Monster Quake and Tsunami in Pacific
 

Preliminary magnitude of megathrust quake off the coast of Tokyo was 7.9 on the moment magnitude scale -- which was just slightly larger than the quake that hit San Francisco in 1906 -- but has since been revised to the MONSTER magnitude of 8.8!!!!

Tsunami generated, of course, & video footage is in from Japan showing the tsunami striking various coastlines on that side of Japan. The entire Pacific Rim will be affected by this tsunami, although it's difficult to say just which coastlines -- from the Kuril Islands in Russia to Alaska's Aleutians to the west coast of the United States to Guam to Hawaii to the Marquesas -- will suffer major damage or loss of life.

STAY TUNED!!

Scary stuff. For those wanting a link on the story, here's one:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42023385...s-asiapacific/

This is scary; I am watching it now on the news. I am concerned about friends in Hawaii. What do yall think is the probability of a tsunami hitting the West Coast from this?

Lorraine, it's highly probable that the tsunami from this quake will reach the U.S. West Coast. The question that can't be answered at this point is the size & energy of the tsunami that reaches our coast. This is certainly a transoceanic tsunami -- a quake of this size easily generates such a thing. But what can't really be predicted is how powerful a punch this will pack--dozens of factors figure in the equation, including the directional aspects of the rupturing fault (in other words, where the rupture lies on the latitude-longitude grid). We'll have to wait & see. It will be many hours yet before these waves hit the West Coast. They need to cross the entire basin.

Tsunamis are fascinating to me (in a very serious, deadly way obviously). It completely blows my mind that they can travel faster than a jet airliner (600 mph). Not to mention the fact they're so highly unpredictable... some monster earthquakes don't spawn tsunamis, while smaller ones do. You'd think they'd be straightforward to find and track, too... but they're not.

i have friends in hawaii as well~ this is so sad & super scary~ the west coast is under a tsunami warning now too~

Such stupidity, this hyperfocus on the exact "time the wave hits." On several of the TV news channels, they were actually running a clock on the screen with a countdown! Tsunamis are wave trains: waves will roll in & out for hours, & the most damaging waves are usually not the very first. So counting down like this is mostly pretty asinine. It gives locals the impression that the danger has passed once the stopwatch hits zero.

Also asinine, although I understand what drives it, is the emphasis on wave height.

Let's see whether this event focuses attention on the Cascadia Subduction Zone. For the population all up & down the shoreline of the western U.S., it's Cascadia that's the wild card.

I am texting back and forth with a friend of mine that is in Waikiki, Hawaii and he even thinks the danger is over because the countdown has come and gone and he "sees nothing". I told him just wait and don't be off guard yet. He is on the 18th floor of a hotel.

Remind your friend what happened in Hilo Harbor after the Chilean quake in 1960: http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/c1187/#waves

http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/c1187/images/fig17.jpg

This picture, and it's accompanying headline just kinda...says it all. :distress:


http://col.stb.s-msn.com/i/54/87FD35...2D699F8C8D.jpg

Key details:

•Second quake hits another area of Japan
•200 to 300 bodies found in one coastal city after tsunami
•Dam breaks in Fukushima prefecture, washing away homes
•Coast Guard searching for ship carrying 80
•At least 90 fires in northeast Japan
•Train with unknown number of passengers is missing
•Radioactive vapor to be released at nuclear plant
•4 million lose power in Tokyo area
•100 aftershocks, some above 6.0
•Some damage in U.S.; Calif. search for man swept out to sea

An amazing photo, really, despite the devestation it captures.

http://col.stb.s-msn.com/i/53/D3BCD6...3F1E946EEE.jpg

Japanese officials declare a nuclear emergency.
 

Scary stuff.

Coolant systems reportedly have failed at three quake-stricken nuclear reactors. Radiation is seeping outside one, & temps are rising out of control at two others.

BUT - of course, despite declaring an emergency, everything is supposedly 'fine'.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540...26068#42026068

So, so sad. And weird to think that my hometown in California was even effected... hundreds of boats sank due to the tsunami. I've been thinking about poor Japan all day.

Man swept to death by tsunami wave in Calif.
 

Man swept to death by tsunami wave in Calif.
Huge surges from Japan quake smash ships at West Coast harbors

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42024659...-asia-pacific/

CRESCENT CITY, Calif. — Tsunami waves spawned by a devastating earthquake in Japan battered Hawaii and the U.S. western coast Friday, flooding businesses, smashing dozens of boats at harbors and sweeping a man to his death.

