Tsunami

Hundreds are dead after the worst earthquake in generations struck off the northeast coast of Japan on Friday, setting off a devastating tsunami that swallowed swaths of coastal territory and fanned out across the Pacific Ocean, threatening everything in its path. The 8.9-magnitude earthquake -- the world's fifth-largest since 1900 and the biggest in Japan in 140 years -- struck at 2:46 p.m. local time, shaking buildings violently in Tokyo for several minutes and sending millions fleeing for higher ground.

The Times' April 18 editorial, “ Tsunami alert: Don't cut that program ,” raises awareness of some unwelcome proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's tsunami program. The cuts, which amount to $4.6 million, would affect two important components of the national program. The Times' primary concern is with the smaller of the two reductions, a $1-million hit to the array of buoys in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans that detects tsunamis. The much-larger $3.6-million cut to the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program, or NTHMP, concerns The Times less.

A magnitude 6.5 earthquake rocked the Northern California city of Eureka on Saturday, snapping power lines, toppling chimneys, knocking down traffic signals, shattering windows and prompting the evacuation of at least one apartment building. There were no reports of major injuries, but the temblor, which struck at 4:27 p.m. about 33 miles southwest of the coastal city of 26,000, was powerful enough to send people running into the streets, some fearing a tsunami. Centered offshore about 13 miles deep, the quake was felt as far north as central Oregon, as far south as Santa Cruz and as far east as Reno, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

After last week's earthquake in the Indian Ocean, people in Indonesia responded far differently than they had seven years earlier, after another major quake: They evacuated low coastal areas to escape a possible tsunami. As it turned out, there were no killer tidal surges for various reasons, including the type of earth movement involved. Still, the response was a welcome improvement. The 2004 earthquake and tsunami killed close to 200,000 people in Southeast Asia; many of those victims had no idea of the impending danger.

A Japanese "ghost ship" that has haunted the open seas since it was set adrift by last year's devastating tsunami has finally found a resting place -- on the ocean floor. A U.S. Coast Guard cutter opened cannon fire on the vessel Thursday, sinking it about 180 miles west of Alaska's southeast coast and in waters more than 6,000 feet deep. A column of smoke could be seen rising from the 164-foot Ryou-Un Maru as the Coast Guard began its assault. It took about four hours for the ship to vanish from sight, Chief Petty Officer Kip Wadlow told the Associated Press.

Japanese officials struggled Saturday to avert the possibility of a meltdown at two major nuclear power plants whose emergency cooling systems were damaged by Friday's earthquake and tsunami. Emergency officials ordered the evacuation Saturday of all civilians within a six-mile radius of the Fukushima No. 1 plant, which is about 150 miles northeast of Tokyo, after its normal backup cooling systems failed and it became necessary to release radioactive steam to relieve pressure that could cause an explosion.

Japan's magnitude 9.0 earthquake could lead to insured-property losses of nearly $35 billion, making it one of the most expensive catastrophes in history, according to a risk-modeling analysis released Sunday by a U.S. consulting group. The insurance cost of the quake is nearly as much as the entire worldwide catastrophe loss for the global insurance industry in 2010 and could result in higher prices in the insurance market after years of declines, according to the analysis released by Boston-based AIR Worldwide.

I am an engineer and a disaster researcher; I went to Japan after the March 11, 2011, magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake to try to identify lessons there that could benefit future disaster-response operations. In late May, I was following the usual research routine of interviewing individuals involved at the various stages of the disaster response, and particularly those involved in the distribution of critical supplies as part of the relief effort. FOR THE RECORD: Tsunami: In a March 11 Op-Ed about a 1,000-year-old story that saved lives after the Tohoku earthquake, the last name of a Japanese engineer was misspelled.

The tsunami launched by the magnitude 8.9 earthquake off the eastern shores of Japan was triggered at a site called a subduction zone, where one tectonic plate slowly pushes beneath another. From there, the waves traveled across the sea, little higher than ripples, before piling up into powerful towers of water as they hit land. Earthquake-caused tsunamis occur regularly in the Pacific Ocean, where subduction zones abound, said Robert Weiss, a tsunami scientist with Texas A&M University in College Station.

The earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan Friday will likely have a short-term effect on the global economy, shutting down Japanese factories, ports and oil refineries, but it won't derail the economic recovery, observers say. The 8.9-magnitude quake in Japan, the world's third-largest oil consuming country, forced the closure of all of the country's ports and five of its large steel mills. Car companies such as Nissan said they were closing factories until Sunday and airlines canceled flights to the country.

