You know it’s been a hell of a week when you find yourself saying stuff like this with a straight face.
I mean, we’ve all heard the jokes about “What next, Godzilla?” but I’ll tell you that at this point it honestly would not surprise me.
oh, not a doubt.
after the third natural disater you kinda wonder who’s toes you stepped on, although earthquake, tsunami, and volcano are common chain events.
Do you have a direct link? I can’t find the video.
Did anyone else who used to play Sim City occasionally just set off every disaster in the game simultaneously for the heck of it, and are you also experiencing flashbacks to that now?
Not to make light of the horror of what’s going on in Japan, but every new update just seems to pile more bad news on to what already seemed like an ultimate nightmare scenario. It is too awful to comprehend. Again, thoughts and hearts with everyone living this.
1000 bodies have been found on some beach.
CNN now showing a feed from Japan’s NHK; clearly visible is damage to the building housing the number 3 reactor at the Fukushima plant.
The warning has been thankfully cancelled.
that would be the miyagi prefecture. the number went upto 2,000 just recently.
How about applying your psychic gifts to something useful, like what’s next for the Fukushima nuclear plants? :rolleyes:
i think tsunami warnings are made when ever there are aftershocks. depends on where people have 15 to 50 minutes to get to higher ground. news also mentioned that the tsunami of aftershocks had more localized affect, it didn’t get the whole area that the big one did.
Geez, someone piss in your Cheerios this morning?
My wife safely arrived in Narita this morning, but the trains are out so she took the bus into town.
I took Beta-chan into daycare and found out a few things. It took one mother until 10 pm to get there, and there were day care centers where parents couldn’t get there at all. One of the mothers at our place had to walk 4 hours to get home.
The reason earthquakes are “fun” for my 2 1/2 y.o. daughter is that they do drills every couple of months. They stop what they are doing and get into little balls covering their heads with their hands.
It apparently was fun to do it when the floor was shaking.
There’s scarcity of gas and a lot of food, but we’re all alive, we have our house and each other, so any inconvenience to us is trivial.
holy shit, that video is almost more terrifying than the incoming tsunami footage that just ravaged the coast. 6 minutes from nothing to raging flood waters.
I hope nobody holds it against me that I laughed at what Ms. Whatsit said upthread.
I still find Beta-chan’s reaction to the quake hilarious. Little kids are awesome. I seriously want to give her a big hug right now. And the rest of you guys as well. Regular earthquakes are scary enough, let alone something like this.
:: breathes big sigh of relief ::
That video was terrifying. The raw power is insane. Like Asimovian I found the railing breaking away noticible for some reason.
Minamisanriku was getting a lot of coverage, so I checked it out on Google Earth; there’s all the restaurant and ATM and bus icons for things that are totally gone. Their community webpage is still up BTW; they were supposed to have a forest fire training session yesterday.
And it looks like Fukushima #2 is packing up. At least everyone should know the drill by now. 
Part of that video is at 3:00 here, but it’s worth signing up to Facebook temporarily just to watch the whole thing.
This is what the street used to look like (Google Street View).
I noticed that at 50 seconds on the video, the camera pans past a sign that looks like it indicates a tsunami escape route up those stairs - are these a common feature in coastal towns in this area? Here’s the same sign on Google - it looks like it shows a wave symbol.
Just heard from my husband - a brief phone call from his cell phone. He says it is like nothing he has ever seen, utter destruction with heartbreaking pieces of family life scattered about, like photos, unbroken cups and plates, children’s toys. The one that broke me up though, he said they found a child’s new school uniform, still in its box. But no child.
They arrived last night and started searching immediately, finding one body. Today their team has been diverted to clearing out a smashed up building so the rescuers can sleep there tonight. He reckons they might be gone months.
**Hokkaido Brit,**I’m sorry about how much this will affect your family, and I know this will be really hard for him to be gone, but I’m really thankful for the efforts of everyone.
I wish I could go up and help.