Monster Quake and Tsunami in Pacific

[David]

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!!

[louielouie2000]

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

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

[LorraineRN]

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?

[David]

Originally Posted by LorraineRN

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.

[louielouie2000]

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.

[GODDESS6]

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

[David]

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.

[LorraineRN]

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.

[David]

Originally Posted by LorraineRN

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

[KarmaContestant]

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

Hundreds Dead, Damage Massive

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

[BTFLCHLD]

[KarmaContestant]

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

[KarmaContestant]

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

[daniellaaarisen]

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.

[estranged4life]

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.