The Lede is following breaking news of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake about 80 miles off the shore of Japan. Updates below mix news alerts with reports from bloggers and journalists on the ground.
Updating…6:12 P.M. |More on Surging Waters in Oregon and California
At least five people who came to the land’s edge in northern California and southern Oregon on Friday to watch as seas surged from the distant Japanese earthquake were swept away by those same waters, The Associated Press reported, with four being rescued. But at least one man who was taking pictures of the waves in northern California was still missing on Friday.
It appeared that The A.P. was referring to the same episode reported earlier by a local television station in Crescent City, Calif. That earlier report said that at least one person who had been swept away was dead and another still missing. The A.P. said that a man in Brookings, Ore., had been found dead on a commercial vessel, but that local officials said he appeared to have died of natural causes. The differing reports could not be immediately sorted out.
Coast Guard helicopters searched for a missing man near the mouth of the Klamath River in Del Norte County, Calif., The A.P. said, but his chance of survival appeared slim given the roughness of the ocean and the cold.
The video below is said to be from Brookings, Ore., and captures several boats as they are swept away by the retreating waters.
While the waters slowly surged, as captured by the video below, the waves did not top a 20-foot break wall that protects the city, and no home damage was immediately reported, The A.P. said.
5:17 P.M. |Radition Said to Surge at Nuclear Plant After Quake
As Japan awoke on Saturday to the devastation left by the one-two punch of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and a deadly tsunami, Japanese officials warned that damage to a coastal nuclear reactor may have resulted in a radiation leak after its cooling system was knocked offline on Friday.
The video below shows the nuclear plant on Friday as the ocean surged around it.
News agencies and others were reporting that radiation levels surged around the plant.
Thousands of residents had already been evacuated from a 6-mile area surrounding the plant, in Fukushima, about 150 miles north of Tokyo.
Officials now saying radiation at Fukushima nuke plant 1,000X normal level. #jpquake
Steve Herman
W7VOA
My colleague Matthew L. Wald is reporting on the evolving situation at the plant and discussed events earlier on Friday.
3:51 P.M. |Budget Battles and Tsunami Preparedness
What’s the best way to survive a tsunami? Christopher Beam, writing in Slate.com answers: Run uphill.
But he notes: “If you’re smart, however, you’ll have prepared ahead of time.”
Tsunami preparedness does not come free, however; indeed, it has been the subject of political wrangling in Washington, as The Associated Press points out on Friday.
A spending plan approved by the House of Representatives includes cuts to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, among other spending reductions to the National Weather Service.
3:40 P.M. |Former U.S. Ambassador’s Thoughts
Tom Schieffer, who served as the United States ambassador to Japan from 2005 to 2009, shared these with The Lede on the impact of the tsunami and the American response:
This earthquake will have a huge impact on Japan. The Japanese have the best knowledge and technology available to deal with earthquakes. We regularly exercise with them on the possibility of this happening, but no one can really prepare for an earthquake of this magnitude.
The fact, however, that we have such a large American presence in Japan will help us help them. Already, today, you saw the American Air Force base at Yokota taking flights that couldn’t land at Narita.
We have naval vessels, helicopters and cargo planes that I am sure will be used to move relief and medical supplies to where they are needed.
I know that we will do everything possible to be as good a friend and ally to the Japanese as they have always been to us when disaster struck.
This is our turn to repay the kindness they showed us after Katrina.
3:37 P.M. |Following Developments on Twitter
The Twitter module on the righthand side of this blog has updates on the disaster in Japan. Among others, we are following these Twitter feeds at the moment:
Journalists:
- @gakuranman (a writer)
- @tokyoreporter (a reporter based in Nakameguro, Tokyo)
- @TomokoHosaka (an AP reporter)
- @KyungLahCNN (a CNN reporter)
Service sites:
- @earthoutreach (Google Earth)
- @TsunamiPacific
- @RedCross
News sites:
- @japantimes
- @DailyYomiuri
- @timeouttokyo
- @TWCBreaking
There are also several hashtags that can help when searching for news on Twitter: #jishin ; #tsunami ; #japan ; #earthquake ; #jpquake ; and, for how the tsunami is affecting the United States, #HItsunami (for Hawaii) and #CAtsunami (for California).
3:28 P.M. |Damage and a Death Reported in California
Surging waves touched off by the Japanese earthquake have claimed at least one life in northern California, according to a local TV station. The ABC affiliate in Crescent City reported that waves up to 6 feet high swept a group of four people out into the ocean Friday morning, and that one was known to have been killed. The report, which could not be immediately confirmed, did not specify the sexes or ages of the people, or explain what they were doing when the waves took them.
ABC affiliate KDRV confirmed that the waves pulled the four out to sea late Friday morning. Two of the other people were found alive and one is still unaccounted for.
Del Norte County sheriff’s spokesman Bill Stevens said most boats were pulled out of the harbor in preparation for Friday’s tsunami, but 35 vessels that remained are crashing into one another and sinking.
Farther south in California, KTVU television posted video showing damage to the harbor in Santa Cruz.
Thousands of people evacuated their homes in northern California, Reuters reported.
State officials warned residents not to assume that the danger had passed. “We’re just getting started,” said Jordan Scott, a spokesman for the California Emergency Management Agency, news agencies reported.
