This antipodes map will give you the diametrically opposite of any point on Earth.
Now BBC is saying two nuclear reactors are in trouble, and they may have to let off some radioactive stream. Going to have to evacuate maybe 10,000 residents. Or was that tens of thousands?
I almost expect Godzilla to make an appearance at any time. It’s difficult to imagine a shittier scenario than what’s going on in Japan now.
Sometime around 8 - 12 years ago, a tsunami was recorded way out in the ocean off the coast of Northern California. . . of 1 centimeter. I kid you not. I’m sorry, but 1 centimeter isn’t even a wave, let alone a tsunami. How they determined to classify it as one is a mystery to me.
We had 4 foot waves here in the South Bay. We’re already dealing with millions of dead sardines in the marina and all cleanup operations had to stop. Obviously we have nothing whatsoever to complain about relatively speaking, just reporting on local events.
My prayers go out to the victims and their friends and families in Japan. I’m glad all the Japan Dopers are accounted for.
Did that happen? I’m not making a joke, I’m talking about the real (presumably American) dude in Crescent City, CA, who heard there was a tsunami and instead of going for high ground, went down to the shore with his camera, and got swept away.
It is good that Japan has serious regulations about building and infrastructure construction. They do not let builders slowly eat away at the codes to make building easier and cheaper.
I’m about 70 miles south of Crescent City, where the harbor has pretty much been wiped out. The fishing fleet that usually anchors there is now on the way down here to Trinidad Head and Humboldt Bay.
The stories have been conflicted and muddled all day, but I believe there were two groups of dumbasses, one on a beach in southern Oregon near Brookings. 4 went into the water there, 2 got out on their own and 2 were rescued by the Coast Guard. The other dumbasses with the apparent fatality were near the mouth of the Klamath River. 3 friends trying to take pictures, 1 drug out to sea and they are not longer searching for him.
People in the area have been taking video and posting it on youtube/facebook all day. I’ll put together a post with a few in a minute. This is a very rural and rugged coastal area, so there are lots of viewpoints that are very close to the water and still safe, some of the videos were taken from such places and some arguably not. I do hesitate driving traffic to the videos of people I think are fucking stupid, but documentation is documentation, even if half of what is documented is someone being fucking stupid as a cautionary tale.
Surge up the Mad River about 4 miles from our house (we’re way up on a bluff with the rest of the town). No I did not go down there. I did drive out to a vista point off the freeway a bit to the north, but not until around 4pm. Spent an hour or so there and there was no surge activity.
Crescent City harbor (turn your sound off before you watch it, it is played on fast forward with the sound)
There was another video I had watched from somewhere just north of Trinidad Head, but I can’t find the link.
Such an awful time. We just found out about a friend’s family. They’re northish of Tokyo (somewhere inland of Mito, I don’t know exactly where) but they’re all right. We’ve been on edge all day because we hadn’t heard anything.
I don’t know any details, but our friend is flying back home as soon as she can to be with her family.
Still waiting on news for another friend’s extended family. There’s been no news from them, but they didn’t live in the north, so we’re hoping they’ve just been busy. It’s nerve-wracking to not know.
It’s just awful. I don’t know if it’s worse because I know people there, or if it’s just bad because I feel so impotent living so far away and not able to do anything to help out right now.
Er… dead sardines from the wave, or am I missing another story here?
Regarding the guys getting pictures of the tsunami, there is quite a bit of famous footage from the Andover/McConnell tornado from 1990ish (tornado hit the Wichita area, notably including an Air Force base. I’d say a flight line littered with vehicles and jets is the last place I want to be hanging out in a tornado). Anyhow, one of the video clips, of the tornado hitting the base, was filmed from the roof of one of the dormitories on base. That airman did not get hurt, but as I recall he got in tremendous trouble for that.
I said it last night, and I’ll repeat myself: this is a capital “D” Disaster. There may well be hundreds of thousands homeless, without food, water, shelter or adequate clothing. The death toll from this is going to be horrendous in the end.
Where did you hear that? Because the local radio station I was listening to this afternoon threw that number out too, and later corrected it as an apparent error.
I’ve been seeing 358 confirmed deaths and 800+ missing, which may have gotten misheard or mistyped somewhere along the way.
I have checked on our earthquake sites and nothing big was felt this morning or this afternoon here. On land the aftershocks have topped out at fives so far, mostly fours and threes.
I am hearing rumours about the nuclear power stations being in a state of meltdown. They are saying now that in Fukushima 1 they have detected cesium (??) and this might mean that the middle has melted? (This is being translated as they say it right now.) It seems to be a very dangerous situation indeed.
We have also had announcements that there will not be enough electricity this evening so to save as much as we can. Unfortunately I had left all our laundry to the weekend so I’m madly washing stuff in anticipation of losing power later…