ISHINOMAKI MISSING PEOPEL JAPAN EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI

 Thousands of families are missing loved ones almost three weeks after a powerful earthquake and tsunami devastated towns and lives along Japan’s northeast coast.
Every evening Suzuki slips under the quilt of her futon shortly after sunset around 7:00 pm because there is nothing to do in the pitch darkness.
This district of Ishinomaki still has no electricity, tap water or gas.“I don’t read newspapers, I don’t listen to the radio. They are talking about horrible things,” Suzuki, who has been a widow for years, says as she prepares to sleep on the second floor of her house.“Why do I have to know more when I’ve seen enough myself?” She wakes up as the sun rises. She goes downstairs to clear rubble left by the tsunami that smashed into the ground floor on March 11 and heaped tragedy on this quiet town in Miyagi prefecture.
It was a day when in Miyagi a man felt his mother’s hand slip out of his tight grasp, three children watched their mother being washed away, and an elderly couple vanished with their grandchild, their three bodies later found.Suzuki clears the debris inside her house, which was hit by a wave that at this point was two metres (six feet) high, against the sound of a helicopter overhead that is carrying away newly retrieved bodies.Mud covers family photos and other keepsakes, and the smell of rotten seawater with fish and kelp fills the air.
In the neighbourhood, overturned cars and ships lie scattered on the roads and in other people’s gardens. People walk under a car that is stuck between two buildings like a bridge.
Suzuki’s most important mission is not to clear up rubble but to find her 41-year-old daughter, who has been missing since the day of the disaster.
Suzuki was in the city of Sendai, some 60 kilometres (37 miles) away from her home town, when the 9.0-magnitude quake struck beneath the sea floor.
She managed to return home on the afternoon of the following day, having shared a taxi from Sendai to a place near Ishinomaki and then walked through knee-deep water amid floating bodies for seven hours.When she got home, her daughter was not in the house they have shared.“I failed to die,” Suzuki says as she ponders her pain.Throwing away her tatami mats, fridge, TV sets and furniture means nothing compared with the agony of searching for her daughter, she says.Whenever she spots earth-moving machinery clearing a mountain of rubble to the side of a road, she trails it. “Please, please do it gently. My daughter may be in there,” she asks the driver.The body of another, elderly woman was indeed found in the debris of a nearby supermarket.Many who are searching for their loved ones have experienced the painful process of feeling their hopes whittled down slowly, day by day.
They initially hope that the person is unhurt, then they think he or she isn’t home or is at a shelter, or has been injured and hospitalised.After they learn that the person’s name is not on the lists of inpatients at hospitals, they are left with the hope the person is in a coma and therefore cannot be contacted. Finally, their wish becomes only to find the person’s body.
Families visit makeshift morgues to find the last thing they want to see.There are lists of bodies, all numbered.Some are identified by the name on the papers they carried, others are anonymous and described only in sparse phrases such as “a female in her 30s. Height about 160cm” or “about three years old”.When you give the police the number of the body you want to see, you are shown its pictures.If you think it is the person you are looking for, you are led into a hall where rows of bodies are laid out in plain-wood coffins or plastic bags, with the smell of burning incense sticks in the air.People weep as they find a person they have cared for dearly or shared their lives with, now a stiff body with drenched hair, naked and in a blanket following their autopsy.In the nearby town of Higashimatsushima, a young couple sits by a coffin, which seems too big for their dead baby inside. They are in utter silence, staring vacantly into space.A line of relatives passes another coffin, and one says to the lifeless body inside: “The way you held out is great!” Identical memos, handwritten in large red letters, are left on two coffins lying side by side.

