So since most of y'all understand American geography better than Japanese geography:
My friends in Osaka (San Fran) felt it.
I live in Ogaki (Kansas). There was a mild panic in the mall, and our trains stopped for a few minutes.
Folks in Tokyo are largely shaken but not terribly affected (Boston/DC ish).
Miyagi/etc (Maine-ish) got a wee bit whacked by a tsunami. They had a few minutes of warning. Reports will come in for a few hours, but we're really good at dealing with this.
I actually first heard about this earthquake on Twitter (all eyewitness reports, no second hand information). I immediately checked all news sites I could think of (European, US) but none were yet reporting on it.
I just want to make clear that my comment was in no way intended to criticize mass media. It’s just an interesting new development – if you are not directly affected mass media is no longer the fastest way to get breaking news.
I want mass media to diligently collect all the information they can get and I know that that takes longer than just sending a tweet. Whether the New York Times writes about the event five minutes or an hour after it happens doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
Just as another data point, I almost never read "mass media", since most things there don't really interest me. (Excluding Technology-related news, which I get from TechCrunch etc.).
This used to be a huge problem for me, sine I would be constantly out-of-touch. But nowadays, I find that Twitter/Facebook tend to keep me up to date on anything that's really big.
I bet the NHK has a special team always waiting to report on earthquakes and tsunami warnings. They report on many of the smaller quakes very quickly too.
I just talked to my parents in Hawaii, there's a tsunami warning for 3 am HST. I reminded my dad to sandbag the doors of his restaurant in Waikiki (Vit's Hawaiian Steakhouse) before he closes for the night.
It's just outside of the "tsunami zone" in Waikiki, so I know my dad will probably be working until the police make him evacuate. He did that on the last tsunami warning, and Vit's was pretty much the only restaurant open for several blocks. There was a line out of the door, haha.
Howzit! I lived down there for a few years and miss it dearly. Remember seeing that place a lot but never went inside.
Hope your family and the restaurant are safe. I have a lot of friends down there as well. I actually wish that I could be there for this, the last time there was a tsunami warning (almost a year ago exactly) I was out of town on the mainland =/
Yeah, my family will be fine, they live up on a hill (the only one concerned is my youngest brother, and he just wants to know if there will be school tomorrow). The restaurant should be ok even if a decent-sized tsunami hits. My dad, the Ultimate Businessman, has insurance for everything.
I remember growing up on the beach at the North Shore though, there were a few times when we had to evacuate in a hurry because the early warning systems were not nearly as good as they are now.
Wait, you want to be in the path of a tsunami? I'll admit being in Wisconsin can be a little boring weather-wise but the lack of natural diasasters is kind of nice. The one tornado warning I've lived through was quite enough for me.
Haha, if I remember correctly they sound them when they issue a warning, then they sound them again something like an hour before it will hit and then maybe again after that. It happens enough that it's well coordinated, usually there are police on Kalanianaole Highway making sure everyone heads up into the valleys up until about 15 minutes before it's supposed to hit.
Update: Tsunami waves have begun to hit the islands, but it's relatively small for now.
Update 2: About an hour later, still very moderate waves, although the water has been receding so far that you can see the reefs. No damage reported. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center doesn't expect this to be a major event, although there's still a few hours left in the danger zone.
I'm in Hawaii right now (out of the evacuation zone). They expect the tsunami to hit in about 45 minutes. The tsunami sirens have been going off about every hour, the evacuation zones have been blocked off, and even the police are starting to move to higher ground. Honolulu Harbor is pretty much empty, and it seems like all flights in and out of the airport have been cancelled.
Also, Waikiki Beach is deserted, the hospitals are being inundated with people seeking shelter, and we're all basically holding our breath. The scary thing is that many people don't realize that a tsunami wave is not like a surfing wave; it's basically a solid wall of water, and we're expecting 6-7 feet at the moment.
