsunami, but the damage wasn't as massive as the really horrific stuff in Miyagi and Fukushima.
Did anyone else see the reports that the earthquake moved the whole main Island, Honshu, 8 feet? That's a crazy amount of force. The other statistic that baffled me was that this was 8000 times more powerful than the Christchurch quake. I can't wrap my head around how that works, but if it's true then people's comments about Japan's quake-resistant buildings saving lives are really reinforced.
Having no internet, I was just watching the 24 rolling news that they had on every channel when I wasn't at work, and it has been a scary, sobering few days. And now I'm back online I can read all about everything, all over again, in English. I'm hoping that the worst is over, that they can contain the plants in Fukushima and that the big aftershock that some are predicting doesn't occur. -
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As well as moving the North Island the quake has sped Earths rotation and shortened the day by 1.6 microseconds.
Nasa -
Out of my head, random thought that this may or may not be the place for; when this shit happens, some want gods, some want superheroes. I want fucking Thunderbirds. Surely we could get our shit together as a planet to do this one day?
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The British team of specialists that have gone out who have experience finding quake survivors are actually part of a group called 'international rescue'.
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I vaguely knew about that, but didn't realise it was a volunteer organisation that offered training. Well, gonna leave them my contact details to see if I can get involved.
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(The rest of the website's interesting, from a graphic design standpoint.) -
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CommentAuthorrickiep00h
- CommentTimeMar 14th 2011
@MagicSword! - The Richter scale is, to my knowledge, logarithmic. That means that each progressive number is exponentially more powerful than the last. I think 8000 times more powerful is a bit much, but the math works out that the further up the scale you go, it gets significantly worse in a hurry.
An interesting thing to note is that the Haiti earthquake last year was about the same rating as the Christchurch quake, and it killed over 300,000 people. Relatively few people have been reported killed by the Japan quake itself; far more deaths were caused by the tsunami. As was most of the damage, including the damage that is causing problems at the Fukushima I plant.
All that out of the way, I'm glad people are safe. This has been one shitty, shitty weekend. -
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Within a couple of hours official word on the Fukushima reactors has gone from "probably won't meltdown" to "likely melting; evacuate the surrounding 12 miles."
Fuck.
FUUUUUUUUUUUCK.