Let’s all hope this isn’t as bad as the Aceh quake/tsunami. There wasn’t the footage for that one, so it’s hard to compare.
I changed channels and it’s on the local news. All of the debris that use to be houses and businesses just floating along, so sad. And one video showed what looked like cars driving away and the water headed in their direction. I hope they made it out OK.
It was mentioned that 4 million people lost power. Wow :(.
I’m hearing that almost the entire Pacific rim is under tsunami warning. The US West Coast is under tsunami watch, which is lesser than a warning. Hawaii is under warning.
I found this link on Wikipedia for Miyagi prefecture. It appears to be south of where Autolycus is located. Miyagi Prefecture - Wikipedia
Of course we are very concerned for all Dopers,(and everyone else too) in Japan, but they probably have other things on their minds now than posting.
Because this is The Future, you can watch news reports about it live online:
http://www.youtube.com/aljazeeraenglish Al Jazeera, as usual, has top-notch coverage.
http://wwitv.com/tv_channels/6810.htm NHK is Japanese TV, but this is their English-language service. (Silverlight required. Linux people, check out Moonlight. Mac people, I honestly have no idea. Moonlight probably works.)
mms://nhk-world.gekimedia.net/nhkw-highm Direct link to the high-quality NHK stream, again in English. Install VLC to use this link. (Other software works, too, but VLC is multiplatform and generally nice for non-techies.)
One of the tsunamis was reported at over 7 meters. Tokyo appears to have escaped major damage, but their trains aren’t running, and this happened during the workday, so a lot of commuters are stuck.
Tokyo J-doper here. The first quake hit at 3:30-ish and the aftershocks (big mofos) are still coming. We’ve got a collapsed building with (600 attendees–I’m typing this as I hear it on the news). 25 injuries, 5 of them serious in this one location. 4 deaths altogether so far.
All trains in Tokyo are stopped, so people are walking home.
But obviously this is minor compared to the hell going on up north. Overall, they’re saying this is the worst quake in 150 years.
Oops, on preview I see Oakminster’s filled you in.
12 confirmed dead in Iwate prefecture.
This is going to take forever to clean up. Further, there is no way to know if there will be an even worse one tomorrow.
Wow. Just wow. To see the waves rolling in from a helicopter. Just seen the pictures of the tsunami–the cars, the buildings, the boats, the big boats, and endless, endless debris…I’ve never seen anything like this. The magnitude is beyond comprehension. You can imagine it, but seeing the video feeds from the copters, from horizon to horizon–you could never out run those things. And the horror of watching a vehicle driving along, slowing down and being swept away. Gad! And to thing that walking along the beach anywhere along the Pacific Rim is a dicey prospect for the next 20+ hours.
And the loss of life, I expect will be large.
Just here to pass on (as trite as they sound) my best wishes for all affected. That is one serious earthquake, and the tsunami I just watched being broadcast was frigging mind-blowing.
May all Dopers in the wake be safe please. 
They are reporting that this is 7th largest earthquake since records started being kept.
And who knows how many waves more from aftershocks. Wow. Expecting the tsumani to hit Taiwan soon. The Philippines are almost due south of the epicenter. I hope they have been able to warn people there. I know their communications are not as great as Japan or Taiwan.
The Red Cross is also reporting that the tsunami/s are going to be big enough to inundate many of the smaller Pacific islands.
Where do you go when you live on an island that is about to be swamped? It beggars comprehension.
I heard about this on the radio this morning and just watched the video footage on the BBC site. Unbelievable What’s so scary is that it’s not like you might imagine, a huge wall of water sweeping through rapidly, but a steady, unstoppable expanse of ocean sweeping everything out of the way. Watching the vehicles stopping and truning around as the water approached and knowing there’s nowhere they could have gone is just heartbreaking.
I just hope the tsunami warning systems across the Pacific are able to do their job, but they’re talking about the waves being higher than many of the islands. I’m just thinking back to when I visited Fiji and the Cook Islands a few years ago. On many of the islands there’s really nowhere you could go to escape a big wave.
Edit: exactly what kambuckta wrote as I posted that.
My son in Yokosuka is safe. He is at work, and will have to stay there, trains not running (as others have noted)
This is TokyoPlayer, reporting live from Tokyo on a bus in a traffic jam.
We’re fortunate to be here in Tokyo and not closer. I hope Auto is OK, and the people in the area are safe. I know there will like be casualties, so our inconveniences are trivial.
People with TVs will have more access to the news than I do, as my major concern has been getting home to my kids. Trains will not be running for several more hours, so there are 10 million people taking a limited number of buses.
When the quake hit, I was walking by a tall building and the sidewalk started to shake. Making good time, I scrambled into the street to avoid any potential falling glass. The windows on the Starbucks across the street were oscillating and people had ducked under tables. Fortunately, nothing broke or collapsed where I was. It was a long earthquake, or at least it felt like a long quake and the buildings seem to shake forever.
I happened to be near the moat at Ichigaya, so I picked a place away from buildings to wait out the immediate concerns of aftershocks.
My wife is in Germany to present a paper, and I had to finish checking the English draft for her presentation, so I did that on a park bench. Although my cell phone didn’t have coverage, my wireless internet adapter did, so I could email and chat with her.
Is there a better word than surreal to describe the experience of chatting via Skype on your laptop while sitting on a park bench while you wait to see if any further quakes come? Fortunately, I knew by then that the epicenter was far north, so I wasn’t too concerned for my safety.
My MIL had came up from Taiwan, so fortunately she was around to pick the kids up from daycare. I talked to her and everyone is OK.
Without trains or subways, and no buses in sight, I walked to Shibuya, about 6 km (3.75 miles) away. As I trekked along in the chilly evening weather, watching young women in high heels and too short of skirts, I thanked the unnamed sperm which contributed a Y chromosome to my make up; giving me a gender which wears flat shoes and long pants in this late winter/early spring season.
A Starbucks was passing out coffee and cookie bits, so I took a short break there and chatted with a couple of Americans who had no idea how long it was going to take to to get back to their hotel tonight. The sidewalks were jammed so I mostly walked in the street.
The buses are “running” from Shibuya. It would be faster to walk, but I’m a little tired so I’ll take the bus part way and then walk the rest.
Again, our inconveniences are nothing compared to those nearer the center so I am not complaining.
My family in Hawaii are only two blocks away from the inundation zone so they’re heading a bit more inland. I can’t get over the image of water with fiery wreckage sweeping over Japanese farmland.
On the smaller, barely above sea level island, I would guess it should be fairly safe to get on a boat and move some distance away from the shore; a tsunami traveling in deep water is AFAIK not a threat for to any vessel. The important thing would be to have sufficient early warning and a well organized evacuation plan. Fingers crossed and I hope there’s nothing more than material loses down the waves path across the Pacific.
The images and videos are hearth wrenching, I mentioned to some colleagues at the office that at least Japan is well prepared for quakes and tsunamis, so I wouldn’t expect anything like the horrible death toll of the 2004 tsunami, although even a small fraction of that is still a great tragedy.
Thanks for that Ale, I was wondering whether that would be a possibility. Let’s hope that there’s enough boats and enough space on them to get all out of harms way.
And TokyoPlayer, glad to hear you’re ok mate. Keep safe, and as you can, keep us posted too.
They’re saying now that there’s damage to 4 nuclear power plants and smoke coming from at least one of them from the building that houses the turbine.
ETA: I just realized that there may be thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of people homeless because of this. This is a Disaster, not a disaster.