Updates on Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami (Update: Evacuations Near Nuke Plant? And 88K Missing?)
[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]
Update: I started a third post on this, mostly right now containing video from the disaster. And don’t forget the original post, which is here.
BIG UPDATE: Via Business Insider, we learn that around 88,000 people are missing.
Update: I forgot to link to this video allegedly of a whirlpool formed near Japan. I say “allegedly” because it is not loading on my computer.
Update (II): Um, this is looking worse.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
And the report this came from says that residents were ordered to evacuate. And is it just me or does the guy in the video look worried? (Hat Tip: Hot Air.)
Update (III): Here‘s a collection of photos from the Tsunami.
Update (VI): Another major update. The Tsunami hit Hawaii, and west coast. Little sign of major damage. Read it all, here.
Update (V): Hilllary just answered the 3 a.m. call:
The United States has transported coolant to a Japanese nuclear plant affected by a massive earthquake and will continue to assist Japan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday.
“We just had our Air Force assets in Japan transport some really important coolant to one of the nuclear plants,” Clinton said at a meeting of the President’s Export Council.
“You know Japan is very reliant on nuclear power and they have very high engineering standards but one of their plants came under a lot of stress with the earthquake and didn’t have enough coolant,” Clinton said.
Update (VI): More on the concerns with that nuclear plant.
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I am up to five updates on a very long post on the Tsunami/Earthquake that hit Japan, so I figured I would start a new post.
First, I am on Twitter now. Very reluctantly, but apparently my username is @AaronWorthing and I will at least tweet when I have a new post. And occasionally be sarcastic in 140 characters or less. So feel free to tweet me if you hear anything important. Just bear in mind I am a bit of a twitter noob and I might make newbie mistakes.
Second, via Hot Air, we get this “holy crap” video of the day, of a refinery explosion caused by all of this. I heard about this on WTOP (a local news radio station), from a Bloomberg reporter and he said he saw this from his hotel in Tokyo:
Yike. I wonder what survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki thought when they saw that? I mean whether you think dropping those nukes were justified or not, at best you can only classify it as a “necessary evil” and you hate to imagine some old man or old woman getting flashbacks to a traumatic experience.
Meanwhile, as messed up as this is, this whole mess sent oil prices plummeting:
Stock futures are falling as investors try to assess the economic fallout from the largest earthquake in Japan’s history.
The quake struck toward the end of the Asian trading session. Tsunami alerts were issued for areas as far away as Hawaii and the mainland U.S. West coast.
Oil prices dipped below $100 for the first time this month. The quake is likely to cut short-term demand for crude from Japan, which is the world’s third biggest oil consumer.
Yeah, so if your prices fall at the pump, this is why. Try not to be too happy about that. Think of it like being in need of a heart transplant and finding out a donor is available. It’s good news for you, but bad news for someone else.
Of course in Hawaii, gas consumption is rising in the short term as officials tell people to gas up. Thus we get this clip from the mayor of Honalulu. [Update: Sorry, but the video won’t embed right. Go here to see it.]
Roadways and beaches were empty as the tsunamis struck the state, which had hours to prepare. Residents in coastal areas of Hawaii were sent to refuge areas at community centers and schools while tourists in Waikiki were moved to higher floors of their high-rise hotels. People waited in long lines stocking up on gas, bottled water, canned food and generators, and officials told residents to stock up on water and fill their cars with gas.
(Source.) Must… resist… urge… to make joke about Obama’s birth certificate being washed out to sea…
Non-joking joking aside, this is NBC news covering the quake in Japan:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
And needless to say we will see many updates throughout the day. At this point, it would be surprising if this ended up being as bad as the one that hit all those years ago. But it’s bad enough and we should pray for everyone over there.
[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
i won’t be updating the last post anymore so look here for anything new, for the near future.