Japan's nuclear crisis escalates further

 SENDAI: Japan's nuclear crisis escalated Tuesday as two more blasts and a fire rocked a quake-stricken atomic power plant, sending radiation up to dangerous levels.
Radiation around the Fukushima No.1 plant on the eastern coast had "risen considerably", Prime Minister Naoto Kan said, and his chief spokesman announced the level was now high enough to endanger human health.
In Tokyo, some 250 kilometres (155 miles) to the southwest, authorities also said that higher than normal radiation levels had been detected in the capital, the world's biggest urban area, but not at harmful levels.
Kan warned people living up to 10 kilometres (six miles) beyond a 20 km (12-mile) exclusion zone around the nuclear plant to stay indoors.
The fire, which was later reportedly extinguished, was burning in the plant's number-four reactor, he said, meaning that four out of six reactors at the facility are now in trouble.
The official death toll has risen to 2,414, police said Tuesday, but officials say at least 10,000 are likely to have perished.
The crisis at the ageing Fukushima plant has escalated daily after Friday's quake and tsunami which knocked out cooling systems.
On Saturday an explosion blew apart the building surrounding the plant's number-one reactor. On Monday, a blast hit the number-three reactor, injuring 11 people and sending plumes of smoke billowing into the sky.
Early on Tuesday a blast hit the number-two reactor. That was followed shortly after by a hydrogen explosion which started a fire at the number-four reactor.
Hashimoto said supermarkets are open but shelves are completely empty. "Many children are sick in this cold weather but pharmacies are closed. Emergency relief goods have not reached evacuation centres in the city.
Everyone is anxious and wants to get out of town. But there is no more petrol. We are afraid of using a car as we may run out of petrol."
The UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tokyo had asked for expert assistance in the aftermath of the quake which US seismologists are now measuring at 9.0-magnitude, revised up from 8.9.
But the IAEA's Japanese chief Yukiya Amano moved to calm global fears that the situation could escalate to rival the world's worst nuclear crisis at Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986.
Officials have already evacuated 210,000 people in the exclusion zone around the crippled plant.
At one shelter, a young woman holding her baby told public broadcaster NHK: "I didn't want this baby to be exposed to radiation. I wanted to avoid that, no matter what."
Further north in the region of Miyagi, which took the full brunt of Friday's terrifying wall of water, rescue teams searching through the shattered debris of towns and villages have found 2,000 bodies.
And the Miyagi police chief has said he is certain more than 10,000 people perished in his prefecture.
Millions have been left without water, electricity, fuel or enough food and hundreds of thousands more are homeless and facing harsh conditions with sub-zero temperatures overnight, and snow and rain forecast.
Tokyo stocks, which were punished Monday when the markets reopened, sending indexes around the world sliding, plummeted another 12 percent by early afternoon on Tuesday.
Leading risk analysis firm AIR Worldwide said the quake alone would exact an economic toll estimated at between $14.5 billion and $34.6 billion (10 billion to 25 billion euros) -- even leaving aside the effects of the tsunami.

Japan's nuclear crisis

 SENDAI: Japan's nuclear crisis escalated Tuesday as two more blasts and a fire rocked a quake-stricken atomic power plant, sending radiation up to dangerous levels.
Radiation around the Fukushima No.1 plant on the eastern coast had "risen considerably", Prime Minister Naoto Kan said, and his chief spokesman announced the level was now high enough to endanger human health.
In Tokyo, some 250 kilometres (155 miles) to the southwest, authorities also said that higher than normal radiation levels had been detected in the capital, the world's biggest urban area, but not at harmful levels.
Kan warned people living up to 10 kilometres (six miles) beyond a 20 km (12-mile) exclusion zone around the nuclear plant to stay indoors.
The fire, which was later reportedly extinguished, was burning in the plant's number-four reactor, he said, meaning that four out of six reactors at the facility are now in trouble.
The official death toll has risen to 2,414, police said Tuesday, but officials say at least 10,000 are likely to have perished.
The crisis at the ageing Fukushima plant has escalated daily after Friday's quake and tsunami which knocked out cooling systems.
On Saturday an explosion blew apart the building surrounding the plant's number-one reactor. On Monday, a blast hit the number-three reactor, injuring 11 people and sending plumes of smoke billowing into the sky.
Early on Tuesday a blast hit the number-two reactor. That was followed shortly after by a hydrogen explosion which started a fire at the number-four reactor.
Hashimoto said supermarkets are open but shelves are completely empty. "Many children are sick in this cold weather but pharmacies are closed. Emergency relief goods have not reached evacuation centres in the city.
Everyone is anxious and wants to get out of town. But there is no more petrol. We are afraid of using a car as we may run out of petrol."
The UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tokyo had asked for expert assistance in the aftermath of the quake which US seismologists are now measuring at 9.0-magnitude, revised up from 8.9.

But the IAEA's Japanese chief Yukiya Amano moved to calm global fears that the situation could escalate to rival the world's worst nuclear crisis at Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986.
Officials have already evacuated 210,000 people in the exclusion zone around the crippled plant.
At one shelter, a young woman holding her baby told public broadcaster NHK: "I didn't want this baby to be exposed to radiation. I wanted to avoid that, no matter what."
Further north in the region of Miyagi, which took the full brunt of Friday's terrifying wall of water, rescue teams searching through the shattered debris of towns and villages have found 2,000 bodies.
And the Miyagi police chief has said he is certain more than 10,000 people perished in his prefecture.
Millions have been left without water, electricity, fuel or enough food and hundreds of thousands more are homeless and facing harsh conditions with sub-zero temperatures overnight, and snow and rain forecast.
Tokyo stocks, which were punished Monday when the markets reopened, sending indexes around the world sliding, plummeted another 12 percent by early afternoon on Tuesday.
Leading risk analysis firm AIR Worldwide said the quake alone would exact an economic toll estimated at between $14.5 billion and $34.6 billion (10 billion to 25 billion euros) -- even leaving aside the effects of the tsunami.

