Another big earthquake just hit southern Japan, in the same region that that 6.2 one struck the other day. This one is 7.0 or 7.1, which is a whopper.
Are any of our Japanese dopers from that region? Is everyone okay?
Godzilla!!!
Seriously, I hope everyone is OK, Japan does their construction knowing that they will have earthquakes, but that doesn’t mean lives can’t be devastated.
It just keeps on rollin. It hit Ecuador next and today, Tonga.
I just got back home from Japan (not the affected area, for which I am grateful). From watching the news coverage there, there seems to have been a lot of buildings damaged or destroyed - not just old houses with heavy tile roofs, but modern buildings, like a city government office building, and commercial buildings. When we were watching TV coverage, I think it was Friday there (so Thursday here) every few minutes there was another alert that there had been more aftershocks. This seemed to go on all day and into the next day. Apparently the continuing aftershocks did a lot of the damage to the already-weakened buildings. Last count I saw was 41 dead, but it kept going up every day.
The other thing I noticed was the hordes of uniformed people helping - police, fire people, military - and how fast they showed up everywhere. I have my disagreements with Japan and its cultural homogeny, but in respect of responding to disasters like this, I think they are probably the most civilized country in the world.