It's about 2 1/2 hours after the earthquake occurred. Since then, oil refineries are burning, cities are flooded and terrible things happen. While on Twitter the trending topic #prayforjapan is more to calm the tweeters own minds than help the people, in Disneyland Tokyo citizens are grouping to get ready for the amusement park getting hit by the tsunami. Terrible. While I write this post, I follow the NHK world live stream and, more and more areas are getting hit. Just now with a aftershock.
In the area there are many nuclear power-plants. Four of them are shut down, and the official saying is "The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says no abnormal levels of radiation have been reported at four nuclear power plants in the quake-hit Tohoku region."
Can you read it? No "abnormal" level? That's as good as to say there is radioactive material coming outside.
Meanwhile the tsunami warning center at Hawaii has issued a warning for Russia, Taiwan, Australia, Mexico and Peru.
If any country in the world can be prepared for an earthquake, it's Japan. They have excellent precautions, good measures for buildings and a lot of experiences, while they have several, quite strong, quakes every year. But this one is different. It's more intense, and it made terrible damage, and still does with the tsunami.It will take weeks to see what damage is really done. If you watch the footage from the airports you can see, it will take a lot of time even to rescue the people there. I can only hope for the people of Japan, that the government proves once more, that it is perfectly trained for that kind of disaster.
Update: Google has set up a rescue site where people can find missed persons: http://japan.person-finder.appspot.com/