2:18 P.M. |Mapping the Quake and Tsunami
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Center for Tsunami Research Frames from an animated model of the tsunami created on Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.These are still frames taken from an animated sequence created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to model the earthquake off Japan – which the agency is calling the Honshu earthquake, after the Japanese island it affected most, the country’s largest and most populous.
The model is meant to provide a way to “estimate of wave arrival time, wave height and inundation area immediately after a tsunami event.”
The agency also created a colorful map showing the estimated force of the tsunami – represented in wave heights – as it exploded out from the epicenter.
NOAA My colleagues on the Times interactive graphics desk have taken this data and created some very readable maps, including the location of the tectonic plates whose undersea movement caused the quake.
1:42 P.M. |An Account From an Academic Visiting Tokyo
William M. Tsutsui, a professor of Japanese business and economic history and a dean at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, was in Tokyo when the earthquake struck. He blogged about the experience and spoke to my colleague Maria Newman by telephone:
Professor Tsutsui was getting off a bus in front of a hotel in Tokyo, where he was traveling with a business delegation, when the ground began to shake.
“The door to the bus opened, and it began to shake and sway, and we saw groups of people running out of the hotel,” he said.
“The shaking became really very intense,” he said. “I used to live here, and I’ve visited here many times, and lived through many earthquakes, but this was far and away the strongest I’d ever felt. You could see the awnings on the hotel bouncing up and down.
“What was scariest was to look up at the skyscrapers all around,” he said. “They were swaying like trees in the breeze.”
He said he saw some window washers on a platform, swaying back and forth: “Luckily, they were wearing their harnesses, so they came out okay. It was truly terrifying.”
Dr. Tsutsui walked around the city afterward, experiencing the aftershocks of the first quake, and said that he saw no real damage to structures anywhere. They were left standing, he said, while people on bicycles and motorcycles had fallen over.
“It’s really a testament to Japanese construction methods,” he said. “I can’t imagine a quake of this magnitude in Los Angeles or San Francisco causing almost no damage. The contrast to Haiti could not be more extreme.”
He said he was also struck by the mood of the people all around him. They appeared frightened, he said, but they were calm and patient, even hours later when the streets became clogged with traffic and public transportation was halted, forcing people to scramble for a way to get wherever they were going.
“It’s been gridlock on the streets here for almost 12 hours, and in all that time, I’ve heard cars honking maybe three or four times,” he said.
Dr. Tsutsui said his group was scheduled to meet with the Japanese prime minister on Friday afternoon.
1:15 P.M. |Obama Discusses Disaster With Reporters
President Obama opened his news conference in Washington Friday afternoon with remarks about the disaster in Japan, and said the United States would provide “whatever assistance is needed.” Here are his remarks in full:
Before I begin, I want to say a few words about the terrible earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan earlier today.
First and foremost, our thoughts and our prayers are with the people of Japan.
This is a potentially catastrophic disaster, and the images of destruction and flooding coming out of Japan are simply heartbreaking.
Japan is of course one of our strongest and closest allies, and this morning I spoke with Prime Minister Kan.
On behalf of the American people, I conveyed our deepest condolences, especial to the victims and their families, and I offered our Japanese friends whatever assistance is needed.
We currently have an aircraft carrier in Japan and another is on its way. We also have a ship en route to the Mariana Islands to assist as needed. The Defense Department is working to account for all our military personnel in Japan. U.S. embassy personnel in Tokyo have moved to an off-site location, and the State Department is working to account for and assist any and all American citizens who are in the country.
Tsunami warnings have been issued across the Pacific, and we’ve already seen initial waves from the tsunami come ashore on Guam and other U.S. territories in Alaska and Hawaii, as well as on – along the West Coast. Here in the United States, there hasn’t been any major damage so far, but we’re taking this very seriously, and we are monitoring the situation very closely. F.E.M.A. is fully activated and is coordinating with state and local officials to support these regions as necessary.
And let me just stress that if people are told to evacuate, do as you are told.
Today’s events remind us of just how fragile life can be. Our hearts go out to our friends in Japan and across the region, and we’re going to stand with them as they recover and rebuild from this tragedy.
1:07 P.M. |Shelter For the Stranded
As my colleague Elizabeth A. Harris notes, BBC Travel is reporting that schools, universities, hotels and even restaurants in Japan have opened their doors to people in Japan who could not get home for the night.
Here is a map, in Japanese, to help people find a place to stay.
より大きな地図で 東京都内避難場所 を表示
1:04 P.M. |A Neighborhood Awash in Miyako
Another video clip from Tokyo Broadcasting System Television shows buildings being pushed off their foundations in the Kuwagasaki section of Miyako, a city on the northern coast about 125 miles northeast of Sendai. The whole neighborhood seems to float on the powerful surge of water as residents watch from higher ground:
12:20 P.M. |Architecture Meant to Bend, Not Break
This video shows office towers swaying rather dramatically in downtown Tokyo:
Though the images are a bit unnerving, the buildings are doing they way they were designed to do – move and flex with the seismic motion rather than stiffly resist it, which would cause them to crack and topple.
As my colleague Norimitsu Onishi writes, “no country may be better prepared to withstand earthquakes than Japan”:
Over the years, Japan has spent billions of dollars developing the most advanced technology against earthquakes and tsunamis. The Japanese, who regularly experience smaller
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Comments (1)
I have no idea why I can’t rec this. Thanks for all the info.