After the earthquake and tsunami Blast in"Nuclear" plant japan

Fukushima: A hydrogen explosion rocked the earthquake-stricken nuclear plant in Japan where authorities have been working desperately to avert a meltdown, compounding a nuclear catastrophe caused by Friday’s massive quake and tsunami.
The core container was intact, Jiji news agency said, quoting the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), but the local government warned those still in the 20-kilometre evacuation zone to stay indoors. Kyodo news agency quoted Tepco as saying workers were injured in latest explosion.
Edano, citing information from the plant operator TEPCO, said the reactor container was likely undamaged and there was a low possibility of major radiation.
Japan's nuclear safety agency said the blast, at the number 3 reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 plant, was believed to be caused by hydrogen.
A hydrogen explosion had hit the number 1 reactor at the same plant on Saturday, a day after an earthquake and tsunami devastated the northeast coast.
Authorities have declared an evacuation zone within a 20 km (12 mile) radius of the plant and evacuated 210,000 people.
"We have strongly advised all the people still within the evacuation area to go inside nearby facilities," said nuclear safety agency spokesman Ryo Miyake.
Some 746 people -- patients, elderly people and care workers at three hospitals and nursing homes -- remained within the 20 km area Monday.

Death toll “above 10,000”

Broadcaster NHK, quoting a police official, said more than 10,000 people may have been killed as the wall of water triggered by Friday’s 8.9-magnitude quake surged across the coastline, reducing whole towns to rubble. It was the biggest to have hit the quake-prone country since it started keeping records 140 years ago
Kyodo said 80,000 people had been evacuated from a 20-kilometre radius around the stricken nuclear plant, joining more than 450,000 other evacuees from quake and tsunami-hit areas in the northeast of the main island Honshu.
Almost two million households were without power in the freezing north, the government said. There were about 1.4 million without running water.
Nuclear crisis

The most urgent crisis centres on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, where authorities said they had been forced to vent radioactive steam into the air to relieve reactor pressure.
The complex was rocked by a first explosion on Saturday, which blew the roof off a reactor building. The government had said further blasts would not necessarily damage the reactor vessels.
Operator Tepco said on Monday it had reported a rise in radiation levels at the complex to the government. On Sunday the level had risen slightly above what one is exposed to for a stomach X-ray, the company said.
Authorities had been pouring sea water in two of the reactors at the complex to cool them down.
Nuclear experts said it was probably the first time in the industry’s 57-year history that sea water has been used in this way, a sign of how close Japan may be to a major accident.
“Injection of sea water into a core is an extreme measure,” Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This is not according to the book.”
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said there might have been a partial meltdown of the fuel rods at the No. 1 reactor, where Saturday’s blast took place, and there was a risk of an explosion at the building housing the No. 3 reactor, but that it was unlikely to affect the reactor core container.
A Japanese official said 22 people have been confirmed to have suffered radiation contamination and up to 190 may have been exposed. Workers in protective clothing used handheld scanners to check people arriving at evacuation centres.

Economic impact
The earthquake has forced many firms to suspend production and shares in some of Japan’s biggest companies tumbled on Monday, with Toyota Corp dropping around seven per cent. Shares in Australian-listed uranium miners also dived.
Already saddled with debts twice the size of its $5 trillion economy and threatened with credit downgrades, the government is discussing a temporary tax rise to fund relief work.
Analysts expect the economy to suffer a hit in the short-term, then get a boost from reconstruction activity.
“When we talk about natural disasters, we tend to see an initial sharp drop in production…then you tend to have a V-shaped rebound. But initially everyone underestimates the damage,” said Michala Marcussen, head of global economics at Societe Generale.
Ratings agency Moody’s said on Sunday the fiscal impact of the earthquake would be temporary and have a limited play on whether it would downgrade Japan’s sovereign debt.
Risk modelling company AIR Worldwide said insured losses from the earthquake could reach nearly $35 billion.
The Bank of Japan has said it would pump cash into the banking system to prevent the disaster from destabilising markets.
It is also expected to signal its readiness to ease monetary policy further if the damage threatens a fragile economic recovery.
Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said authorities were closely watching the yen after the currency initially rallied on expectations of repatriations by insurers and others. The currency later reversed course in volatile trading.
The earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world in the past century. It surpassed the Great Kanto quake of September 1, 1923, which had a magnitude of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo area.
The 1995 Kobe quake killed 6,000 and caused $100 billion in damage, the most expensive natural disaster in history. Economic damage from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was estimated at about $10 billion.

