Stunning Photographs from Japan

Amazing, disturbing earthquake and tsunami photos here.

Comments

[Pro Libertate]

Jesus wept.

[rather]

Al Jazeera English had excellent coverage last night.

The nuclear power plants are the issue of concern now. Last night, the Japanese were too quick to announce they had no damage.

[?]

Jane Fonda: It's the China Syndrome!

Jack Lemmon: Don't you mean the Japan Syndrome?

Jane Fonda: They all look the same to me.

[Old Mexican]

Re: rather,

Last night, the Japanese were too quick to announce they had no damage.

They're still saying that.

[Knee Jerk American]

No nukes!

[rather]

3000 people are evacuating as a 'precaution'

http://www.jpost.com/Headlines.....?id=211749

[sailshonan]

A good friend of mine was an engineer who designed the nuke plant that was damaged in the earthquake a few years back. I lived in Japan for five years--my mother is Japanese and she has six sisters with families (my cousins)who still live over there. But everyone's in teh Tokyo area and and OK. Japan has really really poor emergency services and hospitals so the people in Sendai and Miyagi are going to have a rough time. Unfortunately, I predict a lot of survivors who are injured or trapped won't make it. We always knew the Big One was coming to Tokyo (still hasn't, this one was in NE Japan) because conventional wisdom says big ones happen every 70 years or so, and the Great Kanto Earthquake was in 1923. It was always in the back of my mind when I lived there. Also, I kept an earthquake kit bythe door and shoes by my bed ( broken glass while sleeping) but 90% of Japanese don't keep an earthquake kit (backpack with clothes, food, water.)I'm watching japanese news to stay updated.

[Timon19]

AJE had decent coverage. The first anchorlady was babbling cluelessly with some guy from Tokyo while the video feed was showing NHK's footage of live tsunami action. It took a full 10 minutes of her yakking before someone decided to tell her to start talking about the amazingly frightening pictures that they were showing us. Meanwhile, there were several HUGE aftershocks within an hour of the main earthquake that seemingly went unreported. One of them was something like 50 miles from central Tokyo and was approx. 6.4 magnitude. Totally ignored.

Until they got rid of her and went with Anand Naidoo, it was sort of a clusterfuck.

All that said, I'm sure it beat the crap out of CNN's coverage.

Anyway, I was more concerned with the natural gas containers that were on fire. There was a whole natural gas tank farm that was adjacent to the burning container. Not good.

[OhioOrrin]

and buddha

[Old Mexican]

And Demeter.

[Jeff Spicoli]

Tasty waves!

[Laird Hamilton]

right! How'd I miss that did you see picture #7

[Jeff Spicoli]

Dude!

[Spoonman.]

Prolefeed's in Hawaii, right? Everything OK there?

[James Ard]

All of this shaking is sure to make other faults unstable. The New Madrid fault is overdue for an adjustment. I hope St. Louis and Memphis have built solid structures.

[Paul Warfield Tibbets]

I had nothing to do with this.

[Trespassers W]

I'm going to go throw up now.

[East-Coaster]

I wish the tsunami would hit California already. I have shopping to do.

[Hobo Chang Ba]

My wife's family lives in Fukushima, one of the hardest hit prefectures. Haven't been able to get in touch with them yet, but their district was "only" a 6- (major damage). I'm really worried about Kurihara, which had 77,000 people and reached mag 7 (complete destruction).

[All Kidding Aside]

Good luck to them.

[GILMORE]

This so totally proves anthropogenic global warming.

cause, like... uh.... white people... corporations.... capitalism... and like, too much walking around... exacerbate plate tectonics. Also, GMOs. And Sarah Palin's violent rhetoric.

This could all be solved with new lightbulbs, high speed rail, and reusable grocery bags. And maybe hemp.

[GILMORE]

Holy shit... just when I think i'm maybe drawing too much of a cartoonish parody...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03.....ke.html?hp

Something is imitating life here.

Op-Ed Contributor
Let There Be More Efficient Light

\...America finally got its act together in 1894, when Congress standardized the meaning of what are today common scientific measures, ...\

I have now read this three times, and I still am not sure why the guy believes that rubber stamping things makes them magically more utilitarian... I mean, by his logic, wouldn't we'd have been been forced-to-go-Metric eons
ago...?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqP3SE4k2qg

[rhofulster]

ABC had a scientist on this morning at about the time the wave was supposed to hit Hawaii. Steph and the other anchor were watching footage of a beach where the waves looked high, but nothing approaching a tidal wave and they kind had this "is that all there is" reaction. The scientist responded with "oh - it's coming. Our instruments and computer models - large, sophisticated computer models - on a lot of big supercomputers predict it." (paraphrase.)

The wave was predicted to hit HI at 8:15(Eastern). This guy hadn't given up by 8:45. They didn't put him back on the air before the show was over, but I'm guessing he still believes a tsunami hit HI because his model said so.