Sirens sounded for hours before dawn along the West Coast and roadways and beaches were mostly empty as the tsunami struck. By midmorning, waves were crashing against the 30-foot bluffs in Crescent City, Calif.

A 25-year-old man was swept into the Pacific Ocean near the Klamath River in Del Norte County in Northern California. The man and two friends reportedly traveled to the shoreline to take photos of the incoming tsunami waves, Lt. Todd Vorenkamp said. His friends made it back to shore safely.

The missing man was presumed dead and his body has not been located, said Joey Young, spokesman for the Del Norte County emergency operations center in Crescent City.

Surging water knocked dozens of boats from their docks, both in Crescent City and on California's central coast in Santa Cruz, where loose fishing vessels crashed into one another and chunks of wooden docks broke off.

"This is just devastating. I never thought I'd see this again," said Ted Scott, a retired mill worker who lived in Crescent City when a 1964 tsunami killed 17 people on the West Coast, including 11 in his town. "I watched the docks bust apart. It buckled like a graham cracker."

Young said about 30 boats were damaged at the harbor in Crescent City.

The waves didn't make it over a 20-foot break wall protecting the rest of the city, and no home damage was immediately reported.
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In southern Oregon, the harbor at Brookings, near the California border, was extensively damaged. Several vessels were sunk, half a dozen others were swept to sea and much of the commercial part of the basin was destroyed, Curry County Sheriff John Bishop said. Damages will run in the millions of dollars, he said.

One man with a history of heart problems was found dead aboard a commercial vessel in Brookings but it was unclear if the death was related to the tsunami.

Four people at a beach north of Brookings were swept into the sea. Two were able to get out of the water on their own, and two were rescued by law enforcement and fire officials, the sheriff's office said.

Officials in two coastal Washington state counties used an automated phone alert system, phoning residents on the coast and in low-lying areas and asking them to move to higher ground.

"We certainly don't want to cry wolf," said Sheriff Scott Johnson of Washington's Pacific County. "We just have to hope we're doing the right thing based on our information. We don't want to be wrong and have people hurt or killed."

Earlier in Hawaii, water rushed up on roadways and into hotel lobbies on the Big Island and low-lying areas in Maui were flooded as 7-foot waves crashed ashore.

Big Island Mayor Billy Kenoi's office said that "damaging waves" hit Kailua-Kona around 5:30 a.m., roughly two hours after the first surge was expected, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported. The waves caused relatively minor but widespread damage in the area, the paper said.

Businesses on Maui also reported flood damage and many roads were closed. Mayor Alan Arakawa said the island's 14 evacuation centers were filled, with as many as 500 people in some facilities, the Star-Advertiser reported.

Scientists warned that the first tsunami waves are not always the strongest, and officials said people in Hawaii and along the West Coast should watch for strong currents and heed calls for evacuations. Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie said the islands were "fortunate almost beyond words."

The tsunami, spawned by an 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan, slammed the eastern coast of Japan, sweeping away boats, cars, homes and people as widespread fires burned out of control. It raced across the Pacific at 500 mph — as fast as a jetliner — before hitting Hawaii and the West Coast.

It is the second time in a little over a year that Hawaii and the U.S. West coast faced the threat of a massive tsunami. A magnitude-8.8 earthquake in Chile spawned warnings on Feb. 27, 2010, but the waves were much smaller than predicted and did little damage.

Scientists then acknowledged they overstated the threat but defended their actions, saying they took the proper steps and learned the lessons of the 2004 Indonesian tsunami that killed thousands of people who didn't get enough warning.

This time around, the warning went out within 10 minutes of the earthquake in Japan, said Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist for the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu.

"We called this right. This evacuation was necessary," Fryer said. "There's absolutely no question, this was the right thing to do," he said.

Police went through the tourist mecca of Waikiki, warning of the approaching tsunami. Hotels moved tourists from lower floors to upper levels. Some tourists ended up spending the night in their cars.

Across the islands, people stocked up on bottled water, canned foods and toilet paper. Authorities opened buildings to people fleeing low-lying areas. Fishermen took their boats out to sea, away from harbors and marinas where the waves would be most intense.

As the sun rose, people breathed a sigh of relief.

