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Thousands More Bodies Found in Japan
AP - NBC L.A.

2 hours ago 14 March 2011 - 12:26AM PT

Thousands More Bodies Found in Japan

As rescue workers continued to dig out bodies across Japan’s devastated coastal towns, the death toll from Friday's massive earthquake continues to climb. Japanese police reported that 1,000 bodies washed up on the shores in Miyagi Prefecture, bringing the official death toll to about 2,800, but the Miyagi police chief said that over 10,000 people are estimated to have died in his province alone.

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I don't believe this photo needs any comment whatsoever.

A Japanese fighter plane is swept into a building by a tsunami Friday afternoon, the aftermath of a large coastal earthquake. (Reuters)

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A day after the Japanese earthquake, there are reports that as many as 10,000 people are unaccounted for in the devastated town of Minamisanriku, in the Miyagi prefecture. It was one of the areas that bore the brunt of Friday’s tsunami and is now largely buried under mud.

[Photo: AP]

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Buildings destroyed by a tsunami are pictured in Minamisanriku, Miyagi Prefecture, in northern Japan after the magnitude 8.9 earthquake and tsunami struck the area.

March 13, 2011. (Reuters)

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Patients wait to be rescued from a hospital where there is no electricity or medicine in Otsuchi town in Iwate Prefecture after the magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck the area.

March 13, 2011. (Reuters)

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A wave approaches Miyako City from the Heigawa estuary in Iwate Prefecture after the magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck the area March 11, 2011. (Reuters)

Following the March 11, 2011 earthquake in Japan, this terrified giant panda grabs the leg of a policeman.

To the people of Japan...

CONTINUED...

PART TWO...

In Oarai, a port about 150 miles south of hard-hit Sendai, fishing boats, truck and cars lay 100 yards back from the water’s edge, deposited in a jagged line like seashells left behind by the farthest reach of powerful waves. Some fishing boats had capsized; those swept into town by the tsunami teetered on their sides, or were tossed upside down.
Multimedia

JR, the railway company, reported that three passenger trains had not been accounted for as of Saturday night, amid fears that they were swept away by the tsunami. There were reports of as many as 3,400 buildings destroyed and 200 fires raging. Analysts estimated that total insured losses from the quake could hit $15 billion, Reuters reported.

Even as estimates of the death toll from Friday’s quake rose, Japan’s prime minister, Naoto Kan, said 50,000 troops would be mobilized for the increasingly desperate rescue recovery effort, according to The Associated Press. Meanwhile, several ships from the United States Navy joined the rescue effort. The McCampbell and the Curtis Wilbur, both destroyers, prepared to move into position off Miyagi Prefecture.

In addition, the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group was expected to arrive Sunday. Besides serving as a hospital, it can also be used as a platform for refueling helicopters from the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Japan was also accepting offers of help from other countries.

Convoys of Japanese military helicopters could be seen flying over the earthquake zone on Saturday, and trucks filled with soldiers were moving into the area.

While aftershocks from the earthquake continued, the tsunami wreaked the most damage. Tsunami experts estimated that despite Japan’s extensive warning systems and drills, there would only have been between 15 and 30 minutes after the earthquake struck before the tsunami washed in, leaving those in coastal areas precious little time to flee.

One-third of Kesennuma, a city of 74,000, was reported to be submerged, the BBC said, and photographs showed fires continued to rage there. Iwate, a coastal city of 23,000 people, was reported to be almost completely destroyed, the BBC said.

Local television here reported that the authorities had found 300 to 400 bodies in the town of Rikuzentakata, in Iwate Prefecture. In Minamisoma, in Fukushima Prefecture, 97 residents of a retirement home were found dead. And an additional 100 bodies were found Saturday in Miyagi Prefecture, near the quake’s epicenter, bringing the total in those places to more than 500.

Although aftershocks were continuing to rattle Tokyo, signs of normality were appearing. Flight schedules were resuming at Tokyo’s principal airports, Narita and Haneda, and most of Tokyo’s trains and subways were operating.

Farther north, aerial photos showed floodwaters receding from the runways at the airport in Sendai, perhaps the hardest hit of the coastal cities.

Military units were in Sendai on Saturday, working at evacuation shelters or helping search-and-rescue teams. Sendai’s Web site, posted in Tokyo because much of the north was still without electricity, recorded a grim list of the toll: 1.4 million homes in the city without electricity, and 500,000 homes without water. At a school turned refugee center, Nakano Elementary School, 350 people were lifted out by a Self-Defense Forces helicopter, and 400 people in Arahama Elementary School were in the process of being plucked out by helicopters.

