Rescue efforts underway in Japan
Posted March 12, 2011 12:07 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TOKYO, Japan – A powerful 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck Japan, Friday, killing hundreds. The quake — the largest to hit the country since officials began keeping records in the late 1800’s — was followed by a powerful tsunami that struck its eastern coast, sweeping away trees and houses while tossing around cars and boats like toys.
- Anyone looking for information about Canadians in Japan can call Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAIT) at 1-800-387-3124 or e-mail sos@international.gc.ca.
- Google also launched its Person Finder application following the earthquake in Japan. It was tracking 3,700 records as of 7:15 a.m.
Japanese police said 200 to 300 bodies were found in Sendai city, the closest major city to the epicentre. Some estimates said 1,000 people had died, but at latest count, the official casualty toll was 236 dead, 725 missing and 1,028 injured.
Saturday morning, military helicopters were being used to rescue people from rooftops, trying to escape their flooded homes. At the same time, officials reported four bullet trains as missing, as well as a ship carrying approximately 100 people. However, the ship has since been found with all passengers on board in good condition.
Telephone lines are down, hampering efforts for family to reach loved ones, while making rescue efforts even more difficult. Approximately four million people are without power.
Getting around in Tokyo remains difficult, but public transit is slowly returning to normal.
“Train lines have started up again, but that was a huge issue initially when the quake hit,” said reporter Akiko Fujita. “There are nearly three million people that use the subway system out here. They were all stranded.”
At least 100 aftershocks have been felt since the initial quake, the largest one measuring 6.8 on Saturday morning.
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“The earthquake has caused major damage in broad areas in northern Japan,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan said at a news conference.
The quake toppled cars off bridges, violently shaking buildings and triggering fires.
The 8.9-magnitude offshore quake struck at 2:46 p.m. (Tokyo time) and was followed by at least 19 aftershocks, most of them of more than magnitude 6.0.
Scientists said the massive earthquake ranks as the fifth largest jolt in the world since 1900. They said the “megathurst” quake is similar to what happened during the 2004 Sumatra quake and the one last year in Chile.
In all these cases, one tectonic plate is shoved beneath another. Such earthquakes are responsible for the most powerful shifts in the Earth’s crust.
Seismologists said the quake was 8,000 thousand times more powerful than the quake that hit Christchurch, New Zealand, in February.
A massive tsunami hit the northeast coast shortly afterwards, with waves coming almost 100 kilometres inland, pushing boats, houses and cars, and swept away the aforementioned ship and one train, now reported as missing.
Tsunami coverage from Japan TV (courtesy of CitizenTube/YouTube):
Watch tsunami hit Japan (courtesy of CNN):
A tsunami warning was issued for the entire Pacific, including areas as far away as South America, the entire U.S. West Coast, Canada and Alaska. The warning was extended to a number of Pacific, Southeast Asian and Latin American nations, including Russia, Indonesia, New Zealand and Chile. In the Philippines, authorities said they expect a one-meter high tsunami.
Air Canada has cancelled its flights to Tokyo.
The quake struck at a depth of 10 kilometres, about 125 kilometres off the eastern coast, the agency said. The area is 380 kilometres northeast of Tokyo. Dozens of cities and villages along a 2,100-kilometre stretch of coastline were shaken by violent tremors that reached as far away as Tokyo.
Bloomberg News reported six Sony factories have been shut down in the northeast, and its not yet known word on when they can resume business.
Japanese authorities and the Japanese Prime Minister urged some 2,000 people living near a nuclear plant in Fukushima, at the epicentre of the quake, to leave the area, after a nuclear emergency was declared. Another warning was issued for a second nuclear plant Saturday morning. In both cases, the warning was prompted by cooling system failures. An additional three plants were shut down.
Japan’s nuclear safety agency said pressure inside the reactor at the first power plant has risen to 1.5 times the level considered normal. To reduce the pressure, slightly radioactive vapour may be released. The agency said the radioactive element in the vapour would not affect the environment or human health.
A large fire erupted at the Cosmo oil refinery in Ichihara city in Chiba prefecture near Tokyo and was burning out of control with 30 metre-high flames whipping into the sky.
In downtown Tokyo, large buildings shook violently and workers poured into the street for safety. TV footage showed a large building on fire and bellowing smoke in the Odaiba district of Tokyo. The tremor bent the upper tip of the iconic Tokyo Tower, a 1,093-foot steel structure inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Hamilton, Ont., lawyer Nile Morris works in Tokyo and told 680News the quake struck while he was at work on the top floor of a 19-story building.
“Nobody had experienced this magnitude of quake before, so people were fearing the worst I think, and as I said, everybody was scrambling to get under their desks and their tables in the office, and hoping that it wouldn’t be quite so bad,” he said.
He said it took him about two hours to walk home because everything is shut down in Tokyo, including transit.
The highways to the worst-hit coastal areas were buckled and communications, including telephone lines, were snapped. Train services in northeastern Japan and in Tokyo, which normally serve 10 million people a day, were also suspended.
The true damage is not known at this time, because many area have been cut off by buckled roads and broken telephone poles. Widespread fires are burning out of control in numerous locations.
One global investment banking group has estimated damage at $10 billion.
Several quakes had hit the same region in recent days, including a 7.3 magnitude one on Wednesday.
Japan’s worst previous quake was in 1923 in Kanto, an 8.3-magnitude temblor that killed 143,000 people, according to USGS. A 7.2-magnitude quake in Kobe city in 1996 killed 6,400 people.
Japan lies on the “Ring of Fire” — an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 per cent of the world’s quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 nations. A magnitude-8.8 temblor that shook central Chile last February also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.
Meanwhile, a NASA geophysicist has concluded that the Earth’s rotation sped up by 1.6 millionths of a second because of the shift in the planet’s mass due to the quake.
