TSUNAMI AFTERMATH JAPAN March 2011. ‘Too Late’ for Some Tsunami Victims to Rebuild on Japanese Coast. A Long, Painful Reckoning in Japan. 3,373 people confirmed dead, 6,746 missing. At Core of Ruin, a Search for Life. Japan Comes to Grips With Damage. Japan tsunami carries away ship with 100 people: media. TOKYO, March 11, 2011 (AFP) - A ship carrying about 100 people was swept away by the huge tsunami that hit Japan on Friday and its fate was unknown, public broadcaster NHK reported, citing Miyagi prefecture police. The ship was owned by a shipbuilder in Ishinomaki, Miyagi, said Kyodo News. No further information was immediately available from Japanese media or prefectural police which AFP reached by telephone. Friday's massive quake struck just under 400 kilometres (250 miles) northeast of Tokyo, creating a 10-metre (33 feet) tsunami wave that hit the Pacific coast of Honshu island near Sendai city. The monster wave wreaked vast destruction, smashing ships into towns and tearing away entire houses.
Television footage shot from a helicopter showed a large whirlpool offshore created by the tsunami that tossed around ships. Two Dogs Defy the Wave. Prepared well for tsunami. Andrew Moore was tsunami researcher in Japan, says nation very prepared for disasterHe says high-tech early warning system buys about 10 seconds for the well-wired populationDeep bays on coast funnel waves to towns; 1896 quake killed more than 10,000, he saysMoore: This event will help show what works, what doesn't in earthquake preparation Editor's note: Andrew Moore is an assistant professor of Geology at Earlham College, in Richmond, Indiana.
He lectures on geologic hazards and how societies deal with natural disaster risk (CNN) -- Like many around the world, I sit transfixed by the images coming this morning from northern Japan, where a devastating earthquake and tsunami have already claimed hundreds of lives. It has a special resonance for me because I lived in Sendai, in the Tohoku region, from 1999 to 2001, working in a Japanese research laboratory dedicated to the study and control of natural disasters. I was a tsunami researcher in that lab. Search and rescue in Japan after quake. Japan begins grim relief mission with towns flooded, thousands reported missing. TOKYO - Rescue teams searched through matchstick rubble Saturday for thousands of people missing in flooded areas of northeastern Japan, beginning one of the most complex relief efforts in history.
A day after the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and massive tsunami, entire towns remained impossible to reach and some were feared to be wiped off the map. Most estimates put the death toll at 1,700, but news services quoted police in Miyagi Prefecture - one of the hardest-hit areas - as saying they expect the number to exceed 10,000 in that region alone. About 200,000 people are living in temporary shelters.
A strip of Japan's main Honshu island has almost no electricity, with scarce means to communicate. Many shelters do not have heat. An explosion at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture and concerns about potential radiation leakage prompted evacuations within a 12.5-mile radius. Attempts to map out the damage were only beginning as Japan dispatched 50,000 troops to the disaster zone. Tsunami warnings work but aren't enough - Technology & Science. The Pacific tsunami warning system kicked into high gear Friday after the massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake off the east coast of Japan, but experts say the ability to issue advance notice isn't necessarily enough to limit damage and loss of life.
"The warning system provides quite accurate timing of when the tsunamis are likely to arrive," said Andrew Miall, a geology professor at the University of Toronto. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center is based in Honolulu. ((Marco Garcia/Associated Press)) The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center is run by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration out of Hawaii. It is responsible for issuing warnings of tsunamis, waves that cause damage far away from their source and can spread to the entire Pacific rim in less than 24 hours. It issues three kinds of alerts: Warning: based on seismic data and confirmation of a destructive tsunami. DART is made up of a tsunameter on the ocean floor and a surface buoy.