Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12709598

Japan's been hit by a big earthquake, which has caused a Tsunami

Looks dreadful. There's all sorts of shit on fire too.

Jesus. I'm watching the footage, live on the Beeb. I feel genuinely sick.

I don't know if there's quake damage or if its just the tsunami, but the helicopter footage of the tsunami itself is horrific. Like a giant obscene mass rolling over the land, smothering farms and roads. When did it happen, only just now?

Tsunami warnings for Russia, Peru, Taiwan, Indonesia, Argentina...

That footage is horrific.

Yeah some awful scenes of the tsunami this morning, I just hope that most people got enough warning to get out of the way.

2011 really hasn't been a good year for natural disasters has it.

Yeah, that clip of the tsunami, you could see cars speeding along and then being washed away

The footage of the tsunami is mind blowing. You can't begin to imagine how terrifying it would be to see that coming towards you especially when it's dragging along buildings with it.

My heart goes out to everyone who's suffering in this. Really tragic.

I hate to say it, but with an epicentre that close to the centre it would have been half an hour at most before it hit after the initial shock, and this thing is travelling over at least three miles inland. Hopefully there was some high ground to get to and everyone knew what to do.

But we may be talking thousands here.

Also the other areas around the world possibly getting some level of tsunami... horrid videos... so many houses, boats, farms in the tsunami. I can only guess how many people were in this.

Earth quake was 8.8 - 8.9 (EDIT 8.4) ... EDIT EDIT 8.8 again!

The footage I saw was so strange - the water was moving so slowly, but my brain couldn't figure out why it wouldn't just stop

Yeah, I thought that. You expect it to come to an eventual stop with all the debris and distance covered, but it just ploughs on and on.

Like at Formula 1 with the helicopter cams, distance seems to slow the speed of stuff seen. Those waves were travelling faster than cars.

8.9 now, US geological dudes say? Jesus. This could be worse than Kobe. Probably is.

In better news, for a country heavily dependent on nuclear energy, the Japanese government has announced that all five nuclear power stations automatically shut themselves down upon the first detection of tremors.

Nature can be fantastic and horrific at the same time....

Even whirlpools... actual whirlpools .... this is madness.

Looks like a trailer for "Battle: Japan"

I'm watching it on BBC News channel now - each piece of video seems more horrific than the next.

I keep thinking it's all cgi because it can't possibly be real.

The Telegraph have a video showing people running towards it to have a look, after seeing the cars and water appear through some buildings, I hope they managed to run the other way in time

Worse was when the camera panned round, across all the flooded land, to focus on the sea and there was another wave racing in.

I can't follow the news properly, I'm in work, so I'll have to update myself every half hour.

Thoughts:

Epicentre close to the shoreline, only a hundred miles away? That's bad.

Bravo Tokyo building codes. Scary to think tall buildings were swaying up to 30 minutes after the shock. Thank Christ it wasn't off Tokyo instead.

Japan revised her plans after the wake up call that was Kobe, dispelling her self-assured complancency somewhat. They'll do better this time.

Nuclear reactor shut-downs are heartening. Remember when Japan's nuclear power program was somewhat dangerous, back in the 90's?

Russia's evacuating its islanders from the coast. Good reactions there, Mr Bear.

Ten metre tsunami in Pacific may be higher than some islands there, say Red Cross. Jesus.

The area affected doesn't seem like a tourist spot, and there isn't the ignorance that unfortunate tourists and locals had in Thailand and Indonesia. But again, what can you do? That looked like flat farm land, not hilly coastal inlets.

However, I have a hunch that damage will be localised for Japan and not affect the Western Pacific too much. Seems to be moving away from Indonesia at any rate.

The coastline of Japan is heavily industrialised, with lots of refineries. Referring to quake risk it is often called 'the poison necklace'. There may be an ecological disaster too.

In North Japan, for those away from the coast and over a dozen miles inland, damage should be more limited - especially given the light construction of houses. Fire is a risk.

A few years ago. I remember a friend of a friend staying over. Good company but a little edgy. After she left my friend told me how she had lost her boyfriend in Thailand. They were in their hotel cabin in bed and the water just smashed like a car through the curtained windows. She was scarred over her body. Her boyfriend didn't make it.

This is extraordinarily bad.

This was the first thing I saw after waking up and I couldn't make sense of it. It was like a 3D image for me but messed up, like the land was nearer to the camera than the water.