“The rescue is going on through the night, of course,” Michael Tonge, a teacher from Britain, said early Sunday morning from his home in Sendai.

Mr. Tonge said many people in Sendai were still without power, although his home had not lost electricity. “The government is telling people not to use it too much as they need the power to help bring the nuclear reactor under control,” he said.

No buildings had collapsed in his neighborhood, Mr. Tonge said, and people were not panicking — typical of a nation accustomed to order and schooled to stay calm and constructive.

“The few shops open have people queuing nicely,” he said, “with no pushing or fighting or anything.” He said he hoped the earthquake would not come to be known as the “Sendai quake.”

“I haven’t heard it being called the Sendai quake here, but if that’s what people are calling it, then that is unfortunate,” said Mr. Tonge, who lives there with his wife, Yuka, and their 3-year-old daughter, Aoi. “This is a beautiful city with nice people. A great place to live.”

Martin Fackler reported from Nakaminato, and Mark McDonald from Tokyo. Reporting was contributed by Yasuko Kamiizumi and Michael Wines from Tokyo, Nelson Schwartz from New York, Thom Shanker from Washington, and Makiko Inoue from Nakaminato.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/world/asia/13japan.html?hp

The New York Times...

Japan Pushes to Rescue Survivors as Quake Toll Rises
European Pressphoto Agency

Local residents look for survivors of a collapsed building following the Tohoku earthquake in Iwaki city, Fukushima prefecture on Saturday. More Photos »
By MARTIN FACKLER and MARK McDONALD

Published: March 12, 2011

PART ONE...

NAKAMINATO, Japan — Japan mobilized a nationwide rescue effort on Saturday to pluck survivors from collapsed buildings and rush food and water to thousands in an earthquake and tsunami zone under siege, without water, electricity, heat or telephone service.

Residents were forced to leave the devastated city of Natori in Miyagi Prefecture on Saturday in the wake of the powerful earthquake that struck

Entire villages in parts of Japan’s northern Pacific coast have vanished under a wall of water, many communities are cut off, and a nuclear emergency was unfolding at two stricken reactors as Japanese tried to absorb the scale of the destruction after Friday’s powerful earthquake and devastating tsunami.

Japanese news media estimates of the death toll ranged between 1,300 and 1,700, but the total could rise. Many communities were scrambling to find the missing; in the port town of Minamisanriku, nearly 10,000 people were unaccounted for, according to the public broadcaster NHK. Much of the northeast was impassable, and by late Saturday rescuers had not arrived in the worst-hit areas.

More than 300,000 people have been evacuated, including tens of thousands fleeing the zone around the nuclear plants in Fukushima Prefecture even before news that problems at one plant appeared to be escalating quickly.

Most of the deaths were from drowning, but Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and firefighters were working to prevent a higher toll, rushing up the coast in helicopters and struggling to put out fires burning in industrial complexes or sweeping through Japan’s many vulnerable wooden homes. Japan had clearly learned the lessons of the devastating Kobe earthquake of 1995, when the government refused to accept offers of international help early enough, leading to criticism that some of the 6,000 deaths could have been avoided.

The United States, which has several military bases in Japan, is sending in helicopters, destroyers and an aircraft carrier, the Ronald Reagan, which has the ability to act as a hospital as well as to convert seawater into drinking water, said a spokesman for the Navy’s Seventh Fleet in Japan. Severe aftershocks continued to rock a traumatized country. The United States Geological Survey recorded 90 quakes off the eastern coast on Saturday alone, five of them with magnitudes larger than 6.0. Kyodo News reported more than 125 aftershocks since Friday afternoon’s earthquake.

The continual swaying and rolling of the ground deepened the disorientation of a nation accustomed to disaster, but which has not experienced anything on this scale for generations.

Compounding those fears was uncertainty about the scale of the radiation damage from an explosion at one of the nuclear plants in Fukushima, in the earthquake zone, and a growing sense on Sunday that the crisis at one plant was much worse than it had been even hours before. The Japanese authorities were handing out iodine to residents in the area. Some experts believe iodine can help head off long-term effects of radiation exposure, including thyroid cancer.

The breadth of the disaster poses new challenges for a fragile government struggling with political scandals, continued economic woes and public frustration over its inability to weaken entrenched bureaucrats.

