http://www.youtube.com/wa...5AGl0nnmkc

http://www.nytimes.com/20...ml?_r=2&hp

Tsunami warnings throughout Hawaii! Holy Moley.

[This message has been edited by Amorette Allison (3/11/2011)]

Luckily Japan is a country that gets a lot of earthquakes so the buildings are built to stand them. Not to minimize it but I would bet that the damage will be orders of magnitude less than the one in Indonesia a few years back.

that you-tube video shows incredibly fast-moving carnage. Notice even burning houses being swept along.
The death toll is going to be outrageous when all is done.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news...c-12709856

http://framework.latimes....-japan/#/0

Stunning. Shocking. Mother Nature reminding us who is in charge.

ETA: Why I can't 'touch type' those brackets around url is beyond me but I guess they weren't imprinted in my brain when I was learning to type. I keep putting in parentheses.

[This message has been edited by Amorette Allison (3/11/2011)]

the waves hit Hawaii and Calif but not major damage apparently

http://www.nytimes.com/20...ndex.jsonp

A couple of our villages on the Pacific side of the Peninsula evacuated to high ground early this morning. No reports of damages or injuries from the wave that came ashore.

Its pretty horrific over there, alright....but it ain't nothing until this bad boy crawls out of the water...



Giant underwater earthquake....nuclear plant core meltings...he will be emerging very soon...

I was speaking with a friend in Tokyo while they were getting 5.0-6.0 aftershocks every several minutes this morning. Although much of the Country is standardized much higher for earthquakes not all of it is - the Northern, Miyagi prefecture (near Sendai) is very industrial and even a "crack in a wall" can be catastrophic. So, locally, where a lot of that was located it's still going to be painful. Yes, compared to some places in the world - better, but still. Not to mention the in-rushing water for those areas.

He said that the local newscasters were covering as much as they could but when they came back from a remote-reporter... they were all wearing helmets in the studio. That had to be weirdly comical.

They were losing power and utilities in various areas due to a bit of domino-effect with Sendai nuclear plant losing cooling and other resources getting the extra demand.

A strange thing too... he said that outside his apartment all appeared generally normal except long lines at the payphones.

Of all the places in the world I thought a payphone would have been a distant memory in the historical rearview mirror it would have been Japan! Evidently not.

Does he know what the deal is with the surgical masks? Not just in this instance but very often when I see footage of Japan I notice that people on trains and such are wearing surgical masks. To add to that, I used to bike to work when I lived in California and very often I would pass an elderly Asian guy on a bicycle and he was always wearing a surgical mask and occasionally you would see just random Asian people wearing them on the street. I guess it's a precaution against germs? Or pollution? Just something I have wondered about from time to time and it seems to be an Asian thing.

Levi, believe it or not... they do it for the most un-American of reasons:

They're being good citizens - they don't want others to catch their germs if ill.


-- I guess I could also say that carrying over the civic-sensitivity to Asians living in the US they probably notice we don't have quite the same regard, hence wearing masks for themselves and their benefit.

[This message has been edited by Dan Mowry (3/11/2011)]

Dan Mowry wrote:

most un-American of reasons

Dan is actually kind of right. I think (and perhaps I'm wrong) they are worn to limit the chance of spreading the flu and such.

here is an answer I found on the net...makes sense to me at least...


In many asian cultures it is considered to be socially unacceptable not to wear a mask if you are sick. If there is a lot of sickness going around, healthy people start wearing masks too.

One only needs to watch video from the streets of Tokyo or Bejing during an outbreak (swine flu, avian flu, etc.) to see loads of people wearing masks. Even on a "normal" day, the handful of people who are sick are wearing the masks.

Volcano in southern Japan erupts
http://www.latimes.com/ne...?track=rss

I hope it's just an internet rumor and Charlie Sheen ISN'T being sent to Japan as good will ambassador.

Saw this on the news today, if you peek at this link it will let you know how you can send a text from your cellphone in order to donate some money to the RedCross for help in the Japan disaster.

http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_nolnav_text2help

Just for inquiring minds.
If anyone hears of anything on how to send things such as clothing, canned goods, etc please post it on here, I haven't heard anything on that yet. Thanks!

It's almost always better to just send money. It doesn't have any shipping overhead, and allows things to be bought locally (outside of the disaster zone, obviously), which in turn helps that economy.

http://american.redcross...._text2help