WHAT IS TSUNAMI AND EARTHQUAKE

With a massive 8.8 earthquake striking near Chile and sending a tsunami across the Pacific, Hawaii readies itself for what could be a devastating strike. The island state has a history of being stricken by tsunamis, some generated locally but many from far off areas.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), 50 tsunamis have been reported in Hawaii since the early 1800’s. Of those seven caused major damage. Five of those were generated from areas outside the state.

A tsunami is a series of waves that start out as a disturbance under the sea (such as an earthquake), and then increase in intensity. The disturbance causes the waves to travel outward in all directions. In this article, you will learn more about the causes and effects of tsunamis.

The motion of a tsunami is similar to what happens when you toss a rock in a lake and ripples start to form and move about the water. The time it takes for the waves to fully form is between 5 and 90 minutes. Sometimes, the wave speed in the open ocean will average 450 miles per hour.
Tsunamis that have reached a height of more than 100 feet have been recorded. The closer the waves get to reaching shallow coastal waters, the more normal they appear. The speed also decreases. If a tsunami closes in on the coastline, other conditions arise. It may grow in height and when it reaches the shore – it can be highly destructive.

An earthquake is not the only natural occurrence to cause a tsunami. Landslides, volcanic eruptions, and even meteorites have been known to cause an earthquake. A tsunami can start hundreds or even thousands of miles away from coastal areas. Location can play an important role in the effect of a tsunami. The regions at a great risk for suffering a tsunami are found less than 50 feet above sea level and within one mile of the shoreline.
Tsunamis cause a succession of high and low water levels. These kinds of crests and troughs usually occur about 10 to 45 minutes apart.
 The highest death toll from a tsunami happened on December 26, 2004, when an earthquake with a magnitude of 9 occurred under the Indian Ocean. The tsunami struck off the coast of Indonesia with a wave that affected the coastlines of nine different countries about the Indian Ocean. It was estimated in January 20, 2005 that the tsunami took the lives of at least 226,000 people. The total death toll is a number that will never be known.
Other Facts About Tsunamis

A 1964 earthquake in Alaska caused a tsunami with waves that measured between 10 and 20 feet high. The effects of the tsunami were felt along the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington. In Alaska, more than $84 million in damage was incurred and the tsunami killed 123 people.
Since 1945, more people have lost their lives as a result of tsunamis than as a direct result of what happens with an earthquake.
Tsunamis are rare along the Atlantic coastline. However, a serious earthquake that took place on November 18, 1929 in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. A tsunami developed and as a result, a great deal of damage and deaths took place at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland.
The most common way that a person dies during a tsunami is by drowning. Other causes of death include flooding, polluted water supplies, and damaged gas lines.
A tsunami that occurred in 1946 sent waves of 20 to 32 feet to crash into Hilo, Hawaii. The downtown part of the city flooded and in the process, 159 people were killed.
An estimate 10,000 people died in Hong Kong when a typhoon accompanied by a tsunami took place in 1906.
The Tsunami Warning Centers in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Palmer, Alaska, keep an eye on the disturbances that can lead to tsunamis. When a tsunami is detected – it is tracked. Tsunami warnings are then issued for areas in danger.

The worst tsunami to strike Hawaii in modern history occurred in 1946 and was caused by an earthquake in the Aleutian Islands. The tsunami struck without warning and claimed the lives of 170 people, mainly near Laupahoehoe and Hilo. Wave heights near Hilo reached 30 feet while the maximum height was 55 feet at the northern tip of the island near the Pololu Valley.

Waves as high as 35 feet struck Hilo, Hawaii and caused 61 deaths and $75 million in damage. Hilo Bay itself was struck the worst where 600 acres of land inland were inundated and only the most reinforced buildings survived. On Maui, the Kahului area was struck the worst where a warehouse and some houses were destroyed.

Tsunamis caused closer to the epicenter of a quake are often more deadly as there is less warning. Two locally generated tsunamis have also caused damage in Hawaii, one in 1868 and another in 1975. The 1868 tsunami destroyed two villages while waves from the 1975 tsunami claimed two lives.

