Merged 8.8 quake in Sendai, Japan

[Skeptic Ginger]

Refugees are in hundreds of public buildings or other shelters. But with the power grid down, portable kerosene heaters are the only source of heat. Supplies of kerosene in the disaster area are very limited. As are food, medical supplies and clean water. Those working to truck supplies into the affected area or move people out are running into shortages of fuel.

I'm not saying it's not tough. But are there reports of refugees dying?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I don't know if anyone's posted it yet, but there is some good news about both human and feline residents of "Cat Island."

Kool there is a link to the dog video with the transcript translated.

 

[Kestrel]

I'm not saying it's not tough. But are there reports of refugees dying?

Some elderly people evacuated from hospitals have died. One refugee center had 14 such deaths. They had medical staff at the center, but almost no supplies.

 

[CompusMentus]

Video: Japan earthquake. Moment tsunami hit Miyako City (BBC)

Apologies if this has already been posted.....

Check out this 2 minute video HERE (BBC). You can really gauge the destructive power and the depth of the oncoming wave as it sweeps in. The light coloured building with the garage and the long brown-roofed warehouse type building and couple of other concrete-type stuctures are the few that stand up to the water. I watched this one or two times before I noticed several doomed people standing on a building that later disappears. Also listen as a whole house is washed past I think people are screaming, trapped in there. **** it's horrible.

Compus

 

[angrysoba]

Kool there is a link to the dog video with the transcript translated.

Ah! You found it!

This is the one I was talking about much earlier in the thread.

 

[angrysoba]

Apologies if this has already been posted.....

Check out this 2 minute video HERE (BBC). You can really gauge the destructive power and the depth of the oncoming wave as it sweeps in. The light coloured building with the garage and the long brown-roofed warehouse type building and couple of other concrete-type stuctures are the few that stand up to the water. I watched this one or two times before I noticed several doomed people standing on a building that later disappears. Also listen as a whole house is washed past I think people are screaming, trapped in there. **** it's horrible.

Compus

This really is horrible isn't it.

I am guessing that some of that video had been edited as well. There must be a lot of video in existence that would simply be nightmarish.

 

[CompusMentus]

This really is horrible isn't it.

I am guessing that some of that video had been edited as well. There must be a lot of video in existence that would simply be nightmarish.

Yup. What we do see is bad enough, let alone what mainstream news will not show. For instance there were reports of 2000+ bodies washed up on a shore (I think it may have been Sendai) video of such probably exists but who would want to see it? I find that it's very hard for me not to almost feel involved when I watch the video's such as I have just posted. It being so close-up and personal so to say.

The difficulties the Japanese people face in the future, following all this, appear almost insurmountable. But they are a tenacious, resourceful race, they will beat it.


Compus

 

[a_unique_person]

Yet the Yen has gone up, and the Australian dollar has gone down. Explain that.

 

[Puppycow]

Yet the Yen has gone up, and the Australian dollar has gone down. Explain that.

Speculation. But the G-7 has since intervened to sell the yen back down. The reason why speculators were betting on the yen to go up is explained in the following article:

G-7 Sells Yen in First Joint Intervention Since 2000

“The speculation was that Japanese life and casualty insurers will repatriate dollar-denominated assets to secure funds in the wake of the earthquake,” Yosano told reporters in Tokyo yesterday. “But they have ample cash, deposits and other liquid assets,” he said, adding that the Financial Services Agency and Bank of Japan have confirmed insurers aren’t selling their dollar assets.

 

[Last of the Fraggles]

Yet the Yen has gone up, and the Australian dollar has gone down. Explain that.

The Yen appears to have gone up for two reasons (or one reason if you combine them both into 'increased demand for Yen)

1. Japan is/is planning on repatriating a lot of its investments to help rebuilding - cashing in their foreign currency and converting it to Yen

2. Currency traders anticipating 1 are buying up Yen as its going to appreciate soon.

 

[Puppycow]

Efforts are being made to rescue the animals caught up in the situation as well as the people.

Welfare groups race to rescue Japan's abandoned animals

But there's a twist to it which I suppose was inevitable.




Rolfe.

That's so irresponsible. It's practically like abandoning children.

 

[gumboot]

We seem to have two threads talking about the nuclear power plants and nobody talking about the earthquake/tsunami itself.

There are half a million people homeless, sleeping in schools and sports halls, it's freezing and snowing, and these people have lost everything - in many cases including close family members. They're running out of food and fuel and there is a shortage of blankets.

The death toll is still a guess. Official figures are a few thousand, but 29 towns have been completely or partially wiped out, and in several of these towns they're talking about 10,000 people missing. Each. The amount of property damage is appalling, and nobody has any idea what will or can emerge from that rubble to re-home the survivors. Several of these towns in effect no longer exist.

Looking at the geography on Google Maps, it seems that many of these towns were built on the flat land at the head of coves/fjords/sea lochs. The tsunami has obviously been funnelled by the bays right at the towns. The designated tsunami refuges were in some cases much too low for safety in a tsunami of the height that actually happened, and became death traps. Building standards obviously hadn't taken anything like that into account, as it's fairly easy to see how properties could be built to have a good chance of standing up to that sort of wave, but few were constructed in that way.

