Henry (Bakubo) - OK?

[David Kilpatrick]

Seeing the tsunami news. Is all OK in Hawaii?

David

[Juanito200]

I certiainly hope so, and his friends/ family in Japan.

[aster]

As far as REUTERS reports, there's a Tsunami moving in the direction of Hawaii and that there's still time for the authorities to remove or relocate the people to other places as a precaution for any casulties. They are not taking any chances, they say but if Henry is still there and able to contact us here somehow, we'll know firsthand.



Yildiz

[UrsaMajor]

Seeing the tsunami news. Is all OK in Hawaii?

There should be no safety issue, as there was plenty of warning time. I do not know what wave size was forecast for Hawaii, so it is possible that there may be property damage if the wave is big enough.

As a reference point, a one-meter wave was forecast for Southern California and our beaches were closed, but no evacuations were ordered. In the Northern Calfiornia / Oregon area, the forecast was for a two-meter wave and evacuations were ordered in some coastal areas.

With best wishes,
- Tom -

[Dusty]

I heard 2 news reports this morning, one stating a 1 foot wave, and another a 4 foot wave. Both said no major damage.

Dusty

[David Kilpatrick]

Well, if it's a four-foot wave they will be queuing up with the surfboards. The news reports seemed more concerned here - even implying it could have serious effects as far away as Chile and NZ (though I know they have downgraded it to be just strong unusual currents, not a wave).

No-one seems very worried about marine life. I wonder how just an event affects it.

David

[pakodominguez]

No-one seems very worried about marine life. I wonder how just an event affects it.

David

I think nature, other than humans, handle this kind of events way better than us.

I remember the big earthquake on 1974, epicenter in Pachacamac, 50 km south of Lima. South side of the city suffers a lot, but I don't recall Tsunami issues. Two Years ago we had another big earthquake, epicenter in Pisco, the city was reduced to ruins -it is a small city, so there were not that many dead people. Last year the epicenter moved way south, to Chile. There was another Tsunami alert (my Girlfriend was in Peru at that time, in a beach south of Lima, they got evacuated) but nothing really happened, Inch'Allah!

I hope Japan will recover soon, they have the resources for that and, as many other countries in the "Pacific ring of fire" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Ring_of_Fire they are prepared to handle it.

[bakubo]

Most of my friends in Japan are in the Tokyo area and a few south of there in Osaka, on Shikoku, and on Kyushu. So far, the ones I have heard from are all okay. Several of my friends in Tokyo have been in touch via Facebook and, in fact, the first I heard of the earthquake was when I logged on to FB last night about 8:20 PM and immediately saw 3 posts (2 from Japanese friends and 1 from a Greek friend living in Tokyo) saying they just had a huge earthquake. Their messages were only a few minutes old. Since then there have been a few more from people I know there.

No problems here, but last night about 9:30 PM the tsunami sirens were going off. They went off again several times during the night and police cars were driving slowly around Waikiki with loudspeakers telling everyone to get above the 3rd floor of buildings. Although lots of hotels are tall there are a lot of old, small hotels so everyone in those hotels/apartments and some houses had to be moved out to higher places. Even the 2 old, famous, expensive hotels on the beach: Royal Hawaiian (pink hotel) and Moana Surfrider. We are well above the 3rd floor where we live so we didn't have to do anything.

The tsunami was to arrive here at 3:21 AM so I got up a bit after 3:00 AM to see what might happen. I watched on TV, but just like the last tsunami warning we had while here a couple of years ago it didn't turn out to be much. Down beneath Diamond Head, where lots of surfers go and I walk right by there most days, the water receded a couple of hundred meters off shore and completely exposed the reef. The TV people said they had never seen that reef exposed before. We were wondering what was going to happen next, but the water just came back and then later it did it again. It happened several times, but no big waves or wall of water. Here at Waikiki also there was a small surge that went up the beach, but I don't think it even got past the seawall or on the sidewalk and road. It continued for a few hours, I guess.

I saw on TV the tsunami hitting around Sendai and at first it was offshore and approaching. It looked like what we all saw in the video of the tsunami when it hit southern Thailand at Christmas 2004. The water reached the shore and was just relentless. More and more water and just moving inland further and further and carrying everything with it. I guess you have seen that aerial video taken from a helicopter. You couldn't see people in the video, but you could see people driving on roads and the water finally engulf some of the cars. Very sad.

[Juanito200]

Henry- I am glad that you, and your friends in Japan are safe. However, this is truly a horrible situation that we wont know the full extent of for a few days. I see in the north it is the worst, and the death toll keeps rising. Some parts look almost completely devastated..
Japan has many months of work ahead.... Sad indeed. John

[Birma]

Glad to hear that Henry is ok in Hawaii. The earthquake looks especially bad in Japan.

[Dr. Harout]

Earthquake is always bad. Every time I hear of an earthquake I go back to Dec. 7, 1988...
Special trained groups arrived in Armenia hours/days following the earthquake. Trained people from France, Germany, Greece, Italy, from everywhere (if anyone of them is reading this, I want them to know how I love them, respect them and bow in front of them). No one asked them, but they were here doing everything to save lives, and they did.
Those rescue teams were in special uniforms, with their brilliantly trained dogs detecting people trapped alive under the ruins...
And even in such horrible instances funny things happen...
One of the dogs stopped and barked while moving the rubble with its paw. Immediately a small group begun to "open" a "hatch" to take out the trapped persons underneath.
After a while an old woman was pulled out followed by an old man. Seeing all those "soldier-like" people the old man stood still, raised his hands up high and shouted: we surrender, we surrender, don't shoot...

[aster]

Hi Henry,

Nice to hear that Hawaii was not affected by the Tsunamis and that you and your friends are fine. : )

Long working hours and rebuilding are ahead of Japan to clean up the devastaton the tsunamis casued. The Nuclear Plant presents some danger though, since there seems to be a leak and a blast. I always eye the existence of such nuclear energy plants when there's a bigger 'power' called nature. Earth's crust will never be a rigid singular piece nor the human beings will ever be the 'perfect engineers' to build that nuclear plant that will not be the core of a more dreadful ending to human life on Earth.
It's estimated that the devastation caused by the recent earthquake and evetually the tsunamis are equal to the damage 3-4 atom bombs would cause. (!)

Japan has a well-trained and self-disciplened, educated nation that knows how to be prepared for such critical natural disasters by sticking to strict building codes and mentally evolving for facing one.

In an other part of the World, the devastation and the number of lost lives would have been much, much bigger because of ignorance and corruption.

Well done Japan! There's a good lesson in the way you handled this disastrous situation.


Yildiz

[bakubo]

Photos. The first few you can click on and see the same scene today.

Japan Earthquake: Six Months Later

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011 ... er/100146/

[Birma]

Thanks for posting the link Henry, its an important reminder of the devastation, and also good to see the amazing progress the people of Japan are making to clear up - it is a BIG job!. Very moving sequence of pictures.

[Greg Beetham]

The devastation is almost as bad as if a nuclear bomb had been dropped, they even had the radiation to contend with just as if one had been. Iwaki is our (Townsville's) sister city in Japan and our city council ran an appeal which we gave as much too as we could spare, but I doubt you could ever raise enough to compensate for that amount of damage and tragedy.
Greg