[ALUmnus]

No, the earthquake was not actually Japanese, but that's where it was. Anyway, this is a really cool compilation of 14 different videos shot of the events. There's one towards the bottom that is really neat to see, the guy is walking through a park and you can see the cracks forming and the ground actually moving. I've never seen anything like it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theenvoy/ ... nd-tsunami

[bravo269er]

The footage is just surreal. What a horrible feeling it must be seeing something like that coming towards you...

[Sly Fox]

My uncle in Chiba used to live in California and has experienced earthquakes on multiple continents and he said nearly 400 miles away from the epicenter it shook him up.

[4everfsu]

More pictures

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... anrik.html

[jbock13]

I was actually in the 2007 earthquake that happened in Peru, about 30 miles from the epicenter, in a town called Pisco. It was a really frightening experience, but once I felt the building shake, I knew immediately what was happening.

The difference in Central and South America is, all buildings are made to withstand earthquakes, and pretty much all buildings have a green S Exit on them, which is sismo, which is a spanish word for earthquake (like in america, you see Fire Exit signs). I'm not sure about Japan, I've never been to Asia but if you remember the earthquake in Chile was an 8.8 and only a hundred or so died.

Compare this with Haiti, where tens of thousands of people died, yet the earthquake was only a 7.0. Ultimately, preplanning and preparation makes all the difference when it comes to human lives.

[vastrightwinger]

Most of the death and destruction in Japan was due mainly to the resulting tsunami. The Japanese are considered one of the best prepared for earthquakes but it is hard to prepare for a 15 foot wall of water.

[olldflame]

Japanese construction codes are the toughest on the planet for earthquake resistance. Haiti, on the other hand, has none, and to make it worse, many buildings were constructed with heavy concrete slab roofs on top of concrete block walls with little or no rebar reinforcing the walls. This was done because they are more resistant to a hurricane. Problem is, when the block walls crumbled in the quake, the slab roofs fell and crushed the occupents. The vast majority of deaths in the Haiti quake were a direct result of this. Almost noone in a frame roofed building died.

[Sly Fox]

My Uncle in Japan says the mess at the university in Greater Tokyo where he teaches is awful. Clean up is going to last awhile. On the positive side, many of the predicted blackouts in Tokyo haven't occurred yet. The government is trying to be as cautious as possible with the electricity grid in light of the nuclear plants going dark.

[BJWilliams]

USA sent hundreds of search and rescue workers to Japan and Gleaning for the World at TRBC is working on what to do to help there as well

[4everfsu]

Most of the death and destruction in Japan was due mainly to the resulting tsunami. The Japanese are considered one of the best prepared for earthquakes but it is hard to prepare for a 15 foot wall of water.

I read one of the report or it maybe in the article I posted that a city of 10K people decided not to flee when the alarms went off. Most of the 10K are unaccounted.

[ALUmnus]

Before and after satellite images. Just incredible. Those are buildings that are missing, not cars. Where do you even begin to start a clean-up of this magnitude?

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011 ... unami.html

[Sly Fox]

You beat me to posting those. ABC of Australia had those up last night but I didn't have time to post them. It is amazing the perspective technology gives us today of what type of destruction has really occurred. Just a few years back it would often take weeks to get full reports of damage from a disaster of this magnitude.