Yesterday's 8.9 earthquake in Sendai, Japan, just north of Tokyo--ironically on the anniversary of the 1933 Long Beach quake I just wrote about here (their March 11 is our March 10)--and the 23-foot tsunami resulting from that quake--overshadow the statistics of the Long Beach quake.
A story we need to be following now concerns the effect of the disaster on a nuclear power plant just northeast of Tokyo. The area is being evacuated. According to the Associated Press two hours ago, "The government declared a state of emergency at the plant. The quake triggered a power outage and when a backup
generator also failed, the cooling system was unable to supply water to
cool the reactor. The reactor core remains hot even after a shutdown." This makes a nuclear meltdown possible. Latest update
Note: The Sendai earthquake is 8,000 times stronger than the recent one in New Zealand.
My final post about the '33 quake is below.
searching on japan; offshore drilling long beach; 1933...found your excellent blog on top of the ggl search.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
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