TOKYO — The biggest earthquake to hit Japan in 140 years struck Friday, triggering a tsunami that pounded the country’s east coast and prompted tsunami advisories along Canada’s West Coast. Just before 12 p.m. ET, reports indicated more than 300 people dead in Japan and at least 500 people missing. The Red Cross in Geneva said the wall of water was higher than some Pacific islands.Another unnerving report was that the Japanese government had ordered an evacuation of 2,000 residents near a nuclear power plant in Fukushima. However, the World Nuclear Association later said that situation was under control. Tsunami alerts were also lifted for Australia, New Zealand, Guam, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines.There were several strong aftershocks in Tokyo, prompting widespread panic. An oil refinery near the city was on fire, with dozens of storage tanks under threat. “People are flooding the streets. It’s incredible. Everyone is trying to get home but I didn’t see any taxis in Ginza, where there are usually plenty,” said Koji Goto, a 43-year-old Tokyo resident. There were no reports of any Canadians injured or killed. There are 1,512 Canadian citizens registered with the embassy in Tokyo. A statement from Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada said officials there are “are actively working to determine the impact on any Canadians that may be affected, and stand ready to provide consular assistance to Canadian citizens in need. ”Tiffany Chong, a British Columbia native living in Kunitachi, Japan, said she was in a pottery class when the ground began to shake. “We all ran outside to get to an open space and crouched down,” she said in an email. “The ground was rolling as if we were on a boat in choppy water. I kept looking up at the telephone poles with all the electrical wiring and hoping they weren’t going to fall on me.”Kunitachi is about 400 kilometres south of Sendai, where the quake hit hardest. Ms. Chong said friends in downtown Tokyo told her that their office buildings swayed. Blaise and Maynard Plant, brothers from Ottawa, are part of the Japanese-based pop band, Monkey Majik. They were in Sendai when the earthquake and tsunami hit. Tweets from Blaise indicated all but one of the four band members were accounted for. He had yet to hear from one of the Japanese members, Tax.“Tremors have subsided, very calm here,” Blaise said in one tweet that came several hours after the main earthquake hit.Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he had spoke to Japan’s ambassador to Canada, Kaoru Ishikawa, to offer condolences and assistance.He added that he was monitoring the situation with regard to Canadians in Japan and the risk for a tsunami on Canada’s West Coast. “We encourage all (West Coast) citizens to follow the instructions of local authorities,” Harper said at an event in Guelph, Ont. As the morning progressed, it was seeming less likely Canada’s shores were going to see any major effect from the Japanese earthquake.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had issued tsunami advisories for the West Coast, including B.C. The 8.9-magnitude quake — the most powerful since Japan started keeping records 140 years ago — caused many injuries and sparked fires, while the tsunami prompted warnings to people to move to higher ground in coastal areas. “The earthquake has caused major damage in broad areas in northern Japan,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan told reporters. About 4.4 million homes were without power in northern Japan, media said. a hotel collapsed in the city of Sendai and people were feared buried in the rubble. A ship carrying 100 people was swept away by the tsunami, Kyodo News Agency added. Electronics giant Sony Corp., one of the country’s biggest exporters, shut six factories, as air force jets raced toward the northeast coast to determine the extent of the damage.
The Bank of Japan, which has been struggling to boost the country’s anemic economy, said it would do its utmost to ensure financial market stability as the yen and Japanese shares fell. “I was terrified and I’m still frightened,” said Hidekatsu Hata, 36, manager of a Chinese noodle restaurant in Tokyo. “I’ve never experienced such a big quake before.” “We Japanese get use to earthquakes, but this one was so scary,” said Chika, a Tokyo resident who did not want to give her last name, in an email to Postmedia News. Her husband, Antoine, was temporarily stuck in his Tokyo office, unable to find transportation home, but eventually made his way there.
The earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world in the past century. TV footage showed a muddy wall of water carrying debris across a large swath of coastal farmland near the city of Sendai, which has a population of one million. Ships were lifted from the sea into a harbor where they were on their side. Sendai is 300 kilometres northeast of Tokyo and the epicentre at sea was not far away. TV footage showed boats, cars and trucks tossed around like toys in the water after a small tsunami hit the town of Kamaichi in northern Japan. An overpass, location unknown, appeared to have collapsed and cars were turning around and speeding away. Kyodo said there were reports of fires in Sendai where waves carried cars across the runway at the airport. “The building shook for what seemed a long time and many people in the newsroom grabbed their helmets and some got under their desks,” Reuters correspondent Linda Sieg said in Tokyo. “It was probably the worst I have felt since I came to Japan more than 20 years ago. ”The quake surpassed the Great Kanto quake of Sept. 1, 1923, which had a magnitude of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo area. The 1995 Kobe quake caused $100 billion in damage and was the most expensive natural disaster in history. Economic damage from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was estimated at about $10 billion. Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world’s most seismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20 per cent of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.
March 11, 2011 - A whirlpool near Oarai City, Ibaraki Prefecture, northeastern Japan.
A massive tsunami sweeps in to engulf a residential area after a powerful earthquake in Natori, Miyagi Prefecture in northeastern Japan, March 11, 2011. (REUTERS/KYODO)
Japan’s deadly history with earthquakes
The biggest earthquake to hit Japan since records began 140 years ago struck the northeast coast on Friday, triggering a 10-metre tsunami that swept away everything in its path. Here are a few facts about Japan and earthquakes.
