Tsunami Earthquake In Tokyo Japan News Mar-11-2011

Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Destroys Buildings. An 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the world’s strongest in more than six years, struck the coast of Japan, causing a tsunami as high as 10 meters that inundated towns north of Tokyo.

One person was killed and many people are missing or injured across northern Japan, national broadcaster NHK Television said. Airports were closed and bullet train services suspended. More than 4 million homes are without power, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

The quake struck at 2:46 p.m. local time 130 kilometers (81 miles) off the coast of Sendai, north of Tokyo, at a depth of 24 kilometers, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It was followed by a 7.1-magnitude aftershock at 4:25 p.m., the agency said.

NHK showed images of people getting medical treatment in northern Japan and footage of a tsunami sweeping buildings across farmland as far as 1.5 kilometers inland. Ships were smashed into harbor walls and cars were washed away.

“I call on citizens to act calmly. Especially those who are near a beach, please evacuate to higher ground to avoid the tsunami,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan said after convening an emergency response team. “The Self-Defense Forces are already mobilized in various places.”

The Japanese yen was little changed at 82.76 at 4:54 p.m. The Nikkei 225 Average fell after the quake and closed 1.7 percent down. Japanese government bonds rose sending the yield on the 10-year security down 2.5 basis points to 1.27 percent.






Army to Help

Kan ordered the army to aid rescue efforts after the quake, which struck 373 kilometers northeast of Tokyo.

Today’s temblor was the biggest since a magnitude-9.1 earthquake triggered a tsunami off northern Sumatra, Indonesia in December 2004 that left about 220,000 people dead or missing in 12 countries around the Indian Ocean.

A 6.9-magnitude earthquake in Kobe, western Japan, killed more than 6,000 people in 1995, while the 7.9-magnitude Great Kanto Quake of 1923 destroyed 576,262 structures and killed an estimated 140,000.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued alerts for more than 20 countries including the Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

The Japan Meteorological Agency is warning of further aftershocks and told people to avoid coastal areas and evacuate to higher ground, according to an official at a press conference in Tokyo shown on NHK. Aftershocks continued through to 5 p.m. Japan time.

Airports Shut

The airport in Sendai, a city of 1 million people 310 kilometers north of Tokyo, was flooded by the tsunami, according to NHK footage. Tokyo’s Narita airport shut down, Kyodo News reported. Haneda, the capital’s other main airport, also closed, NHK said.

East Japan Railway Co., the nation’s largest train operator, suspended operations of trains in the Tokyo area along with its bullet train operations, according to its website. Tokyo Metro Co., the capital’s largest subway operator, said on its website it stopped trains, forcing commuters to line up for taxis.

Latest Earthquake - Information Of Earthquake

An earthquake is a trembling or shaking movement of the Earth's surface. Earthquakes typically result from the movement of faults, quasi-planar zones of deformation within its uppermost layers. The word earthquake is also widely used to indicate the source region itself. The solid earth is in slow but constant motion (see plate tectonics) and earthquakes occur where the resulting stress exceeds the capacity of Earth materials to support it. This condition is most often found at (and the resulting frequent occurrence of earthquakes is used to define) the boundaries of the tectonic plates into which the Earth's lithosphere can be divided. Events that occur at plate boundaries are called interplate earthquakes; the less frequent events that occur in the interior of the lithospheric plates are called intraplate earthquakes.
Earthquakes occur every day on Earth, but the vast majority of them are minor and cause no damage. Large earthquakes can cause serious destruction and massive loss of life via a variety of agents of damage including fault rupture, vibratory ground motion (i.e., shaking), inundation (e.g., tsunami, seiche, dam failure), various kinds of permanent ground failure (e.g. liquefaction, landslide), and fire or hazardous materials release. In a particular earthquake, any of these agents of damage can dominate, and historically each has caused major damage and great loss of life, but for most earthquakes shaking is the dominant and most widespread cause of damage.

