Residents look over destroyed buildings half submerged in water from the
tsunami in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, Saturday morning, March 12,
after Japan’s biggest recorded earthquake slammed into its eastern coast
Friday. At the time of going to press (Tuesday, March 15), Japanese
police say the official death toll is 2,414; thousands more missing.
More photos and details on pages 8 and 9. (AP Photo)
Malcolm Foster
Tokyo (AP) - For several terrifying, seemingly
endless minutes Friday, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in
Japan shook apart homes and buildings, cracked open highways and
unnerved even those who have learned to live with swaying skyscrapers.
Then came a devastating tsunami that slammed into northeastern Japan and
killed thousands of people.
The violent wall of water swept away houses, cars and
ships. Fires burned out of control. Power to a cooling system at a
nuclear power plant was knocked out, causing explosions and forcing
thousands to flee for fear of a nuclear meltdown. (At press time
Tuesday, the fear was still very real.)
The death toll is rising steadily - on Tuesday,
Japanese police put the official death at 2,414; with thousands more
missing - but the true extent of the disaster is not yet known because
roads to the worst-hit areas were washed away or blocked by debris and
airports were closed. Officials have said previously that at least
10,000 people may have died in Miyagi province alone.
After dawn Saturday, the scale of destruction became
clearer.
Aerial scenes of the town of Ofunato showed homes and
warehouses in ruins. Sludge and high water spread over acres of land,
with people seeking refuge on roofs of partially submerged buildings. At
one school, a large white “SOS” had been spelled out in English.
The entire Pacific was hit - including coastal areas
of North and South America - and although damages were recorded there,
waves were not as bad as expected.
The magnitude-8.9 offshore quake struck at 2:46 p.m.
local time and was the biggest to hit Japan since record-keeping began
in the late 1800s. It ranked as the fifth-largest earthquake in the
world since 1900 and was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that
devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, last month, scientists said.
The quake shook dozens of cities and villages along a
2,100-kilometer stretch of coast and tall buildings swayed in Tokyo,
hundreds of miles from the epicenter. Prime Minister Naoto Kan was
attending a parliamentary session at the time.
“I thought I was going to die,” said Tokyo marketing
employee Koto Fujikawa. “It felt like the whole structure was
collapsing.”
Fujikawa, 28, was riding a monorail when the quake
hit and had to later pick her way along narrow, elevated tracks to the
nearest station.
Minutes later, the earthquake unleashed a seven-meter
tsunami along the northeastern coast of Japan near the coastal city of
Sendai in Miyagi prefecture. The quake was followed for hours by
aftershocks. The U.S. Geological Survey said hundreds were detected off
Japan’s main island of Honshu, many of them of magnitude 5.0 or greater.
Large fishing boats and other vessels rode the high
waves ashore, slamming against overpasses or scraping under them and
snapping power lines along the way. A fleet of partially submerged cars
bobbed in the water. Ships anchored in ports crashed against each other.
The tsunami roared over embankments, washing anything
in its path inland before reversing direction and carrying the cars,
homes and other debris out to sea. Flames shot from some of the homes,
apparently from burst gas pipes.
Waves of muddy waters flowed over farms near Sendai,
carrying buildings, some of them ablaze. Drivers attempted to flee. The
tarmac at Sendai’s airport was inundated with thick, muddy debris that
included cars, trucks, buses and even light planes.
Highways to the worst-hit coastal areas buckled.
Telephone lines snapped. Train service was suspended in northeastern
Japan and in Tokyo, which normally serves 10 million people a day.
Untold numbers of people were stranded in stations or roaming the
streets. Tokyo’s Narita airport was closed indefinitely.
Officials declared the first-ever state of emergency
at a Japanese nuclear power plant and ordered evacuations after the
earthquake knocked out power to a cooling system at the Fukushima
Daiichi facility near the city of Onahama, about 270 kilometers
northeast of Tokyo. They said radiation levels inside the facility had
surged to 1,000 times more than normal.
A large fire erupted at the Cosmo oil refinery in the
city of Ichihara and burned out of control with 30-meter flames whipping
into the sky.
Tokyo was brought to a near standstill. Tens of
thousands of people were stranded with the rail network down, and the
streets were jammed with cars, buses and trucks trying to get out of the
city.
The city set up shelters in city hall, on university
campuses and in government offices, but many spent their nights at
24-hour cafes, hotels and offices.
NHK said more than 4 million buildings lost power in
Tokyo and its suburbs.
Elsewhere, the tsunami hit Hawaii before dawn Friday,
with most damage coming on the Big Island. The waves covered beachfront
roads and rushed into hotels. One house was picked up and carried out to
sea. Low-lying areas in Maui were flooded by 7-foot waves.
On the U.S. mainland, marinas and harbors in
California and Oregon bore the brunt of the damage, estimated by
authorities to be in the millions of dollars. Boats crashed into each
other in marines and some vessels were washed out to sea.
Thousands fled homes in Indonesia after officials
warned of a tsunami up to 2 meters high, but waves of only 10
centimeters were measured. No big waves came to the Northern Mariana
Islands, either.
Islands across the South Pacific were hit by
bigger-than-normal waves, but no major damage was reported. Surges up to
66 centimeters high were reported in American Samoa, Nauru, Saipan and
at the far northern tip of New Zealand.
In Tonga, water flooded houses in the low-lying
Ha’apai islands early Saturday, police said. Thousands in the capital,
Nuku’alofa, sought refuge at the king’s residence on higher ground,
Radio Tonga said.
The quake struck at a depth of 10 kilometers, about
125 kilometers off Japan’s east coast, the USGS said. The area is 380
kilometers northeast of Tokyo.
Japan’s worst previous quake was a magnitude 8.3 in
Kanto that killed 143,000 people in 1923, according to USGS. A
7.2-magnitude quake in Kobe killed 6,400 people in 1995.
Japan lies on the “Ring of Fire” - an arc of
earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about
90 percent of the world’s quakes occur, including the one that triggered
the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000
people in 12 countries. A magnitude-8.8 temblor that shook central Chile
in February 2010 also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.
The
tsunami hits residences in Natori, Miyagi. (AP Photo/Junji Kurokawa)
Earthquake-triggered tsunamis sweep shores along Iwanuma in northern
Japan on Friday, March 11. (Kyodo News/AP)
Hiromitsu Shinkawa, right, waves to rescuers before being rescued by a
Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer on Sunday March 13. When spotted,
the 60-year-old man was floating off the coast of Fukushima’s Futaba
town on the roof of his house after being swept away in a tsunami. He
was in good condition. (AP Photo/Defense Ministry)
A
woman yells to urge people to head for higher ground following tsunami
warning siren in Yamada, Iwate, northern Japan Monday, March 14.
(AP Photo/Kyodo News)
A
man snaps a picture of the aftermath following Friday’s massive tsunami
triggered by a powerful earthquake in Sendai, Miyagi prefecture,
northern Japan. (AP Photo/Junji Kurokawa)
A
tsunami surge sweeps cars, boats and other debris against a building in
Miyaku City, Iwate Prefecture Japan. (AP PHOTO/NHK TV)
Houses swept out to sea burn in Natori City. (AP Photo)
