Best wishes to all members who living in Japan

[bumblebee man]

Best wishes to all of you!

Originally Posted by sarcle

Edit: If anyone knows a disaster relief site I can forward the traffic.

How about this one? This might be very important today.

http://japan.person-finder.appspot.com/?lang=ja

[seamo]

Just heard the nuclear plants have gone critical...my wife is actually crying for the people of Japan

May the love of many comfort the suffering of the few....

[kenne]

Take care, best wishes for everyone

[jose]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12720219

[Kent99]

Post on another forum about someone's earthquake experience:

We vacated our office building at the big tremor and were all standing on the street when the boss (kaicho) came back. He being the nice employer and employee minded man that he is said "What the fuck are you doing standing out here? Show's over, get back inside an go to work." We did and immediately there after the second big one hit and took off the facade on the side of the building. The Kaicho was the first one outside and was heard to yell "I'm going over to the Land Ministry to see what's going on!" as he rode out of sight. Never saw him again. I got in my car and left the office parking lot at 1730. I arrived home at 0215 this morn somewhat worse the wear. It took almost two hours to get down Atago dori in front of the Imperial Palace alone

[Ryu]

Originally Posted by sarcle

This really sucks. I was actually going over my names before I read about the disaster. I wondered why 災害.com shot through the roof in traffic.

I hope for the best for those living in Japan.

Edit: If anyone knows a disaster relief site I can forward the traffic. Please pm me.

This is the disaster information site of NHK (Japanese National Broadcasting Service). It's a mobile site.

http://www.nhk.or.jp/saigai/jishin/index.html

It'd be nice if you could forward the visitors to this site, as I'd imagine most of the visitors are using mobile phones.

[Ryu]

It's becoming fun. There will be planned power blackouts from tomorrow onwards in Tokyo. I'll have no power for 6 hours tomorrow.

[bramiozo]

Hope Olney is alright also, he lives in Tokyo I think.

[drbiohealth]

Wish you all there stay safe...

[Edwin]

Originally Posted by Ryu

Edwin is in Tokyo, right? Then, he should be fine. The earthquake has only been a little inconvenience for those of us in Tokyo. Perhaps he couldn't get home yesterday because of traffic disruption. But very few people died or suffered severe injury in Tokyo. Everything in this area will be back to normal very soon.

Actually, I moved away from Japan last August, so I was watching the disaster unfold on the TV news over in the UK. Unspeakably tragic, and no sign of any let-up at all in the never-ending bad news. Sorry I missed the query before now (and thanks for asking after me)

[Drewbert]

Originally Posted by Ryu

It's becoming fun. There will be planned power blackouts from tomorrow onwards in Tokyo. I'll have no power for 6 hours tomorrow.

Won't be just tomorrow I'm afraid.

With 6 nuclear reactors now with cooling problems (and at least 2 that have partially melted down) and the remaining reactors that were under maintenance at the time in the same area and thus irradiated, it will be a LONG LONG time before Tokyo can be supplied with the amount of power it's used to getting.

If you are in a position to run your business from another location, I'd start making plans quickly, before other people scoop up the available housing.

Rolling power outages might become the norm for Tokyo for months, if not years.

[Avtal]

The best post I have seen on the earthquake and its aftermath, by a Japanese-speaking American software engineer living in Japan:
some-perspective-on-the-japan-earthquake

Far and away the worst thing that happened in the earthquake was that a lot of people drowned. Your thoughts and prayers for them and their families are appreciated. This is terrible, and we’ll learn ways to better avoid it in the future, but considering the magnitude of the disaster we got off relatively lightly. (An earlier draft of this post said “lucky.” I have since reworded because, honestly, screw luck. Luck had absolutely nothing to do with it. Decades of good engineering, planning, and following the bloody checklist are why this was a serious disaster and not a nation-ending catastrophe like it would have been in many, many other places.)

My best wishes and hopes for everyone affected by this disaster.

Avtal

[Ryu]

Originally Posted by Drewbert

Won't be just tomorrow I'm afraid.

With 6 nuclear reactors now with cooling problems (and at least 2 that have partially melted down) and the remaining reactors that were under maintenance at the time in the same area and thus irradiated, it will be a LONG LONG time before Tokyo can be supplied with the amount of power it's used to getting.