Most large earthquakes are accompanied by other, smaller ones, known as foreshocks when they occur before the principal or mainshock and aftershocks when they occur following it. The source of an earthquake is distributed over a significant area -- in the case of the very largest earthquakes, in excess of a thousand kilometres -- but it is usually possible to identify a point from which the earthquake waves appear to emanate. That point is called its "focus" and usually proves to be the point at which fault rupture was initiated. The position of the focus is known as the "hypocentre" and the location on the surface directly above it is the "epicenter." Earthquakes, especially those that occur beneath sea- or ocean-covered areas, can give rise to tsunamis, either as a direct result of the deformation of the sea bed due to the earthquake, or as a result of submarine landslips or "slides" indirectly triggered by it.

In the 1930s, a California seismologist named Charles F. Richter devised a simple numerical scale (which he called the magnitude) to describe the relative sizes of earthquakes, which has come to be called the Richter scale. Since Richter, seismologists have developed a number of magnitude scales. Most of the scales in use in the Western world are mutually consistent to a sufficient extent that the term "Richter scale" is routinely used in reporting these numbers to the public. Other scales (and other ways of describing the size of earthquakes) are used in some non-Western countries, and by earthquake specialists. The press sometimes mistakenly reports such values as "Richter magnitude", and this has given rise to public confusion.

Earthquake effects are described in terms of Intensity, a scale which attempts to quantify the severity of shaking at a given location. A number of intensity scales are in use, and there is a significant degree of consistency amongst them. The best known is the Mercalli (or Modified Mercalli, MM) scale, but the more consistent and analytical European Macroseismic Scale (EMS) is now increasingly widely used.


A double decker freeway, the top deck has collapsed onto the lower deck

Interstate 880 in Oakland, California following the Loma Prieta earthquake, ca. 1989
Some earthquakes are caused by the movement of magma in volcanoes, and such quakes can be an early warning of volcanic eruptions. A rare few earthquakes have been associated with the build-up of large masses of water behind dams, such as the Kariba Dam in Zambia, Africa, and with the injection or extraction of fluids from the Earth's crust (Rocky Mountain Arsenal). Such earthquakes occur because the strength of the Earth's crust can be modified by fluid pressure. Finally, earthquakes (in a broad sense) can also result from the detonation of explosives. Thus Western scientists have been able to monitor, using the tools of seismology, nuclear weapons tests performed by governments that were not disclosing information on these tests along normal channels.

Earthquake Rocks China

Beijing: The death toll in an earthquake that toppled houses and damaged a hotel and supermarket in China's extreme southwest has risen to 24. More than 200 others were injured.
State media is reporting that witnesses reported seeing people buried under debris from buildings damaged by the quake near the border with Myanmar.
State broadcaster China Central Television said the quake hit while many people, including students, were home for a customary midday rest.

The website of the Chinese government earthquake monitoring station said the magnitude-5.8 quake struck just before 1 p.m. (0500 GMT) Thursday at a depth of six miles (10 kilometers). The US Geological Survey measured the quake at a magnitude of 5.4 and at a deeper 21 miles (35 kilometers).
CCTV reported that about 100 armed police, firefighters and soldiers were using three excavators to try to rescue a man and a girl trapped inside a four-story building that had partially collapsed.
He Shuhui, head of an armed police squad, was quoted as saying they were trapped in a stairway on the ground floor of the building.
Another official on duty at the center, Gao Shaotang, said many houses had been toppled. Xinhua said the army was sending 400 soldiers to the site for rescue efforts.
The epicenter was in Shiming Village, just over a mile (kilometer) from the county seat, but triggered a power outage across Yingjiang, which has a population of about 300,000 people, Xinhua said.
The mountainous area lies 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) southwest of Beijing, close to the border with Myanmar, and is home to many ethnic groups on both sides of the border, which sees heavy traffic in people and goods.
Xinhua said the quake-prone region has been hit by more than 1,000 minor tremors over the past two months.
The Myanmar Meteorological Department released a statement saying a quake had hit some 230 miles (370 kilometers) northeast of Mandalay, the country's second-largest city.
The statement did not mention injuries, damage or the specific area of Myanmar most affected by the quake. Authorities in the tightly ruled country tend not to immediately discuss the effects of natural disasters.
Much of the area on the Myanmar side been under the control of various armed ethnic groups, who have battled the Myanmar military to remain free from central government control.

