Photo: AFP
Japan's massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake collapsed a pedestrian road in Urayasu city, Chiba prefecture, Japan, March 11, 2011.
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24:00 UTC: Our live blog is now ended. CheckVOA's Asia page for the latest developments in the earthquake aftermath and recovery.
You can also follow VOA correspondent Steve Herman on Twitter at @W7VOA for up to the minute updates on the situation in Japan.
Pictures from Japan:
23:50 UTC: How does Japan's earthquake compare to other major earthquakes? According to the U.S. Geological Survey this was the 5th most powerful earthquake since 1900.
ABC News has an infographic showing the scale of this earthquake as compared to that of other major earthquakes
23:42 UTC: Twitter user @yazanbadran shared this photo, which he said was sent to him by a friend in Tokyo. Click to see the full-sized version on Twitpic.
23:35 UTC: Japanese officials said a power outage at a nuclear plant in the city of Fukushima shot radiation levels to 1,000 times above normal in some parts of the facility after the reactor's cooling system failed.
Japanese Prime Minster Naoto Kan ordered a widening of the evacuation zone around the plant, telling thousands of people to move at least 10 kilometers away.
22:46 UTC: What causes a tsunami? VOA's news team takes a quick look athow an earthquake creates a tsunami.
22:34 UTC: Local Japanese media are now reporting as many as 1,000 people may have been killed. Japanese authorities said 200 to 300 bodies have been found in Sendai, the city closest to the quake. Japan's National Police Agency reported at least 150 other deaths from the disaster and said more than 500 people were missing. Damage to highways was making it difficult for rescuers to reach the worst-affected areas and determine more accurate casualty figures.
Authorities ordered about 3,000 people to evacuate areas within several kilometers of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, where radiation levels surged around the facility after the reactor's cooling system failed.
22:30 UTC: Additional video footage of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan:
22:27 UTC: Michiko Schoenwald, who lives in Tokyo, talks about her experience during the earthquake and what has been going on since:
21:32 UTC: Reddit users in Japan are sharing their experiences during the earthquake. User "buffetcity" writes, for example:
I was in Mori Tower during the quake, high floor. The building swayed like crazy but I felt pretty safe throughout. My apartment is a different story, though. Broken TV, cups, plates, the works. I should have stayed in Roppongi!
(Caution: some strong language)
20:34 UTC: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has put together a video demonstrating how the tsunami wave spread from the epicenter of the earthquake out to other parts of Asia and the Americas.
More information at noaa.gov.
(via the New York Times)
20:21 UTC: Craig Fugate, chief of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, says devastating events like the massive 8.9 earthquake off the coast of Japan can happen "with little or no notice" and that being prepared is the best defense. Earthquakes rarely give any warning, he says.
Thousands of people were evacuated from a harbor area north of San Francisco where tsunamis caused by the Japan earthquake flipped and damaged boats. Tsunamis also swamped the beaches of Hawaii.
Strong aftershocks are expected to keep hitting Japan and government officials are waning that more tsunamis could crash over coastal areas.
20:11 UTC: Nuclear worries in Japan following 8.9 earthquake
19:52 UTC: Twitter user @durf shared this picture of the line for the bus last night:
on yfrog.com via Global Voices
19:37 UTC: Japanese officials say pressure is rising inside a nuclear reactor in eastern Japan, after the plant lost power as a result of Friday's massive earthquake. Authorities are saying they may intentionally release some radioactive vapor to release the pressure in the plant's reactor.
Pressure inside the reactor has risen to one-and-a-half times the normal operating level. The government has declared a state of emergency at the Fukushima nuclear plant, and ordered some 3,000 nearby residents to evacuate the area.
19:23 UTC: Lee Sulbitna, a South Korean student at Japan's Waseda University, tells VOA she was evacuated briefly this afternoon after the earthquake struck. Lee lives in the town of Saitama, near Tokyo. She says she ran outside when the big quake hit and when she got home, the television and other items were on the floor. Lee says Saitama's quake was not nearly as strong as the quake in Sendai. But it was the first quake she has ever experienced, and there have been several small quakes since in Saitama. One big concern she has is news that a cooling system at the Fukushima nuclear plant has stopped working.
19:08 UTC: @johnmysersteam on Twitter shares this account from his son and his girlfriend, who are currently traveling in Japan:
At the time of the earthquake we were on the Tokyo Metro system on the way back to the hotel in Shinjuku, the first thing that happened was the train started to brake very hard with the tannoy telling us that the emergency brakes had been applied. Then the power and the lights cut out inside the carriage.
At first, I thought it was maybe just somebody pulling that handle you should never pull in one of the carriages, but as soon as we stopped you could feel the train start to shake quite violently. Looking out of the train windows, you could see the trees shaking, the power lines for the trains and then the buildings started wobbling in a way buildings really shouldn’t.
Read their full account at scottandmegansworldtrip.tumblr.com.
(via @jamescridland)