"With everything that could have happened and did happen in Japan, we're just thankful that nothing else happened," said Sabrina Skiles, who along with her husband spent a sleepless night at his office in Maui. Their beachfront house was unscathed.

Kenoi, the Big Island's mayor, told KHNL-TV a home may have washed into the ocean but he was "confident" of no reports of loss of life. "There is damage but considering what could have happened we are thankful," he said.

About 70 percent of Hawaii's 1.4 million population resides in Honolulu, and as many as 100,000 tourists are in the city on any given day.

Honolulu resident Margaret Carlile told msnbc.com that the alarms woke her up. "All the sirens went off — there's one down by the ocean and one nearer," she said. "The alarms are going off every hour on the hour to alert people."

Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle said on KHNL that city and county employees were placed on administrative leave Friday and had been asked to stay home.
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The warnings issued by the tsunami center covered an area stretching the entire western coast of the United States and Canada from the Mexican border to Chignik Bay in Alaska.

Many islands in the Pacific were evacuated, but officials later told residents to go home because the waves weren't as bad as expected.

In Guam, the waves broke two U.S. Navy submarines from their moorings, but tug boats corralled the subs and brought them back to their pier. No damage was reported to Navy ships in Hawaii.

In the Canadian pacific coast province of British Columbia, authorities evacuated marinas, beaches and other areas.

In Latin America, a tsunami alert was in effect for Chile's coastline and remote Easter Island territory. The government said it would evacuate flood-prone areas along the mainland coast.

A magnitude 8.8 quake and ensuing tsunamis a year ago hammered towns, roads and industries and killed more than 500 people in central Chile.

In Ecuador, most of the residents of Galapagos Islands — and many of the islands' world-famous animals — were evacuated to higher ground

Mexico's state-run oil company Pemex evacuated 300 workers from its only oil port on the Pacific coast. Authorities closed ports along Mexico's western coast as a precautionary measure, although the first waves to hit land were smaller than expected.

The worst big wave to strike the U.S. was a 1946 tsunami caused by a magnitude of 8.1 earthquake near Unimak Islands, Alaska, that killed 165 people, mostly in Hawaii. In 1960, a magnitude 9.5 earthquake in southern Chile caused a tsunami that killed at least 1,716 people, including 61 people in Hilo. It also destroyed most of that city's downtown. On the U.S. mainland, a 1964 tsunami from a 9.2 magnitude earthquake in Prince William Sound, Alaska, struck Washington State, Oregon and California. It killed 128 people, including 11 in Crescent City, Calif.

The Associated Press, msnbc.com staff and Reuters contributed to this report.

I have some friends in Japan and, although they have told me they're safe, they are so frightened. What a horrific, sad situation. The video and pictures say it all. My prayers go out to everyone and I am really heartbroken for them.

An important thing to ask those of you who live near the west coast in Northern California, Oregon, Washington, & Canada (from Cape Mendocino all the way to Vancouver):

Are YOU prepared for the rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone--whose magnitude & tsunami generation would be very closely equivalent to this Japanese event?

Are YOU prepared?

I live in Denver, and I'm not prepared for Yellowstone blowing. I'd most likely not live through it anyway. :]

Talk about deja-vu...
 

"Bay Area hard rock band HIGH ON FIRE was on tour and set to perform in Tokyo, Japan on Friday when the powerful earthquake and resulting tsunami struck off the island nation's shore, collapsing buildings, touching off widespread fires and unleashing walls of water up to 30 feet high. The US group was unharmed, but shaken after surviving its second natural disaster in sixteen days; the band was also abroad in Christchurch, New Zealand during the 6.3-magnitude earthquake of February 22, the country's deadliest natural disaster in 80 years.

"Our thoughts go out to all the people of the world who have already been through such agony during these tragedies and are now going through much worse," said the band in a statement. "To all those who have lost loved ones in particular, you have our deepest sympathies."

-----------------------------------

I'm in Oklahoma, and only 20 miles from the Meers Fault, So I am prepared for it:

http://www.meersstore.com/observatory.html

http://texomashomepage.com/fulltext?nxd_id=104566

Pray tell, how does one prepare? :confused:

All hope is not lost. Preparation consists in teaching -- or training -- yourself to take specific action under certain circumstances.

If you're on a beach or in a marina & you feel shaking strong enough to knock you off your feet, consider that a sign that the quake is locally generated. Don't wait for Civil Defense sirens (there's even a chance that a tsunami would reach your location before the sirens sounded). Let the quake itself serve as your prompt to gain ground & elevation, either by running inland or by getting into a steel-reinforced concrete building that's at least three stories high -- a beachfront hotel, for example. Get into it! Get upstairs! Use the stairwell.

