Earthquake and Tsunami Japanese Style

March 11, 2011

In case you have been sleeping or busy doing something else for the last 24 hours it would be a good idea to read this so that you can at least know what's going on.

And what am I talking about?

It is that massive 8.9 earthquake in Japan, more importantly the over 30 foot tsunami that followed, reaching Southeast Asia, Hawaii, and North America.

Now there is something much much worse besides from the stranded people, cut power and communications, damages worth a fortune to buildings and other property, missing people, thousands of reported deaths resulting directly and indirectly from this Top 5 Strongest Earthquake since we started documenting earthquakes. And you might ask what could be worse?

It is that news reports are saying that a Nuclear Meltdown might be imminent from a damages Nuclear Reactor Plant. Yes, like what else could go wrong?

I understand that Japan and the Japanese people are probably the most prepared culture in terms of dealing with major earthquakes, tsunamis and its varied consequences.

And what would you expect from a people where the word tsunami came from?

And even though I lived in the Philippines for many decades and have experienced great earthquakes there, even though I now live about one decade in California and also experienced a number of quakes here, I understand that all these are nothing to what the Japanese have experienced in terms of quake intensity, the duration of the shaking and all the effects that it brings. New reports say the shaking they experience was five minutes long. Yes, you read correct, five minutes, not five seconds.

We just do not have anything on them.

And it is just heartbreaking to know what there people living there have undergone and are undergoing with this 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami and now a possible nuclear meltdown.

Japan and the Japanese people needs our help.

And we as a humans must be able to come together at least in this terrible time of calamity and even with all these tradegies, we might not have seen the worst just yet.

My prayers go out to all the victims in that part of the world. Imagine, the tsunamis that travelled the length of the Pacific Ocean have bombarded Northern and Southern California thousands of miles away and it did millions of dollars of damage and at least one death as tsunami waves of about six feet have reach Northern America, and some reaching a maximum height of 8 feet.

5. March 11, 2011: A magnitude 8.9 quake strikes off the northeast coast of Japan, sending a tsunami across the Pacific and killing a still-undetermined number of people.

4. December 2004: An Indian Ocean tsunami, triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, kills 230,000 in a dozen countries.

3. March 1964: A 9.2 magnitude earthquake in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and the resulting tsunami kill 131 people.

2. May 1960: A magnitude 9.5 earthquake in southern Chile and ensuing tsunami kill at least 1,716 people.

1. November 1952: A magnitude 9.0 quake in Kamchatka causes damage but no reported deaths despite setting off 30-foot (9.1-meter) waves in Hawaii.

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Source: U.S. Geological Survey, Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology and WHO's International Disaster Database