- The U.S. Geological Survey located the 8.9 magnitude quake at a depth of 15.1 miles and 81 miles east of Sendai, on the main island of Honshu.
- Japan, situated on the “Ring of Fire” arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches which partly encircles the Pacific Basin, accounts for about 20% of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.
- Tokyo, with a population of 12 million, sits on the junction of four tectonic plates: the Eurasian, North American, Philippine and Pacific. The sudden bending or breaking of any plate can trigger an earthquake.
- A tremor occurs in Japan at least every five minutes, and each year there are up to 2,000 quakes that can be felt by people.
Some major earthquakes in Japan:
- The Great Kanto earthquake of Sept. 1, 1923, which had a magnitude of 7.9, killed nearly 143,000 people in the Tokyo area.There was extreme destruction in the Tokyo-Yokohama area from the earthquake and subsequent firestorms, which burned about 381,000 of the more than 694,000 houses that were partially or completely destroyed. Although often known as the Great Tokyo Earthquake (or the Great Tokyo Fire), the damage was apparently most severe at Yokohama.A tsunami was generated in Sagami Bay with wave heights as high as 12m on O-shima and 6m on the Izu and Boso Peninsulas. Seismologists have said another such quake could strike the city at any time.
- On March 2, 1933, on Japan’s northeast Pacific coast, a magnitude 8.1 quake in the area killed more than 3,000 people. The quake struck about 290 km (180 miles) off the coast of Honshu, most of the casualties and damage were caused by a large tsunami, instead of directly from the earthquake itself.
- On June 28, 1948 an earthquake measuring 7.3 killed 3,769 people at Fukui 28 miles northeast of Kyoto.
- On Jan. 16, 1995, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 hit central Japan, devastating the western port city of Kobe. It was the worst earthquake to hit Japan in 50 years, killing more than 6,430 and causing an estimated $100 billion in damage — the most expensive natural disaster in history.
- On Oct. 23, 2004, a 6.8 magnitude quake struck the Niigata region, about 250 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, killing 65 people and injuring 3,000.
- On March 25, 2007, a 6.9 magnitude quake struck the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa prefecture, about 300 km west of Tokyo, killing one person, injuring more than 200 and destroying hundreds of homes.
- On July 16, 2007, a 6.8 magnitude quake struck Niigata prefecture, about 250 km (150 miles) northwest of Tokyo, killing 11 people and injuring 1,950. The tremor caused radiation leaks at the world’s largest nuclear plant, which officials said were within safety regulations and posed no threat to the environment. The leaks nonetheless reignited fears about nuclear safety in the quake-prone country.
- On Aug. 11, 2009 a 6.5-magnitude earthquake centered about 150 km (90 miles) southwest of Tokyo jolted the city and surrounding areas, disrupting transport and closing a nuclear plant for safety checks.
- On March 14, 2010 a strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.6 jolted northern Japan shaking buildings in the capital Tokyo some 240 km (150 miles) away. The epicentre was about 40 km (25 miles) beneath the ocean off Honshu, Japan’s main island, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.
- On Nov. 30, 2010 a deep earthquake with a magnitude of 6.9 hit islands off the east coast of Japan, the JMA said, causing buildings to shake in Tokyo.
Source: Here
Biggest Full Moon in 19 Years Almost Certainly Won't Cause a Huge Natural Disaster
On March 19th, the moon will be closer--and thus bigger--than it's been in two decades. On March 19th, the moon will be closer to Earth than it's been since 1992. The full moon that night will appear about 14 percent larger and significantly brighter than usual, but despite the brightness, the supermoon has a dark side. Supermoons have been linked to massive natural disasters in the past, from earthquakes to floods--but that connection is typically touted by astrologists. Astronomers and scientists, with typical drollness, say a catastrophe is unlikely.
March 19th marks this year's lunar perigee, the point in the moon's orbit at which it is closest to Earth. It's the moon's elliptical orbit that's responsible for the differences in distance between the moon and Earth (the opposite, the point at which the moon is farthest from the Earth, is called the lunar apogee). This month's perigee will leave the moon, says Steve Owens at Dark Sky Diary, about 8 percent closer to Earth than usual, and about 2 percent closer to Earth than the average lunar perigee. In fact, it'll be the closest positioning since 1992.Past supermoons have coincided with natural disasters--the Indonesian earthquake in 2005, Australian flooding in 1954--but scientists note that those are unrelated, more likely than not. Says John Bellini, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey: "A lot of studies have been done on this kind of thing by USGS scientists and others. They haven't found anything significant at all. "The tides will pull a bit higher, but earthquakes are almost completely unaffected and volcanoes are not likely to show unusual behavior. John Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, said "Practically speaking, you'll never see any effect of lunar perigee. It's somewhere between 'It has no effect' and 'It's so small you don't see any effect.'
"Besides, it's still 2011. Everyone knows there won't be any world-ending catastrophes until next year, right?"
ARE YOU FRIGGIN FCKIN KIDDING ME? I hope they got it wrong about all those rumors about 2012. I seriously hope so.