If you live or work within a half mile or mile of the coast, contact your local emergency management office & ask about tsunami inundation maps, which show you those parts of the coastline that can expect inundation. You should also find out what the evacuation routes are in your area, & memorize them!

Above all, in a remotely generated tsunami, follow the instructions issued by the authorities. If they report that a tsunami is possible in your area in five hours' time, take them seriously.

I see these extreme forces of nature and I thank my lucky stars that I live in England.

We folks of the British Isles are so fortunately situated in an area of peace and calm (naturewise and weatherwise).

We moan when we have to put up with a few inches of snow or losing a fence panel because we have a gale force wind now and then.

We don't have to worry about Typhoons, Monsoons, Hurricanes, Tornados, Droughts, Earthquakes, Volcanic Eruptions, Catastrophic Floods, Tsunamis, Deathly Blizzards et al.

Yes, all of us would be in trouble if Yellowstone blew, or a couple of similar calderas in Europe - but these are only "might happens". On the whole we Brits don't have much to worry about.

Why anyone would want to emigrate from our green and pleasant land is beyond me.

My heart goes out to everyone who has to cope with living in an area prone to extreme weather and natural disaster.

We have earthquake drills twice a year at work. I also have emergency "kits" on every floor of my three story home. The nuclear power plant accident has me a bit concerned and wondering about the jet stream these days. Even though I live within the Cascadia Subduction Zone, I am on the far side of it... I think I'm ready to move to Britain. I feel really bad for the people of Japan and a bit nervous about any kind of whiplash effect such a large earthquake might have on other plates. I grew up around the San Andreas fault and very much used to earthquakes, but subduction quakes freak me out a lot more than thrust faults.

It is easy to become complacent in an area that seems to be the host of great weather most of the year--bad things can't happen here, not to me. Did you see the LA Times article? It's not whether California is due for a massive earthquake, but when:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...tory?track=rss

As you have been stating over the years:

On a more personal level, each one of us needs to take these warnings seriously and pull our heads out of the sand. Does your house have an earthquake kit for the long days without water, power, food and easily obtainable cash? Has your house been made as safe against earthquakes as possible? Those who ignore these warnings now will regret it later when the next Big One hits.


Do you have a 72 hour kit? Most people do not. It doesn't just apply to California.

http://72hours.org/build_kit.html

And as beautiful as it is, how do people feel living so close to a volcano?

http://www.mutineermagazine.com/img/...mt_rainier.jpg

Thanks, Tango.

California has at least a small measure of consolation to take--our fault zones would never produce a quake of the size & energy that just struck Japan. We are largely a strike-slip fault region, & any dip-slip or thrust faulting in the state is localized & confined. Nonetheless, our fault systems can generate -- & have generated -- ruptures as big as M7.8-7.9. This is easily sufficiently big to demolish our cities & infrastructure.

But it's the entire west coast north of San Francisco -- from about Cape Mendocino (CA) to just north of Vancouver (British Columbia) -- that will experience what Japan's coastline just experienced: a megathrust subduction zone rupture of magnitude 9, a perfect tsunami-generating machine.

Everybody listen to Tango!! If you live in an active earthquake region (which includes most of the population centers in California, for example), you need a 72-hour kit! I have one. You should have one, too.

Such beauty -- & yet it is the very visual indication of imminent disaster. The reason that volcano is there -- & the reason that all the beautiful strato-volcanoes of the Cascade range are there -- is the very subduction zone I mentioned earlier in this post:

CASCADIA!!!!!!!!!!

What happened on the other side of the Pacific a few days ago WILL happen to the West Coast because of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. It last happened on a cold January night in the year 1700. It may very well be "overdue" in seismic parlance.

There was an extraordinary program on the imminent Cascadia subduction zone earthquake & tsunamis - which ranges in breadth across Vancouver to Seattle down through Portland and into Northern California - on the National Geographic Channel last night. It was eye-opening to say the least.:eek:

Sometimes it rages...just like the sea...We rock a little or a lot!:angel:

This may have been what you watched... It's a documentary called "Shock Wave".

Coastal towns from California to British Columbia can expect tsunami waves 15 to 30 metres high only 20 minutes after a magnitude 9 earthquake in the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

You can watch the full documentary online... Yes, it is an eye opener.

