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8.9 earthquake hits Japan

earthquake.usgs.gov

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Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#141

Post by magicofpi »

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…

Update: Tsunami waves have begun to hit the islands, but it's relatively small for now.

Update 2: About an hour later, still very moderate waves, although the water has been receding so far that you can see the reefs. No damage reported. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center doesn't expect this to be a major event, although there's still a few hours left in the danger zone.

I'm in Hawaii right now (out of the evacuation zone). They expect the tsunami to hit in about 45 minutes. The tsunami sirens have been going off about every hour, the evacuation zones have been blocked off, and even the police are starting to move to higher ground. Honolulu Harbor is pretty much empty, and it seems like all flights in and out of the airport have been cancelled.

Also, Waikiki Beach is deserted, the hospitals are being inundated with people seeking shelter, and we're all basically holding our breath. The scary thing is that many people don't realize that a tsunami wave is not like a surfing wave; it's basically a solid wall of water, and we're expecting 6-7 feet at the moment.

If you want to follow what's going on, check out #hitsunami on twitter; it's being updated very frequently. Also, there's a live webcam of Waikiki Beach at http://hitsunami.info.

[edit with more information]

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#142

Post by koski »

koski wrote: post #107

The Tsunamis caused by this that might hit Taiwan etc. can be huge (5 to 10 meters). Or then just 10 cm high. How ever it's moving now 800km an hour. The destruction is terrible ( http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhj2ge_violent-seisme-d-une... ) I cannot explain in written how sorry I feel for the people living in the area.

The tsunami is expected to reach Mexico's coastline within three to four hours, the BBC Mundo's Alberto Najar reports. Ports in the state of Guerrero are now closed. In Baja California Sur, civil protection authorities say they expect no major damage.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#143

Post by koski »

koski wrote: post #133

Japan has declared a state of emergency because of the failure of the cooling system at one nuclear plant, according to the Associated Press. Officials say there has been no leak of radiation. Let's hope this does not get any worse than it is right now.

Japanese authorities are urging some 2,000 residents living within a 2km radius of a nuclear plant in Fukushima to evacuate, the AFP reports. The plant has been shut down after its cooling system failed.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#144

Post by edanm »

ugh wrote: post #47
flyt wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook for me; I know two people living near Tokyo that instantly updated their statuses and it just snowballed from there. It took the US news (nytimes.com) at least 20 minutes to have anything up, but twitter and facebook exploded instantly.

I just want to make clear that my comment was in no way intended to criticize mass media. It’s just an interesting new development – if you are not directly affected mass media is no longer the fastest way to get breaking news. I want mass media to diligently collect all the information they can get and I know that that takes longer than just sending a tweet. Whether the New York Times writes about the event five min…

Just as another data point, I almost never read "mass media", since most things there don't really interest me. (Excluding Technology-related news, which I get from TechCrunch etc.).

This used to be a huge problem for me, sine I would be constantly out-of-touch. But nowadays, I find that Twitter/Facebook tend to keep me up to date on anything that's really big.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#145

Post by donw »

po wrote: post #25

I'm still feeling shakes every few minutes. It's like living in a house on a block of jello. Long rolling waves. I'm in central Tokyo and our china cabinet was shaken pretty badly: http://www.flickr.com/photos/poswald/5516954100/in/photostre... I know some people up in sendai that I'm a bit worried about.

My office is on the 7th floor of a building in Yoyogi. Monitors are scattered everywhere, and our breakroom is effectively destroyed.

Nobody was hurt, fortunately, but I'm really glad this quake wasn't any stronger... I've been through a lot of quakes here, and this is the first time I thought I might be going home in a black bag.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#146

Post by atgm »

po wrote: post #25

I'm still feeling shakes every few minutes. It's like living in a house on a block of jello. Long rolling waves. I'm in central Tokyo and our china cabinet was shaken pretty badly: http://www.flickr.com/photos/poswald/5516954100/in/photostre... I know some people up in sendai that I'm a bit worried about.

I'm feeling shakes every 20 minutes or so; one of the earthquake alerts on my phone actually preceded the shaking by about 10 seconds. My body's so used to the shaking that it always thinks it's shaking -- I set up a bottle of water to look at just so I don't go insane.

11:30 pm JST and I'm still feeling quakes.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#147

Post by mechanical_fish »

Sandman wrote: post #31
suyash wrote: post #26

Is this post appropriate for HN?

No, it is not. From the HN guidelines: Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. And unlike cosmok, I do mind it, because this type of news is slowly turning HN into something it shouldn't be. There's a reason for this particu…

They may be downvoting you because they are emotional. Or they may be downvoting because you are wrong. ;)

This story violates neither the letter nor the spirit of the rule against "video" of a disaster; aka cheap sensationalism. Rather, much of the thread is the opposite of sensationalism: e.g. patio11 on the average state of Japanese disaster preparedness.

This story has all sorts of HN community relevance, ranging from how are community members experiencing this on the ground to how do otherwise abstract geology papers manifest in real life to hey, wait, my startup is sitting in a prime earthquake zone; how should we prepare?

And, you know, this is a magnitude 8.9 earthquake. They don't happen every year. We can afford a handful of threads on each one. It's nice to try to have an interesting news site, but if this isn't news one has to question the entire concept of news. Which is fair: News is not for everyone, and perhaps news is not for you. It's just not to your taste. Have you tried an exclusive diet of decade-old paper books?

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#148

Post by CWuestefeld »

This is what I like about HN. This isn't a particularly "hacker" story, but the perspective here is unique.

On the main stream media, I'll get a couple of statistics and video, then an empty comment about "loved ones trying to make sense of this senseless tragedy".

On HN, I get the facts, but both broader and deeper, from the geological nature of the quake to the effect on other locales. And I get real, unfiltered perspective from those involved -- without the bogus posturing for the human interest feel.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#149

Post by ck2 »

I am watching live and they just said all cooling hardware and backups for one of their atomic plants has FAILED and they are advising residents to evacuate. Ugh.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#150

Post by rue »

lancewiggs wrote: post #91
veidr wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm wow, apparently yes. , I still cannot make a call. Press call and it goes directly to call failed. (SoftBank iPhone 4)

stay with it. The telcos in New Zealand got COWS (mobile cell sites) and new cell sites/equipment down to Christchurch very quickly - importing some from China (Huawei gear I guess). Landlines take much longer to repair, and cells have redundancy - can link together with fibre or microwaves.

Don't “stay with it” continuously, though, that'll just keep the system overloaded. If you can't get through, wait 20 minutes before trying again.
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