Twin catastrophes – mega-quake tsunamis

The largest earthquake in Japan's history, somewhere between 7.9 and 8.9 on the Richter scale, has killed an undetermined number of people, with at least dozens of aftershocks up to 7.1 on the Richter and tsunamis that reached a height of 33 feet.

It is the fifth worst earthquake in the world in more than 100 years. The Kyodo news agency reported initially that an estimated 88,000 people were missing. An estimated 200 to 300 bodies already have been found in the city of Sendai, where fires are raging in the wreckage of demolished buildings.

The death toll is expected to surge as the flooding recedes.

Hawaii was hit by tsunami waves, estimated as high as six feet, although they appeared not to threaten major damage. Points along the West Coast of the United States were evacuating low-lying regions.

Matt Alt, an American living in Tokyo for the last eight years, described Friday's ordeal.

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"Oh, it was a terrifying sensation," he said over Skype. "The only way I could describe it [is] like a sustained sense of vertigo. The entire floor was shaking almost like a carnival ride or something like that. Only you never knew when it was going to stop. And it only lasted for about a minute or so, but I can tell you, it felt a lot longer than that."

At least 2 million people were without power in Tokyo. All rail service was halted for several hours, and even after some lines began running again, officials said commuters should expect disruptions for days. Mobile phone communication – where virtually everyone carries a cell phone – was largely unavailable.

Narita International Airport, the main international gateway, canceled all its flights for the afternoon and evening but resumed outgoing flights late Friday night.

Workers and residents fled from buildings, terrified by the aftershocks that continued for hours and refusing to return indoors. With the normally reliable mass transit system shut down, thousands of commuters from Tokyo's expansive suburbs were stranded, unable to find a taxi. Shelters opened their doors to accommodate them.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, the government's top spokesman, said Japan's Self-Defense Force had been dispatched to Miyagi Prefecture to assist in recovery efforts. The earthquake will strain the resources of a country already struggling with a two-decade economic stagnation and a burdensome public debt.

Authorities said the dead number in the hundreds and many, including passengers on a type of ferry and more on a passenger train, were missing.

Tsunami surge in Japan

Alt said he and his wife went outside their home as the quake hit.

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"It was so strong, and the undulation of the earth was so powerful that we actually had to kind of hang onto the outside of our house, and eventually we had to crouch down almost like in a little ball to keep from falling over."

Floyd Brown, president of the Western Journalism Center in the U.S., told WND by e-mail he was awakened by hotel staff at the Marriott in Maui this morning at 2 a.m. local time along with other guests. They were taken to a conference room about 30 feet above sea level to wait out the tsunami.

Reached by telephone, he said, "The biggest wave so far has been about six feet. It hasn't been a major tsunami."

Hotel visitors, who were spending their time on computers and drinking coffee at the evacuation center, could see nothing because of darkness, he said.

According to the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., the Japanese quake was preceded by smaller quakes in the region for several days. Then, several hours before there were several small quakes ranging up to 2.9 in the Hawaii region, as well as quakes of 4.5 and 4.8 in the Kuril and Revilla Gigedo islands.

Then a quake of 3.4 was recorded in central California and about 40 minutes later, Japan was struck by a quake of 8.9. That was followed 20 minutes later by successive shocks of 6.4, 6.4 and 6.8 within minutes.

What followed has been dozens of shocks in the range up to 7.1 in the same region, as well as small tremors in Hawaii, Southern California, Alaska and Oklahoma.

Nearly a dozen nuclear power plants in Japan were shut down and several thousand residents living around one near Tokyo were evacuated when the plant's cooling procedures went awry. However, authorities reported that there was no radiation leaking.

Videos of the disaster showed ships hundreds of feet long bouncing into each other and buildings crashing back and forth as the ocean surge lifted them off their foundations and carried them inland. Cars bobbed like corks and a churning, roiling brown ocean littered with vehicles, boats and buildings swept across the nation's oceanside farmland.