CBC.CA - SHOCK WAVE

Piling on to the tsunami theme here... Some scientists are saying that the lost continent Atlantis has been found... 60 miles inland in northern Spain! :eek: :confused:

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/14/...ainland-spain/

The program I watched last night on National Geographic Channel was called: Countdown to Catastrophe: Mega Quake.

This was on NGC last night as well: Finding Atlantis. I Dvr'd it, chose to watch Big Love instead - but I cannot wait to watch it.

The heartbreak in all of this is endless. You survive the earthquake, and manage to avoid getting swept away by the tsumami- then there is the danger of radiation due to the nuclear powerplant damage- there's no place to live, there's no food, no safe water, sanitation is destroyed- you look around at all the destruction, and meanwhile, bodies that you can't even recognize are washing up on shore. We haven't seen anything like this in our time. To read that the earth shifted it's axis and the country of Japan actually moved as the result of the upheaval is shocking. Their ability to make a living has been largely destroyed. And have we even forgotten Haaiti and Indonesia? How about Katrina here in the US. And Muammar Gaddafi is shooting and bombing people that oppose his rule? People in various countries are being sold as slaves. It really is an insane world we live in. The news is unbearable, isn't it? How much worse to live it. A lot of people are trying to pretend all of this horror isn't going on, largely because there isn't an easy "fix." But I think it's in the little things that we survive. Being kind to one another, looking out for one another, doing what you can to be ready for the miserable times, etc. It's trite but just being nice to each other is sometimes the saving grace in a society.

Best thing I've heard all day.

Turbulent times indeed: Haiti, Gulf oil spill, Japan, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya,Bahrain Saudi Arabia, terror attack Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nuclear Meltdowns, Financial Crisis affecting several countries, Higher than average unemployment or under employment in several developed countries, The accelerated unequal distribution of wealth not seen since before the Great Depression... & much much more!:distress:

And thus it brings me back to Stevie ~ Someone who has always taken me away ~ if only for a moment ~ from the serious reality we face in our day and age. For this I am grateful. Thank you ~Stevie Angel~ :angel:

From what I've been reading lately, it's unfortunately more complicated than that.
There's often a series of strong foreshocks - preliminary earthquakes (as there were in this case). Each or at least most of those foreshocks are strong; none of them generates a tsunami. So one would have to run inland, etc. 10 or more times in the 24 or 48 hours before the strong quake might or might not follow. Hey, I'm all for that but I doubt it would be possible to get large numbers of people to go along; and employers wouldn't tolerate it.

Just a thought that occurs to me - Everywhere I look in the last day or so, the lead story has been the nuke plant accidents - about which they've already said most of the radiation will probably be contained no matter what happens. Without wanting to badmouth the individual reporters, etc., the news groups as a whole have only one job: to help the advertisers sell cars and beer. So they've switched over to a related - but different - story that's more dramatic and less depressing. But that's not what really just happened here, is it. The real story is that a very large number of people have just been killed and hurt and they need our prayers and help. Including, if possible, financial donations and/or donation of blood, supplies etc.

I know that foreshocks are a fact of megathrust quakes, but what does that have to do with the widely accepted recommendation to get off a beach as fast as you can if you experience an earthquake strong enough to make it difficult to stand?

What is all this about running inland ten times? I don't follow.

Please see the following:
http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~nat_haz/t...eachquakes.php

And actually, a foreshock of, say, M7 or M7+ can generate a local tsunami.

I was just reading that there is some radiation now leaking from one of the reactors that was shut down at the nuclear plant that´s had the explosions. Not good.:( David is it possible that the radiation would effect Tokyo or is it too far away?

140,000 people told to seal themselves indoors

Japan crisis worse than Three Mile Island, experts say
No-fly zone imposed near stricken nuclear site

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42084187...fic/?GT1=43001

I am struggling to comprehend the enormity of this. Thank you for the bolded piece.

Japan quake upgraded to 9.0
 

U.S. Geological Survey Updates Magnitude of Japan’s 2011 Tohoku Earthquake to 9.0

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...le+Feedfetcher

Independently, Japanese seismologists have also updated their estimate of the earthquake's magnitude to 9.0. This magnitude places the earthquake as the fourth largest in the world since 1900 and the largest in Japan since modern instrumental recordings began 130 years ago.