Earthquake News - Earthquake Today

Earthquakes cause tremors inside the earth that can be felt by humans most of the times. However, not always an earthquake may be noticeable to us, except the sensitive seismological devices that monitor the range and intensity of these quakes. Approximately 500,000 earthquakes happen round the year and of these, only 100,000 are felt by humans and yet just 100 cause any sort of damage. One of the most active earthquake zones is South California that witnesses around 10,000 earthquakes annually and majority of them are not felt.

Earthquakes have a potential to cause wide range destruction. For example, the greatest ever earthquake was in Chile with the magnitude of 9.5. However, the deadliest earthquake to be in records was in China on 23rd Jan 1556 that took lives of approximately 830,000. Another thing about these quakes is movements inside the earth crust. Since the tectonic plates are moving, it is causing various unimaginable things. Like, San Francisco is getting closer to LA by 2 inches annually. So, it can be seen that the two cities would meet eventually, even if the time period is about in million years.

Another such incident is reported to have happened in Feb 2010 in Chile. A city moved 10 feet towards the West because of an earthquake of magnitude 8.8. The level of disaster can be very high. One of the best recent examples is Indian Ocean earthquake that happened in 2004 and caused enormous Tsunamis and killed more than 230,000 people in over 14 countries. The impact was one of the worst in present times and the also, the duration of this quake was the longest of earthquakes every observed.

How Earthquakes Work

An earthquake is one of the most terrifying phenomena that nature can whip up. We generally think of the ground we stand on as "rock-solid" and completely stable. An earthquake can shatter that perception instantly, and often with extreme violence.

Up until relatively recently, scientists only had unsubstantiated guesses as to what actually caused earthquakes. Even today there is still a certain amount of mystery surrounding them, but scientists have a much clearer understanding.

There has been enormous progress in the past century: Scientists have identified the forces that cause earthquakes, and developed technology that can tell us an earthquake's magnitude and origin. The next hurdle is to find a way of predicting earthquakes, so they don't catch people by surprise.

In this article, we'll find out what causes earthquakes, and we'll also find out why they can have such a devastating effect on us.

volcanic eruptions
meteor impacts
underground explosions (an underground nuclear test, for example)
collapsing structures (such as a collapsing mine)
But the majority of naturally-occurring earthquakes are caused by movements of the earth's plates, as we'll see in the next section.

China Recent Earthquakes Threatens Nearby Dams, Environment

The extensive damage done to dams by the earthquake, some have speculated, may lead the government to strengthen its review process for dam building. Meanwhile, concerns that dams may be responsible for seismic activity, persist. See this LA Times story.

A "quake lake," formed by a dam caused by a landslide, has led to the relocation of thousands, who fear that a burst would destroy their crops and their homes. Soldiers with heavy machinery are trying to divert the water.

The human impact of China's most devastating natural disaster in three decades, which is estimated to have claimed at least 12,000 lives, may not be fully known for weeks. Thankfully, no damage has been reported at the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest, situated some 700 km east of the epicenter (map here). If the quake had affected the dam, the human toll would be even harder to imagine.

The dam sits above some 15 million people (some of whom are already suffering from soil erosion that can lead to landslides). Last September, government officials joined the dam's critics in raising the alarm about potential dangers, among them that the dam itself could trigger quakes as it sits near a number of fault lines. A burst at the Three Gorges, says engineer Philip Bosshard, former president of the San Francisco-based International Rivers Network, would “rank as one of history’s worst man-made disasters.”

The Three Gorges may be fine, but near Dujiangyan, where some of the greatest loss of life occurred, a number of dams and the surrounding areas are at risk.
While there is no official word yet on the status of those dams, a friend, who met today with researcher-activist Yu Xiaogang, said that at least one of the dams near Dujiangyan has likely cracked. Update: 2000 soldiers have been sent to repair "extremely dangerous" cracks in a dam upstream of Dujiangyan, which "would be swamped" if the dam were breached. The NYT reports that 400 dams have been damaged.