Pretty horrible when it panned enough to the left to show houses and then a road with moving cars on it.

Devastating.

Al Jazeera has the most sensible and informed coverage:

http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

Unlike the readers comments... o_0

The tsunami might be higher than many Pacific islands, some of them with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. And almost the entire Pacific basin is on tsunami alert.

Fuck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgCN-gMBS6o -- Experience the earthquake first hand

http://www.reddit.com/search?q=japan

Fucks sake. These things are difficult to predict I guess, just hope that the most pessimistic estimations are way off the mark.

Have any of the alarms gone off anywhere yet? It was 50cm high by the time it hit japan, 80miles away....there must be an incredible mass of water on the move some where It's likely that one will go for hundreds of miles and it'll get bigger the further it travels, right?

So far it sounds like good news for Indonesia as the shit should be hitting the fan but it isn't.... so no new reports..... yet.

http://www.weather.gov/ptwc/text.php?id ... .11.073000

Christ there's an awful lot of tsunami warnings.

Not really. It will go for hundreds of miles - thousands - but it will lose some energy on the way. The criticial thing that alters tsunami development is the subtopography of the coastline it impacts. If there is little beach and an abrupt ocean shelf it washes over at a low wave with little damage - which is what happened to Mauritius - if it has a long shore run-up then the waves pile up on themselves and cause damage. Reefs and suchlike also help disrupt tsunamis.

Again, my hunch says that South America should be okay. They'll have some hours to prepare too. But if I was down there I'd be evacuating regardless. I am concerned for those islands though. Hawaii might get something bad.

Don't like the sound of that fire in the nuclear plant's turbine. At least the place is shut down.

Shut down or not, it needs the cooling to remain safe.

http://www.upiasia.com/Security/2008/06 ... risk/3945/




And now:

As far as worrying goes, you can't get higher on the scale than a wonky reactor.

It's the next thing to Godzilla really..

I just watched the video on the bbc there's a couple of cars trying to turn round in the road one manages it but the other gets stuck half way and tries to drive towards the fields. You don't see that car again. It's incredible. It just kept coming, how completely terrifying.

I gather it's that the reactors have shut down successfully and there's little chance of a huge accident but the normal progressive shutdown of some components may lead to extensive damage and a lot of repair work needed before they can be started up again.

Just been watching the footage on the BBC, unreal.

The devastation is unbelievable but it's a small mercy that the quakes centre wasn't closer to Tokyo where I'm sure many more lives would have been lost.

Hope they get the refinery fire and reactor situation under control as soon as they can.

I hope you're right, but loss of cooling is pretty serious. It's a boiling water reactor which needs active cooling (I think).
These situations can play out over days as well, like Three Mile Island.

The Fukushima plant is the one which is/was on fire.

There's very little news about it.

webcam: http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/f1-np/camera/index-j.html

This. A slow moving carpet of water that just envelops everything. I couldn't get over how stuff was catching fire after being swept up, still moving on top of the wave.

It looks like an over-the-top disaster movie. Sadly it is real life.

They're saying it's the most powerful quake ever recorded.

The UK may not be brilliant, but I'm glad that the worst we get are floods, minor earthquakes, snow and harsh-ish wind.

Shit. I had a friend out there until a couple of weeks ago, when a sudden and serious illness forced her to come home.

Bizarrely lucky break, I guess

From Kyodo News:



That might be "just in case" but it's pretty officially not good news.

I'm certain it means that they have not yet been able to get the emergency cooling to work, if they had, the panic would be over.

Ach, if it all goes tits up at least they'll have a new setting in time for the 13th Modern fucking Warfare.

Where's Jack Lemmon, Jane Fonda and Kurt Russell when you need them?

It does sound worrying though. At least you don't have to spend time persuading people to evacuate with things like that. I imagine most will have hi-tailed it already. Fingers crossed it'll be cool. Literally.

Is there a good, discreet, no-frills, updating news feed that doesn't include video? Need to follow this.

To be honest your best bet might be typing "japan earthquake" into google and looking at the headlines and twitter feed.

Been watching this through NHK World, the English language division of NHK.

Some of the footage is unreal, whirlpools and tsunami damage are the first that spring to mind, nature can be awesome (and cruel) at times.

For Japan, yes. Seventh most powerful in the world since records began.

But records have only been kept since 1952 since the Official Records House was swallowed up by a mysterious crack in the ground.

Hoo shit, that doesn't sound at all sketchy.