Friday afternoon, Japan.

[Kirstie]

it's horrendous.

 

[Norm]

Some astonishing numbers in this piece - the quake caused Japan to move 4m, the whole earth shifted 15cm.

And this video of the wave shows how fast it all happened. Shocking, horrifying, saddening.

 

[Kirstie]

And this video of the wave shows how fast it all happened. Shocking, horrifying, saddening.

A brave person behind the camera there...

 

[buggi]

I feel like crying when i watch the news. imagine your whole life being wiped out in 1/2 hour. Nothing but the clothes you are standing in; family, friends, neighbours and acquaintances wiped out dead or missing, some torn from your grasp, and where the hell do you start looking for them? Your street? Well, your street doesn't even exist anymore, there are no land marks to even tell you where your house was and you now live on what is basically a rubbish dump.

One "rubbish dump" completely engulfed by flames, the whole lot, because of the timber from the broken up houses fuelled the fire. so if you did by any chance survive and were buried alive, the fire got you.

and then there are 6.2 aftershocks (is that an aftershock? surely it's classed as another earthquake?!) and on top of that, a very real possibility that you live near a nuclear plant that could go into meltdown.

It must look like the end of the world has come, and for these people it is the end of their world.

It's truly too terrible to comprehend and completely overwhelming.

 

[yello]

It's truly too terrible to comprehend and completely overwhelming.

It is isn't it. I watch the news footage in complete disbelief. The scale of it is devastating, I'm numb trying to take it in.

I hope and I pray for everyone there. I cannot even begin to imagine what they are going through.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Two of our friends have just arrived to visit us from Japan (this was arranged some time ago) - one of their sets of parents had their house damaged in the quake, but it turns out to be not so bad as they had first thought, which is why they are here at all. They are relatively cheerful, but they say that the supermarket shelves are almost completely empty even in Tokyo, and they also think that the nuclear authorities are playing down a situation which is likely to be much worse than people know.

 

[Fiona N]

... they also think that the nuclear authorities are playing down a situation which is likely to be much worse than people know.

No - actually the authorities are releasing information even before they know what the implications are which is why even the government spokespeople are speculating about 'white clouds' being either steam or dust or smoke or a mixture.

The World Nuclear News site has a good updating news service and there is stuff on ISIS as well as some good technical background from MIT Nuclear Engineering folk which is updated with relevant posts.

I find it distressing that all the nuclear engineering failsafe systems worked and then the whole place became a cropper because someone hadn't done their homework about tsunamis when siting the backup diesel generators for the cooling systems. Sadly this had been pointed out (by foreign experts as well as local professors) since Japan has been lucky with respect to tsunamis over the last few decades and while earthquake standards were always increasing, the same understanding and risk-proofing wasn't happening with the tsunami risk systems.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

No

Err, yes. I was merely reporting what they think, being Japanese people with direct and immediate experience of the situation and the 'mood' in Japan. So, sorry, but it's not really something you can contradict.

(Whether they are right or not is another matter, although there are very good reasons for not trusting the Japanese nuclear authority - they have a longstanding reputation for cover-up and corruption - but this is a P&L matter, and there is already some debate on that in P&L...)

 

[Flying_Monkey]

The most important thing now is the fact that conditions are deteriorating in the north-east - there has been snow falling, making it very hard on surivors, food supplies are slow in getting to many areas, and apparently many bodies remain undealt with and the capacity to cremate large numebrs of bodies is way beyond the local authorities. This is all going to be particularly hard for the elderly population, which is a much larger proportion of the population in these rural towns and villages than in the cities.

 

[Aperitif]

This is such an overwhelmingly powerful event - yet the people of Christchurch are also struggling, along with many other past events I'm sure. The atomic element in Japan's disaster is an additional burden to test the resolve. I have a Japanese friend who is chanting at every opportunity - she too feels the helplessness. So I send Miki a big 'email hug', she chants and extra few 'Nam-myoho-renge-kyos' - willing people to safety. Let's hope for a bit of good fortune.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Gets worse every time I hear the news and sounds like it's not going to start getting better for a while yet. Dreadful!

 

[Aperitif]

Not deserving of page 4 just yet, there are some more images to 'get a feel' of the destruction here.

Each photo has a vertical bar with a blue 'handle' across the middle. You can click and drag to left or right to see satellite images of 'before' and 'after'.

We see the images within the width of our PC screens and the scale of devastation is obviously not very well translated.
What an awful thought - the aftermath.

 

[Fnaar]

Not deserving of page 4 just yet, there are some more images to 'get a feel' of the destruction here.

Each photo has a vertical bar with a blue 'handle' across the middle. You can click and drag to left or right to see satellite images of 'before' and 'after'.

We see the images within the width of our PC screens and the scale of devastation is obviously not very well translated.
What an awful thought - the aftermath.

Good link, thanks

 

[graham56]

And in the midst of all this it seems someone has cleared out a bank vault.

My link

 

[Aperitif]

Fighting a losing battle.
I was oddly surprised to read that the reactors of the fated plant in Japan are forty years old. Surprised because of my ignorance perhaps? The 'immediate' community will no longer exist - it is truly sad. Here's some news.