If you are in a position to run your business from another location, I'd start making plans quickly, before other people scoop up the available housing.

Rolling power outages might become the norm for Tokyo for months, if not years.

According to what was reported yesterday, I am supposed to be without power right now. But electricity is still working. Thumbs up to Tokyo Electric.

I know the situation is fairly bad. But I wouldn't worry too much about it. When oil shock hit us in the 70's, there were lots of disruption. But Japan came out stronger eventually. It's time to improvise and become more energy efficient. There have already been massive efforts to decrease the use of electricity all around the city.

[IDNer]

The No. 3 nuclear power plant exploded 30 minutes ago!

NISA is 11 o'clock Thursday morning announced that there was a hydrogen explosion in the No. 3 nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, TEPCO Hukushima first.

　経済産業省原子力安全・保安院によると、東京電力福島第1原発3号機の建屋で14日午前11時1分、爆発が起きた。保安院によると、水素爆発とみられ、原子炉格納容器が爆発した可能性は低いという。
　東電は、11時15分現在、3号機の格納容器と圧力容器は健全と発表した。
　保安院は同原発の半径20キロの住民に屋内退避を要請。風向きは南から北で、20キロ圏内には約600人が範囲内に残っているとみられるという。
　同原発では12日、1号機が水素爆発を起こし、原子炉建屋上部が破損している。

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by Ryu

Thanks Tim.

Edwin is in Tokyo, right? Then, he should be fine. The earthquake has only been a little inconvenience for those of us in Tokyo. Perhaps he couldn't get home yesterday because of traffic disruption. But very few people died or suffered severe injury in Tokyo. Everything in this area will be back to normal very soon.

The situation is dire in the northeast though.

Not least because it is more than 8ft from where he left it like the rest of Honshu.

I think few really appreciate the severity of the problem. In fact, I did not. The initial reports in the West were very misleading.

One idiot quoted by Wall Street journal rushed out an estimate of the damage at $10 Billion, which is probably on the low side by a couple of factors of magnitude.

Estimates of death tolls were also complete nonsense. Estimated at several hundred originally.

Now it seems that it is actually the biggest catastrophe since WWII, which means that it would eclipse Kobe.

I can only say how sorry I am for everyone that has lost their loves ones, homes, schools, jobs, cars and just about everything they possessed.

[blastfromthepast]

Wishing the best for Japan and the Japanese.

[bumblebee man]

Originally Posted by Rubber Duck

One idiot quoted by Wall Street journal rushed out an estimate of the damage at $10 Billion, which is probably on the low side by a couple of factors of magnitude.
...
Now it seems that it is actually the biggest catastrophe since WWII, which means that it would eclipse Kobe.

Credit Suisse Japan estimates the economic loss to be 170 to 180 billion dollars. That would be "only" 40 percent of the Kobe earthquake. This is because there are less offices, factories in the north of Japan.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...7EE0K920110314

Originally Posted by Rubber Duck

Estimates of death tolls were also complete nonsense. Estimated at several hundred originally.

True. Just imagine that 17,000 people lived in this town:

[Drewbert]

Originally Posted by Ryu

According to what was reported yesterday, I am supposed to be without power right now. But electricity is still working.

Because the trains aren't.

[Drewbert]

Originally Posted by IDNer

The No. 3 nuclear power plant exploded 30 minutes ago!

That was no hydrogen explosion. That was the top of the reactor blowing off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_N-wNFSGyQ

You can see it dropping to the ground on the left of the smoke plume, after the main event. Well ,when I say smoke plume, that's actually pulverised cement dust from the outer building structure. The reactor top just punched it's way through the concrete roof.

You work out how heavy that reactor top is. Gaaaaa.

Now, ask yourself why NHK, when they run that news item now, don't show the actual explosion, just a smoke plume from afterwards, and highlight the small white smoke plume as those THAT'S all the explosion was.

Things are far worse than they're making out, radiation-wise.

[bumblebee man]

If you thought this couldn't get any worse...

Nuclear cloud heading for Tokyo:



Plus: rain expected.