Pray for Japan

After the fifth worst earthquake since the 1900s when the Richter scale started being used, with a magnitude of 8.9, a gigantic tsunami, with 10m (33 feet!) high waves in places, has swept away entire villages and towns along the coast of Japan.
Though right now the numbers being estimated are 1300, so many people are unaccounted for that the numbers will surely increase. 4 entire trains are missing, 10,000 out of 17,000 people in one town are missing, scores of fires including an oil refinery blaze on, and aftershocks are still coming. There have been about 125 so far, and the largest one has been about 6 plus. Some geology expert on the news yesterday was saying that for a giant earthquake, the largest aftershock has to be about 1 point less, which might strike any time. So the worst may not be over.

Specially with the nuclear reactors melting down, it has gotten progressively worse. And even if it isn't as bad as Chernobyl, it will be bad enough. And Tokyo Power doesn't have the best reputation.
[The government, which took power led by the Democratic Party of Japan for the first time less than two years ago, was already facing criticism.
"Crisis management is incoherent," blared a headline in the Asahi newspaper, charging that information disclosure and instructions to expand the evacuation area around the troubled plant were too slow.
"Every time they repeated 'stay calm' without giving concrete data, anxiety increased," it quoted an unidentified veteran party lawmaker as saying.]

The rescue teams have a very uphill task ahead of them. Many people have spent the last 2 nights out in the open in freezing weather. Aid is just beginning to trickle in. 3 US warships have reached Japan and have been tasked with searching the debris out at sea.

Ironically, this is another date 11 which has struck. 9/11. 26/11. 3/11. Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said the earth's axis shifted 25 cm as a result of the earthquake, and the U.S. Geological Survey said the main island of Japan had shifted 2.4 metres.

Seismologist Daniel McNamara says the quake caused the land to sink: "You see cities still underwater; the reason is subsidence. The land actually dropped, so when the tsunami came in, [the water is] just staying."

The nuclear situation is just getting worse. Government spokesman Yukio Edano: "We do believe that there is a possibility that meltdown has occurred - it is inside the reactor, we can't see. However, we are acting, assuming that a meltdown has occurred and with reactor number 3 we are also assuming the possibility of a meltdown as we carry out measures."
Nuclear expert Bill Nye just said situation at Japan plants sounds 'way more serious' than authorities saying. Deeply worrying.

Pray for Japan. And donate money to Red Cross please! Let us help in any way we can.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80CH_XkpSCE&w=640&h=390]