Aerial photographs of ravaged coastal areas showed a string of cities and villages leveled by the power of the tsunami. Plumes of black smoke rose from burning industrial plants. Stranded ships bobbed in the water. Town after town reported that parts of their population were unaccounted for. Survivors gathered on rooftops, frantically shouting or signaling for help.

With phone service cut throughout the area, some radio and television stations broadcast pleas from people trying desperately to find their family members or at least to assure them that they were alive. “This is Kimura Ayako in Sapporo, looking for the Tanakas in Soma,” one caller said. “We are O.K. Please tell us your location.”

Hatsue Takahashi of Onagawa in Miyagi Prefecture sent out a message on NHK Education TV to Rina Takahashi in the same town: “Hang on,” she said. “I’ll go there to meet you.” And Sachiko Atara of Iwaki city called out across the airwaves in hopes of reaching Hideharu Komatsu in Sendai: “We are all O.K., waiting for your contact.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.earthquake.tsunami.earth/index...

Quake moved Japan coast 8 feet, shifted Earth's axis

By Kevin Voigt, CNN
March 12, 2011 4:01 p.m. EST

Images: Images released by NASA show Japan's northeast coast before, left, and after flooding from the quake-induced tsunami.

(CNN) -- The powerful earthquake that unleashed a devastating tsunami Friday appears to have moved the main island of Japan by 8 feet (2.4 meters) and shifted the Earth on its axis.

"At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan showing the pattern of shift over a large area is consistent with about that much shift of the land mass," said Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Reports from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy estimated the 8.9-magnitude quake shifted the planet on its axis by nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters).

The temblor, which struck Friday afternoon near the east coast of Japan, killed hundreds of people, caused the formation of 30-foot walls of water that swept across rice fields, engulfed entire towns, dragged houses onto highways, and tossed cars and boats like toys. Some waves reached six miles (10 kilometers) inland in Miyagi Prefecture on Japan's east coast.

The quake was the most powerful to hit the island nation in recorded history and the tsunami it unleashed traveled across the Pacific Ocean, triggering tsunami warnings and alerts for 50 countries and territories as far away as the western coasts of Canada, the U.S. and Chile. The quake triggered more than 160 aftershocks in the first 24 hours -- 141 measuring 5.0-magnitude or more.

The quake occurred as the Earth's crust ruptured along an area about 250 miles (400 kilometers) long by 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide, as tectonic plates slipped more than 18 meters, said Shengzao Chen, a USGS geophysicist.

Japan is located along the Pacific "ring of fire," an area of high seismic and volcanic activity stretching from New Zealand in the South Pacific up through Japan, across to Alaska and down the west coasts of North and South America. The quake was "hundreds of times larger" than the 2010 quake that ravaged Haiti, said Jim Gaherty of the LaMont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

The Japanese quake was of similar strength to the 2004 earthquake in Indonesia that triggered a tsunami that killed over 200,000 people in more than a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean. "The tsunami that it sent out was roughly comparable in terms of size," Gaherty said. "[The 2004 tsunami] happened to hit some regions that were not very prepared for tsunamis ... we didn't really have a very sophisticated tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean basin at the time so the damage was significantly worse."

The Japanese quake comes just weeks after a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch on February 22, toppling historic buildings and killing more than 150 people. The timeframe of the two quakes have raised questions whether the two incidents are related, but experts say the distance between the two incidents makes that unlikely.

"I would think the connection is very slim," said Prof. Stephan Grilli, ocean engineering professor at the University of Rhode Island.

CNN's Ivan Cabrera contributed to this report

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From ArchDruid...

Japan confronts full scale of quake devastation - video

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Students hold candles as they pray for Japan's earthquake victims inside their school in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad on March 11. (Amit Dave / Reuters)

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A worker inspects a caved-in section of the Joban Motorway near Mito, Ibaraki prefecture. (Nexco East Japan via Kyodo News, AP)

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Ships drifted by tsunami sit on the land near a port in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, Saturday morning, March 12. (AP)

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Eiji Kanno (L) and his wife Matsuko (white coat) are grief-stricken as it is officially confirmed that their 18-year-old daughter Mizuki is dead inside the tsunami-destroyed car in Yamamoto, south of Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture. (Kimimasa Mayama / EPA)

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Soldiers walk on debris scattered across the town of Minamisanriku in Miyagi prefecture, Japan, on March 12. (Yomiuri Shimbun / AFP - Getty Images)

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The town of Minamisanriku is submerged after Friday's strong earthquake-triggered tsunami in Miyagi prefecture, northern Japan, Saturday, March 12. (AP)