I am hearing there's a fourth fire that just started at one of these plants. OMG!! How horrible.


TIS

Yeah it really looks bad . Our planet isn't doing very well right now.

It's a local disaster. No need to exaggerate as this is terrible enough.

Best footage I've seen so far.

This is the kind of feel good story that hits me right in the heart strings. It shows dogs are really loyal...even to each other. The healthy dog could have went somewhere trying to help himself, but he wouldn't leave his injured friend.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2011/03/17/moos.tsunami.dogs.follow.cnn?hpt=C2

These poor, poor people .

Another strong quake rattles tsunami-ravaged Japan

By CARA RUBINSKY, Associated Press Cara Rubinsky

TOKYO – A magnitude-7.4 aftershock rattled Japan on Thursday night, knocking out power across a large swath of the northern part of the country nearly a month after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that flattened the northeastern coast.

Japan's meteorological agency issued a tsunami warning but canceled it about 90 minutes later. Officials said power was out in all of three northern prefectures (states) and in parts of two others.

There were no immediate reports of serious injuries or damage. The aftershock was the strongest since the March 11 megaquake and tsunami that killed some 25,000 people, tore apart hundreds of thousands of homes and caused an ongoing crisis at a nuclear power plant.

The operator of the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant said there was no immediate sign of new problems caused by the aftershock, and Japan's nuclear safety agency says workers there retreated to a quake-resistant shelter in the complex. None were injured. The crisis there started when the tsunami knocked out cooling systems. Workers have not been able to restore them.

Thursday's quake knocked out several power lines at the Onagawa nuclear power plant north of Sendai, which has been shut down since the tsunami. One remaining line was supplying power to the plant and radiation monitoring devices detected no abnormalities. The plant's spent fuel pools briefly lost cooling capacity but an emergency diesel generator quickly kicked in.

Officials said the aftershock hit 30 miles (50 kilometers) under the water and off the coast of Miyagi prefecture. The U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., later downgraded it to 7.1.

Buildings as far away as Tokyo shook for about a minute.

The quake struck at 11:32 p.m. local time. Moments beforehand, residents in the western Tokyo suburb of Fuchu were warned on a neighborhood public address system of an imminent quake.

In Ichinoseki, inland from Japan's eastern coast, buildings shook violently, knocking items from shelves and toppling furniture, but there was no heavy damage to the buildings themselves. Immediately after the quake, all power was cut. The city went dark, but cars drove around normally and people assembled in the streets despite the late hour.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan huddled with staff members in his office shortly afterward, according to deputy Cabinet spokesman Noriyuki Shikata.

A separate government emergency response team met shortly after midnight to monitor any reports of damage and urged firefighters, police and other emergency personnel to aid those in need.

Paul Caruso, a geophysicist at USGS, said the quake struck at about the same location and depth as last month's huge one.

Another USGS geophysicist, Don Blakeman, said it was the strongest aftershock since March 11, although several aftershocks on that day were bigger.

The USGS said the aftershock struck off the eastern coast 40 miles (65 kilometers) from Sendai and 70 miles (115 kilometers) from Fukushima. It was about 205 miles (330 kilometers) from Tokyo.

____

Associated Press writers Jay Alabaster in Ichinoseki, Japan; Malcolm Foster, Ryan Nakashima and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Colleen Slevin in Denver, Colorado, contributed to this report.

They are really getting it in spades.
I remember about 20 or so years ago the conventional wisdom was that Japan would take over the U.S. economy. Never happened. Now their economy is in the tank and all these disasters will set them back further.

Of course it depends on where it's centered but I can tell you a 7. anything earthquake is considerably large and can be felt miles and miles away from its center.

What I always find amazing is, you can have a large aftershock that isn't considered another earthquake but rather an aftershock from a previous earthquake. Not only that, but aftershocks can come years later from the original quake. Some years back we had a fairly large quake (6. something I think) and later in the news they said it was an aftershock from the Whittier which was in 1987. Go figure.


I assume since they labeled this latest Japan an earthquake that it is separate from the original. Either way, poor Japan. I feel very badly for that country.

TIS

Those poor folks must be a nervous wreck. I felt a quake once and it wasn't much, just a little shake, in Exeter,PA. Our concern was the Berwick Nuke Plant about 30 miles away. Nothing happened, but it does make you spooked.

Back in '85 New York had a tiny one, like a 4 on the Richter Scale. The house started shaking at like four in the morning. It was still enough to freak us all out, though.

Another 7.1 aftershock and another tsunami warning today .

My cousin in Tokyo says things are far worse than what's being reported here. Says power blackouts make riding trains unreliable. His office building, right near the Ginza, has a major structural crack, and the owner simply plastered over it.

Japanese are highly disciplined people, as attest the civility and stoicism they've shown in the face of this horrible calamity. But, part of their solidarity may be the deliberate suppression of worse news in the interest of not losing face.

Life imitates art.

What if the radiation flowing into Japan's coastal and deep water oceans actually creates a Godzilla? That sounds way out there, but just give it a thought.

Japanese gov't today upped the reactor crisis to Level 7 (from Level 5), which is the highest on the international scale, equivalent to Chernobyl--or worse. Gov't denies it was hiding anything, says it took them a month to assess the damage.

Yeah, sure...

(Oli: did you ever see "Gojira," the Japanese original? Much better than "Godzilla."