If you want to follow what's going on, check out #hitsunami on twitter; it's being updated very frequently. Also, there's a live webcam of Waikiki Beach at http://hitsunami.info.
Update 3: About three hours later, there's still no all clear. Oahu and Kauai are a lot better off than Maui and the Big Island, where there have been reports of flooding and damage. They're still gathering information, though, because it's still dark here, but there may have been waves of up to 9 feet.
It was crazy scary, and I was all the way down in Nagoya.
There doesn't seem to be too much damage in Miyagi (where the earthquake was) but some fires broke out apparently.
Luckily, it seemed to be a long, hard earthquake rather than a short hard earthquake, which means that buildings are able to withstand the shaking better. The shaking went on for about 3 minutes here, and there were some after shocks that lasted for about a minute.
The Great Hanshin Earthquake was only a 7.2, and it was much more destructive.
The energy release of an earthquake, which closely correlates to its destructive power, scales with the 3⁄2 power of the shaking amplitude. Thus, a difference in magnitude of 1.0 is equivalent to a factor of 31.6 ( = (101.0)(3 / 2)) in the energy released; a difference in magnitude of 2.0 is equivalent to a factor of 1000 ( = (102.0)(3 / 2) ) in the energy released.[2]
so the correct answer is that this one was 1000 times more powerful than Kobe, and also very shallow (depth of 24 km), but fortunately offshore (but unfortunately that means powerful tsunami).
The fact the epicenter was 200 km offshore is why the shaking wasn't too destructive. The Great Hanshin earthquake was only 20km from Kobe. The distance from the epicenter is often overlooked by the media.
>
A massive 8.8 magnitude quake hit the northeast coast of Japan on Friday, shaking buildings in the capital Tokyo
>
Why would you talk about the earthquake in Tokyo, when it happened in Miyagi? Tokyo only got hit with a 3 or 4. [EDIT: updated to 5 JMS. Tokyo got hit pretty hard too]
The actual earthquake was around 240 miles away. That's the same distance from New York to Boston.
remember, earthquakes are caused by massive tectonic plates shifting around, each plate could be hundreds of miles themselves. also there were at least 4 - 5 aftershocks that hit tokyo with a magnitude of 7+.
And, conservatively, 98% of foreign news agency reporters. See also: a plane landing on the Hudson gets more coverage than half of Iowa being under water.
WTF - That article states 6,000,000 SIX MILLION deaths?
Can this be accurate? It reiterated what I heard on the news regarding passenger trains missing due to the Tsunami - but 6MM???
EDIT: Looks like wiki-trolling...
From CNN:
The official death toll stood at 137, with 539 injured and 351 missing, according to Kyodo, citing police, but that death toll seemed almost certain to rise -- from 200 to 300 bodies have been found in the coastal city of Sendai alone, Kyodo reported. It said the death toll is likely to surpass 1,000.
Death toll from disasters is always low to start. Rescue workers on the ground are more worried about digging out the people who survived (at least for the first 48 hours or so).
Is there any system currently able to mass-call all cellphones from any/all carriers within a given geo-location radius? Or any type of push notification service for natural disasters.
Seems like this happened during the day but watching the news made me think about disasters that happen at night. How are people notified to get the hell out of there??
How are people notified to get the hell out of there??
Are you familiar with the term "air raid siren"? The coast is wall-to-wall peppered with squack boxes. About a minute prior to the earthquake there would have been a "Earthquake is imminent -- brace yourself." broadcast and within a minute there would have been a "A tsunami warning is in effect for (here). Go to shelter immediately. Repeat..."
There are a couple levels of alerts they can pull, from "Be careful" to "MOVE NOW." Miyagi just got "MOVE NOW."
Problems Japan does not have #1: insufficient spending on public works projects In Case Shit Happens, because shit happens so often that when people in several dozen countries say shit they're speaking Japanese.
Can I tell you my favorite outsourcing story? Apologies for those who've heard it (and yes, this actually happened):
India: We can't log into the test server.
