By now, you've probably heard about the earthquake that happened in Japan on Friday. For those of you who don't know the details, at around 2:30pm local time, Japan was struck by an 8.9 earthquake. The quake itself was enough to do serious damage, but it also created tsunami waves up to 30 feet in height. This is the largest earthquake to hit Japan (ever!) and estimated to be the 4th or 5th largest in recorded history. To put it mildly, this was a bad one. The aftershocks are ranging from 6.5 to 7.1 (to give you some perspective, the 1989 San Francisco earthquake itself was a 7.1 magnitude). The death toll is currently at about 2,000 people, but they've been unable to reach some of the harder hit areas where tens of thousands are feared to be dead. The USGS said that if they were able to harness the energy from this earthquake, it would be enough to power the city of Los Angeles for an entire year. The calculation is approximately 600 million times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb.
The earthquake lasted for about 20 seconds and there are reports that say it shifted the entire island of Japan EIGHT FEET. That blows me away!
The pictures of the destruction are heartbreaking. It's hard to tell, but from what the media coverage is showing, it looks like the tsunami itself did the bulk of the destruction. Entire communities were washed away. Now it appears that they are having problems with some of the nuclear plants that are located in the hard hit areas - multiple explosions have happened and they've had to cool the reactors with sea water.
I pray and hope over the next several days that we start to hear the stories of heroism and survival come out of Japan.
Click here for CNN's coverage.
Click here to see before and after the tsunami satellite pictures.
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