Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

8.9 earthquake hits Japan

earthquake.usgs.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 269 posts

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#53

Post by epynonymous »

harisenbon wrote: post #11

Also I found this interesting: > A massive 8.8 magnitude quake hit the northeast coast of Japan on Friday, shaking buildings in the capital Tokyo > Why would you talk about the earthquake in Tokyo, when it happened in Miyagi? Tokyo only got hit with a 3 or 4. [EDIT: updated to 5 JMS. Tokyo got hit pretty hard too] The actual earthquake was around 240 miles away. That's the same distance from New York to Boston.

remember, earthquakes are caused by massive tectonic plates shifting around, each plate could be hundreds of miles themselves. also there were at least 4 - 5 aftershocks that hit tokyo with a magnitude of 7+.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03...

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#54

Post by jarin »

whalesalad wrote: post #46
jarin wrote: post #6

I just talked to my parents in Hawaii, there's a tsunami warning for 3 am HST. I reminded my dad to sandbag the doors of his restaurant in Waikiki (Vit's Hawaiian Steakhouse) before he closes for the night. It's just outside of the "tsunami zone" in Waikiki, so I know my dad will probably be working until the police make him evacuate. He did that on the last tsunami warning, and Vit's was pretty much the only restaur…

Howzit! I lived down there for a few years and miss it dearly. Remember seeing that place a lot but never went inside. Hope your family and the restaurant are safe. I have a lot of friends down there as well. I actually wish that I could be there for this, the last time there was a tsunami warning (almost a year ago exactly) I was out of town on the mainland =/

Yeah, my family will be fine, they live up on a hill (the only one concerned is my youngest brother, and he just wants to know if there will be school tomorrow). The restaurant should be ok even if a decent-sized tsunami hits. My dad, the Ultimate Businessman, has insurance for everything.

I remember growing up on the beach at the North Shore though, there were a few times when we had to evacuate in a hurry because the early warning systems were not nearly as good as they are now.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#56

Post by veidr »

An interesting thing I noticed was that all cell phones were completely useless for a pretty long time following the quake. That's normal, but one difference this time, compared with several years ago, is that most people I know no longer have a landline phone at home. People were queuing up for like 20 minutes to use the one old green plastic coin-op pay phone accross the street.

At first, I didn't think to use a phone, since I was sitting at my desk and email worked normally. I could email a colleague in a different building back and forth in neartime while the quakes were happening. About 15 minutes later it occurred to me to try my (naz)iPhone and see if it was useful. It was not--could not make or receive calls, and the test text message I sent did not arrive in a timely manner (took more than 30 minutes).

Just as a data point.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#60

Post by T-R »

veidr wrote: post #56

An interesting thing I noticed was that all cell phones were completely useless for a pretty long time following the quake. That's normal, but one difference this time, compared with several years ago, is that most people I know no longer have a landline phone at home. People were queuing up for like 20 minutes to use the one old green plastic coin-op pay phone accross the street. At first, I didn't think to use a ph…

Is the cell network still down/overloaded?
Post reply on HN