According to Xinhua, Sichuan officials said on Tuesday that "cracks had appeared on the surface of the dam at the Zipingpu [reservoir] and workshops collapsed, while all hydropower generators came to a halt." A command center has been set up at Zipingpu to safely discharge the reservoir's rising waters and ensure that the damage posed no threat to Dujiangyan and the neighboring Chengdu Plain.

Also, from Reuters: "Upstream on the Min river is an important reservoir called Tulong which is already imperilled. If the danger intensifies, this could affect some power stations downstream," He Biao, deputy party chief of Aba prefecture, told reporters. "This is an extremely dangerous situation."

Peter Hessler reminds us at the New Yorker that the damage could have been much worse had an enormous dam project nearby not been canceled in 2003, amidst concerns by the local seismological bureau and complaints of local citizens.End update

Also slightly damaged is a different kind of earth-changing project: the stunning, 2000 year old Dujiangyan Irrigation System, a UNESCO World Heritage site that is the world's oldest and only surviving no-dam irrigation system. This could put a very large area of agricultural land at risk. (Also damaged in the city of Shifang were two chemical plants, burying 100 workers and causing a leak of liquid ammonia. The epicenter of the quake was near the world famous Wolong Panda Reserve, but the pandas are reportedly safe.)
Though modern dams, like nuclear reactors, are built to higher earthquake standards than most buildings, standards are not met or cannot always be met in rural China. The town of Dujiangyan has learned this tragically: 900 children were trapped beneath a collapsed school building built just 10 years ago, while older buildings nearby remained standing.

Even if the building had been built to earthquake standards, that may not have been enough: ranking a 10 or 11 on the Mercalli intensity scale, the quake exceeded expectations for local seismic activity by a third.

Though Monday's disastrous earthquake was a result of tectonic collision, there are fears that the Three Gorges Dam could trigger earthquakes on its own. Its reservoir sits on two major faults, which can be aggravated by changes in water level, and recently relocated residents have reported landslides, mudslides and ominous cracks in the ground. According to a March 2008 article in Scientific American by Mara Hvistendahl,
Engineers in China blame dams for at least 19 earthquakes over the past five decades, ranging from small tremors to one near Guangdong province's Xinfengjiang Dam in 1962 that registered magnitude 6.1 on the Richter scale—severe enough to topple houses.

Surveys show that the Three Gorges region may be next. Chinese Academy of Engineering scholar Li Wangping reports on the CTGPC's Web site that the area registered 822 tremors in the seven months after the September 2006 reservoir-level increase.

Meanwhile, upstream from the Three Gorges along the Jinsha river, a section of the Yangtze, at least a dozen new dams are being built in order to alleviate sedimentation caused by the Three Gorges reservoir. They too lie in the same seismic region as Monday's earthquake. As a geologist told the Guardian in 2003 of the area, "The Jinsha has bad geological conditions, and there is a more severe seismic area upriver from Xiangjiaba [the site of the furthest downstream of the four dams]." Near this site dam projects "should not be encouraged," he said.
A side note: the response to this earthquake reminds us again that tides are shifting in China, as they must, towards more transparency and government responsiveness. The response by citizens illustrates just how powerful and important the internet can be in a country where information is often scarce. And the reaction by government officials like premier Wen Jiabao, who is also a trained geologist, points to growing concerns about how the government responds to natural and man-made environmental disasters.

To donate to the Chinese Red Cross, go here or check out The Beijinger for more options.

Get warned Of An Earthquakes Right In The Nick Of Time

A new device developed in Japan, called the EQGuard Home Earthquake Alarm System, gives you a warning 20 seconds before an earthquake hits. That should give you plenty of time to hide under your desk, say some prayers, and poop your pants.

The EQGuard works by connecting to Japan's government Meteorological Agency, JAMA, which monitors seismic activity. The agency is also planning to work on sending alerts out over the internet, via email, and even via text message, getting as many people warned as possible when an earthquake is about to strike. Kind of makes you glad you don't live in Japan, no? — Adam Frucci