A Japanese "ghost ship" that has haunted the open seas since it was set adrift by last year's devastating tsunami has finally found a resting place -- on the ocean floor. A U.S. Coast Guard cutter opened cannon fire on the vessel Thursday, sinking it about 180 miles west of Alaska's southeast coast and in waters more than 6,000 feet deep. A column of smoke could be seen rising from the 164-foot Ryou-Un Maru as the Coast Guard began its assault. It took about four hours for the ship to vanish from sight, Chief Petty Officer Kip Wadlow told the Associated Press.

Internet envy Re " A digital desert ," Column One, March 12 Step 1: Start an online company. Step 2: Move to a place with no high-speed Internet. Step 3: Complain. This is totally ridiculous. I wouldn't own a manufacturing company and then move to Malibu and complain that I couldn't run it there, or start a day-care center, then complain that there was a bar next door. Want fast Internet access? Move. The article says that faster satellite access does exist, but it is limited and finicky.

"You are about to see something strange and very memorable," architect Yoshihiro Horii told me as we were driving near the waterfront in Ishinomaki, a city of 160,000 people in northeastern Japan that was heavily damaged by the earthquake and tsunami last March 11. As his wife, a fellow architect named Shoko Fukuya, steered the car over the crest of a hill, we caught a glimpse of what he was talking about: a giant red metal cylinder, 35 feet high...

She doesn't remember the details of that horrific day one year ago, when she was nearly swallowed alive by a massive tsunami triggered by the largest earthquake in Japan's recorded history. About all Masako Unoura-Tanaka remembers is the cold. Her wet hands. And the words she screamed to her aunt as she slipped into the debris-choked waters while trying to climb to a nearby rooftop for safety: "I don't want to die here! Help me!" Unoura-Tanaka, a Los Angeles resident who was visiting Japan at the time, spoke Sunday in Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles, where more than 300 people gathered at three memorial events to burn incense, offer prayers and pay tribute to those who died and those still suffering from the tragedy in northeastern Japan.

Veteran fish seller Yoshito Shimada is under siege. At a grocery store in Tokyo's Shibuya district, mothers pushing strollers demand proof that the daily catch isn't from the waters off the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. "I tell them the government checks the fish for radiation, but they don't trust elected officials, or anyone," said Shimada, his blue shirt stained with fish blood. "A year after the disaster, Japan is still afraid of its own food. " Even in Tokyo, more than 200 miles from the northeastern region devastated by the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that caused radiation to spew from the nuclear plant, residents fear that local schoolyards are laced with dangerous isotopes.

Yogi Berra supposedly said, "It's tough making predictions, especially about the future. " He was right. However, there is an out for forecasters trying to predict long-term medical consequences of the Fukushima nuclear facility accident: The final reckoning will take about 50 years; they are unlikely to be around to be judged wrong. With this reassurance in mind, we think the public deserves an estimate of likely outcomes of radiation released when the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami caused multiple meltdowns of nuclear fuel at the plant.

After the surging ocean waters spawned by Japan's magnitude 8.9 earthquake receded, the drowned were only the first victims to be counted. In the coming days, physicians and public health officials along Japan's hard-hit eastern coast can expect a second wave of tsunami victims with aspiration-related illnesses, trauma and crush wounds, as well as the threat of disease spread by contaminated water. As they tend to survivors, Japanese officials can look to the experience of health workers who ministered to victims after the massive tsunami that inundated Indian Ocean nations on Dec. 26, 2004.

A tsunami warning has been issued for the central and northern California coast and Oregon, the National Weather Service announced early Friday. In the San Francisco Bay Area, an emergency warning system announcement for a tsunami warning was braodcast just after 1 a.m. Waves could begin arriving in Crescent City, Calif., at 7:23 a.m. and the Bay Area shortly after 8 a.m. A lower-level tsunami advisory was issued for the Southern California coast...

I am an engineer and a disaster researcher; I went to Japan after the March 11, 2011, magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake to try to identify lessons there that could benefit future disaster-response operations. In late May, I was following the usual research routine of interviewing individuals involved at the various stages of the disaster response, and particularly those involved in the distribution of critical supplies as part of the relief effort. FOR THE RECORD: Tsunami: In a March 11 Op-Ed about a 1,000-year-old story that saved lives after the Tohoku earthquake, the last name of a Japanese engineer was misspelled.

Almost one year since a devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami struck Japan, a global travel trade group predicted that the island country's tourism industry would make a full recovery in 2012 amid a global rise in travel spending. An economic analysis issued Wednesday by the World Travel & Tourism Council predicted that international tourism would generate $129 billion in spending in Japan in 2012, compared with $128.5 billion generated in 2010. The earthquake, which struck March 11, 2011, triggered a tsunami and ensuing fears over damage to a key nuclear power plant in Japan.