As the wave approaches land, it slows but they increase in height
and the distance between them shrinks. (Wikipedia)A tsunami is typically generated by the movement of tectonic plate boundaries that move abruptly causing an earthquake. As one of the plates moves upward, it pushes the water up and outwards.

 

powerfull disaster history

Netherlands, 1228
Estimate: 100,000 lives lost from the flooding after some dykes broke.

Most of Europe and beyond, 1347-1350
Approximately 25 million lost their lives through the "Black Death" - the bubonic plague. Between 25 and 33% of the entire population of Europe at that time, plus millions in Asia and North Africa lost their lives.

Western Hemisphere, mostly 16th - 18th centuries
Untold millions of lives of American Indians were lost through the various sicknesses brought over from Europe (to which they had no previous exposure or resistance.) It's very difficult to get figures on this that are not politically infected one way or another (very high or very low).
China, 1556
The second deadliest earthquake was in the Chinese province of Shaanzi on February 2, 1556. It killed 830,000 people.
Indonesia, 1815
Mount Tambora (volcano) on Sumbawa Island released about 50 cubic kilometers of magma over at least 500,000 square kilometers of Indonesia and the Java Sea. That eruption and the resulting tsunami took at least 10,000 lives. But the famine and disease that followed took another 82,000 lives - total: over 90,000.
China, 1876 - 1879
The deadliest drought in recorded history was in China between 1876 and 1879. Rivers were dry, so most crops and livestock died. There was no food production in a 1-million km2 area of 9 provinces. The drought caused the death of an estimated nine million people.
Caribbean, 1902
Martinique, a small French colony in the Caribbean, has a volcano "Mont Pelee" which unleashed its fury and wiped out the town of St. Pierre. Only one survivor - pictured on right: a prisoner in a basement cell. (There's a good chance he got his life right with God before that day was over!)  But there were actually two others who also survived. see their amazing stories  Around 30,000 people were killed.
China, 1920
In the north China there was a drought that caused 20 million victims and took at least 500,00 lives.

China, Gansu - 1920
Gansu, China is hit with an earthquake measuring 8.6 and kills around 200,000 people.

Japan, 1923
A third of Tokyo is destroyed and much of Yokohama in an 8.3 earthquake which between 140,000 and 200,000 people.

China, 1927

An earthquake 7.9 - hit Nanshan City and took about 200,000 people.

China, 1931
A flood on the Changjiang River took at least 145,000 people (other estimates go over a million, but we have not confirmed that).

China, 1932
Another earthquake, this one northwest Gansu Province, killed about 70,000 people.

Bangladesh, 1970
In 1970, a cyclone and related floods killed about 500,000 people. With winds of up to 230 km/h, the cyclone crashed into the heavily populated coastal area of the Bay of Bengal, where several river deltas normally provide fertile land. The terrible winds produced massive waves, which wiped out many entire villages. Millions of people were left homeless in this country that is one of the most densely populated and one of the poorest in the world.
China, Tangshan - 1976
The worst earthquake damage in modern times was in northeast China in 1976. It was July 28 when a massive quake, measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale, shook the industrial mining city of Tangshan. Officially 255,000 people died, and another 164,000 were severely injured. But others (unofficial, but perhaps more accurate?) estimate that about 655,000 perished. Some ninety per cent of the buildings were destroyed. It took at least ten years and massive investment to rebuild the city.
Armenia, 1988
An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale devastated Armenia in 1988. At that time Armenia was a republic of the Soviet Union. The town of Spitak was destroyed and it took the lives of all of its residents. In Leninakan, Armenia's second largest city, eighty per cent of the buildings collapsed, and over 100,000 people perished there.

Earthquake of 9.0 and the resulting tsunami creates one of the world's worst disasters.  It does major damage to: Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania, Seychelles, Bangladesh, and Andaman.  Deaths: Between 235,000 and 285,000.

Haiti, 2010
Earthquate - still counting. Most estimates now exceed 220,000 dead.Approximately

Introduction natural disaster

Disaster caused by nature, such as floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches, lahars (volcanic mudslides), landslides, sinkholes, blizzards, drought, hailstorms, heat waves, hurricanes, tropical storms, typhoons, Ice Ages, tornadoes, and wildfires. Epidemics caused by bacteria or viruses are sometimes considered natural disasters, but sometimes put into a different category. A biological threat such as locusts or toxic fungi could also be considered a natural disaster...and more..