Japan earthquakes & tsunamis

An 8.9 earthquake rocked Japan yesterday, March 10, 2011, causing tsunamis across the Pacific, with Sendai, Japan being hit the worst. Some reports say it was an 8.4 quake... regardless, there have been reports of at least 50 or so aftershocks as high as 7.2.

I first read about the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan and tsunami in Hawaii on Facebook - from a friend who lives in Nigeria! I woke Aaron to watch the news with me and ached in horror at the video and reports of 200 hundred bodies already being found, at least 100 missing.

I quietly drove to the bus stop and continued following the news on my iPhone on the ride to work. Thankfully the news was on in the lobby at work and I quickly found the BBC and Hawaii live news reports online.

The destruction is massive. The loss of life is devastating beyond comprehension. It may not be near the magnitude of loss of life that there was in Indonesia, but a massive loss to those in the islands of Japan nonetheless.

The nuclear power plant has lost cooling. Massive fires at oil refineries. Gas lines breaking in neighborhoods producing moving fires among the floods.

I continue to keep the live news on while I work. It's good to finally hear that they are downgrading the tsunami warnings in Hawaii to "watch".

Obama: "Today's events remind us just how fragile life can be."

It hit so close to home... I spoke to Aaron's father, Larry, who lives in Honolulu with his wife, Aaron's mom, Kozue. They lived through an earthquake of a 6.2 magnitude several years ago in Japan when Aaron was young. They were on the ground floor watching the ground waves; they were rocked a full minute. Larry said he could not imagine what an 8.9 would be like. Last night, he and Kozue gathered candles, batteries, water jugs, the land line telephone, a short wave radio, filled the bathtub with water in their 12th floor condo. Trying to reach out to friends and family, they could only hear the active recordings on the phone lines stating that emergency personnel were using the phone lines through this morning. Larry told me that the surge receded at least 100 yards and that a harbor was the worse hit so far; no major damage in the cities. From what he heard, Tokyo lost 4 million building telephones, internet etc. He also said that an interesting side effect of his earthquake and subsequent tsunamis is that the price of oil dropped a whole $1 per barrel due to perceived decrease of fuel use in Japan. The entire pacific basin was affected - from northern Japan down to the southern-most part of Australia, up to Alaska, and across the west coast of the US, Canada and Central America.

This has been the 7th most powerful earthquake in recorded history. My Japanese neighbor, who spoke to her family in Japan, said that they are expecting another earthquake of possibly the same magnitude within one to six months...

As I type, the official death toll is 350, another 500 missing in Sendai. Amazing video looping that shows sea water taking out entire neighborhoods, people attempting to drive away, a motorcycle stopped short of the wave but the video pulled out just then so we couldn't see what happened to him. The Sendai air port is flooded and some trains are... unaccounted for.

What I think that is so amazing is how humans are so closely connected all over the world, but it takes something like this to remind us...

Thankfully Aaron's family and friends are alright. However, we have yet to hear about Kozue's friends in Sendai. It could be days, and the waiting is the worst part. It's almost impossible to concentrate at work.