Aaron Worthing (e7d72e) — 3/11/2011 @ 7:38 amIf Japan had their own oils they would drill down to where they were and bring them to the surface for so they wouldn’t have to depend so much on oil from other countries.
This is one significant way in which Japan is very, very different from America.
happyfeet (ab5779) — 3/11/2011 @ 7:47 amKorean Television over here is reporting that there are heavy casulaties at Disney World, several structures collapsed including the parking garage
EricPWJohnson (6a2bb1) — 3/11/2011 @ 7:53 amBTW, Aaron is now on the Twtitter, twitterers.
Karl (45cc92) — 3/11/2011 @ 8:06 amkarl
it will never be the same, tweeters. lol
Aaron Worthing (e7d72e) — 3/11/2011 @ 8:10 amHow much do you bet Obama uses the nuke alert to plug his “green” energy BS?
Patricia (3aa1fd) — 3/11/2011 @ 8:49 amugh, puked a little in my mouth, patricia.
Aaron Worthing (e7d72e) — 3/11/2011 @ 8:50 amFox news says an entire passenger train is missing.
It was about quarter to three, so hopefully there weren’t many folks on the train, but apparently it’s also graduation season for schools.
This is terrifying.
(All my Navy guys there have checked in– they’re fine and at work.)
On the guy talking about the nuke plant looking worried– the Japanese have a SERIOUS phobia with nuke energy. (for obvious reasons– I knew about it before I went there, but the sheer level wasn’t obvious until I saw it)
Foxfier (24dddb) — 3/11/2011 @ 10:21 amIt took how many decades to get a nuke ship stationed there?
The guy must have a solid pair to just be there reporting.
As the late Petr Beckman put it, “nuclear power” has about as much to do with “nuclear bomb” as “electric light” does with “electric chair”. Nobody’s frightened of electric lights, and it makes no sense to be frightened of nuclear power.
Milhouse (ea66e3) — 3/11/2011 @ 10:25 amThis tsunami is racist.(© JD)
Too soon?
TimesDisliker (c5fd6a) — 3/11/2011 @ 10:34 am“As the late Petr Beckman put it, “nuclear power” has about as much to do with “nuclear bomb” as “electric light” does with “electric chair”.”
Still, when I saw the video of the tsunami in full ‘speeding to the show’ mode, I couldn’t help but think of San Onofre (I live in South OC). I mean, you trust that engineers have taken these sorts of risks into account, but a wall of water going that fast and peaking up would surely hit the power station — and water has a way of finding every chink in any armor.
stari_momak (d5f987) — 3/11/2011 @ 10:39 amFlooding a nuclear power plant would do it no good, but it would be very unlikely to cause any harm to anyone outside its boundaries. At least, no more harm than the tsunami itself caused.
Milhouse (ea66e3) — 3/11/2011 @ 11:41 amAs the late Petr Beckman put it, “nuclear power” has about as much to do with “nuclear bomb” as “electric light” does with “electric chair”.
True.
Considering the massive change between Japan 100 years ago and Japan now, strangeness about nuke anything is a pretty small oddity.
Foxfier (24dddb) — 3/11/2011 @ 11:42 amHillary [ the smartest woman in the world}comment on the cooling water problem reveals that the only thing she knows about nuclear reactors is that she hates them.
dunce (b89258) — 3/11/2011 @ 1:09 pmIMPEACH OBAMA. HE IS A SLACK ACTING NONE ACTING PRESIDENT OF THE FREE WORLDE DOES NOT HELP REBLES IN LIBYA, DOES NOT LISTEN TO PEOPLE OF AMERICA. SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A DOMESTIC ENEMY AND RENOVED A.S.A.P. HE IS A LIAR AND GIVES THE IMPRESSION THAT HE HAS A ADJENDA TO DESTROY THE U.S. FROM THE INSIDE.
FOX NEWS (f9aa1e) — 3/11/2011 @ 3:37 pmIDIOT
JÐ (d656e1) — 3/11/2011 @ 3:46 pm