Now I realise the nuclear situation is serious, but so far it hasn't killed anyone, and there's a genuine disaster going on all around it right now.

Rolfe.

No one cares about human life. They care about money, and exciting media stories. Why do you think the Japan situation is getting so much more attention than the Haiti Earthquake or Boxing Day Tsunami? (Both of which were an order of magnitude larger in terms of devastation). There's a million people in Haiti that are still homeless, over a year after the quake. A million. Do we care? Of course not. Because Haiti doesn't have the third largest economy in the world.

If anything, the amount of attention and the degree of hyperbole being used to describe the situation in Japan does nothing so much as reveal that the western world are a bunch of rubberneckers, not humanitarians.

 

[gumboot]

I suspect the problem is that making a house earthquake proof means making it flexible and light, while making it tsunami proof means making it high and extremely strong.
Doing both would require three storey, extremely strong steel towers, with an open girder ground floor. Cost prohibitive and probably wouldn't work anyway.

Earthquake proof? No such thing. And the only way to make a house Tsunami proof is to not build it on the coast. We're talking about energy releases in orders of magnitude most of us wouldn't even encounter when talking about data storage.

 

[gumboot]

There is a LONG tradition of duty unto death in Japan, from the 47 Ronin to the Kamikazes of World War 2.

Most Kamikazes weren't given much of a choice in the matter. Their commanders did kindly things like neglecting to teach them how to land, so that if they piked on the mission they'd still die trying to bring their kite home.

I'd recommend reading "Samurai!" the biography of WW2 ace Saburō Sakai. He gives quite a scathing take on the Kamikaze and pretty firmly refutes the notion that these were willing volunteers simply exercising supreme dedication to their duty.

And he should know; on June 5 1944, nearly four months before the first formal Kamikaze attack squadrons were formed, he was ordered to lead a Kamikaze raid against a US Task Force. He declined to follow his orders and led the flight home after a dogfight with US fighters - having to talk some of the younger pilots in because they'd never been taught how to land.

 

[angrysoba]

No one cares about human life.

This is hyperbolic but unfortunately there is a certain truth to the fact that the nuclear thing is somehow sexier than bog-standard human misery.

They care about money, and exciting media stories.

I don't know who "they" are but there is some truth to this too.

Why do you think the Japan situation is getting so much more attention than the Haiti Earthquake or Boxing Day Tsunami? (Both of which were an order of magnitude larger in terms of devastation).

We don't really know the magnitude of the devastation here in Japan yet so let's hold fire on claims that X is so much worse than Y. The scale is truly awful by ANY standard.

One of the reasons why we are so much more aware of what happened here in Japan as opposed to in Haiti is, IMHO, because Japan managed to capture so much of it on film and had/have had helicopters and ordinary citizens filming the damage as it happened. This is a gruesomely cinematic catastrophe and yet nobody should say that it has less value being broadcast to the world than other situations.

There's a million people in Haiti that are still homeless, over a year after the quake. A million. Do we care? Of course not. Because Haiti doesn't have the third largest economy in the world.

Again, don't say "nobody cares". Did nobody send money to Haiti? Did no governments send relied teams there to help people or dig them out of the rubble?

If anything, the amount of attention and the degree of hyperbole being used to describe the situation in Japan does nothing so much as reveal that the western world are a bunch of rubberneckers, not humanitarians.

You mean everyone but you, presumably. Presumably you are more caring, more compassionate, have sweeter-smelling faeces etc...

If not could you explain what the purpose is of this rant?

 

[JihadJane]

No one cares about human life.

Hyperbole!

They care about money, and exciting media stories. Why do you think the Japan situation is getting so much more attention than the Haiti Earthquake or Boxing Day Tsunami? (Both of which were an order of magnitude larger in terms of devastation). There's a million people in Haiti that are still homeless, over a year after the quake. A million. Do we care? Of course not. Because Haiti doesn't have the third largest economy in the world.

If anything, the amount of attention and the degree of hyperbole being used to describe the situation in Japan does nothing so much as reveal that the western world are a bunch of rubberneckers, not humanitarians.

Both the [hilited] events received a huge amount of attention and still appear frequently in media stories.

 

[commandlinegamer]

This article by Johann Hari is not uniquely specific to the Japan disaster but I thought it worth mentioning here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...of-the-panicking-disaster-victim-2245014.html

 

[Puppycow]

Why I’m not fleeing Japan

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

It may depend on the layout of the plant...approached from one side the plant itself could provide the needed shielding. Approach from the other side and it might be too much radiation. If they can get electricity to the plant and have tanks of water available, then they can pump water straight to where it is needed. (hopefully)

glenn

So radiation is directional? I did not know that. I figured once it was out, it was out.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I wonder if the scaremongering will go down a little now that Libya is going to dominate the news as soon as the Airstrikes start.....

Probably. And Charlie Sheen is about due to do something stupid. And there is that special wedding coming up!