Patrick: Then you didn't set it up right.
India: No, we did, but we get an error message.
Patrick: What error message?
India: We can't read it.
Patrick: sigh Please take a screenshot then.
India: Here you go.
Patrick: Oh, that is just a weather report which correctly reflects the state of the test database. The system is operating normally. Please proceed with your testing of the function you were assigned.
India: Are you sure it isn't an error? It is written in red. And why would you put a weather report on the login screen anyway?
Patrick: Q1) That is because if you ignore it you'll die. Q2) See Q1.
SearchYC + a few words I remembered of it. (I have an anomalously good memory for things I've written, which is one reason I write so much. It's like Delicious except Yahoo can't lose my bookmarks.)
Reminds me of QA at Yahoo! Japan. They make sure that every page that is going to be released is capable of showing the EMG1, EMG2, and EMG3 tags.
Here is a screenshot of EMG1 and EMG2 both being shown at the same time, it was the first time for me to see more than one shown at the same time in production.
I thought it would be an amusing story to relate regarding our disaster preparedness: don't worry about us, we're so on top of this we have disaster warning systems built into the class schedule portals college kids access from their cell phones. It's amusing because out outsourcing operations in India were... less successful than they could have been because of frequent... inefficiencies in communication and pervasive... opportunities for improvement in engineering skill levels.
No, company policy and common sense would not let me tell you the names of the engineers I had that conversation with. You can read it as "An Employee Of A Japanese Megacorp's Indian Subsidiary" if that makes you feel better. I'm assuming most people understand I do not actually mean everybody in the country.
Besides what patio11 said, there is something similar to the US National Alert System which gets used quite often. It puts alerts on the top of every TV channel when an earthquake starts... unfortunately my TV then fell off the cabinet so I took that as an alert and climbed under my table.
Right about the tv. I was just thinking "what if it had been in the night?" People will be asleep so if there's any window of warning available, how can they get the message?
On CNN the newscaster is repeatedly mentioning how people on the ground are waiting in line to use the pay phone to notify loved ones etc...
I use my phone as an alarm so that's why I just thought it might be helpful if there was a public alert service you can sign up for or even a part of the phone (like emergency 911 always works on a cell phone even if you don't have minutes) that will make it ring, beep or do soemthing stupid to get your attention.
Interesting. However, it is something that the governments should be handling rather than a private company. Just an opinion.
Or a central database and disaster management site where you just register the contact details of your loved ones including yourself. Also a good idea is a general notification for groups.
So say I learnt about it and am in the other end of the world, I would want to leave a beep so shrill that my family gets the hell out and run.
Another easy solution is setting up a reminder service from local trends on twitter+natural language processing+ Bloody loud notification depending on threat levels.
I think close cooperation between private companies and the government has been a trait of Japanese society for a long time. Instead of a single governmental alert service, you'll get the government, NHK, cell phone companies, transport companies, etc., cooperating to get the information out there quickly. For example, the weather service website was being hammered and rather hard to access, but you could see reports on the NHK and Yahoo! websites while the quake was still going on, including tsunami predictions - it's automated, very fast and effective.
The siren systems are also automated. The signal is relayed by governmental offices.
There's just such a system for several municipalities in the U.S - the reverse 911 system, which robo-calls your home or cell phone in the event of a natural disaster or other emergency. I just signed up for it in Mountain View CA, and my mom got a reverse-911 call for the Boston water main break this winter.
There may be a 160 byte block of space in the normal traffic your phone makes to the towers in order to let it know where you are. Maybe they should look into using that for something like this.
It should be much easier for cell phones, since the underlying physical medium is a broadcast medium. It takes significant engineering effort to get rid of this capability.
I'm still feeling shakes every few minutes. It's like living in a house on a block of jello. Long rolling waves. I'm in central Tokyo and our china cabinet was shaken pretty badly:
My office is on the 7th floor of a building in Yoyogi. Monitors are scattered everywhere, and our breakroom is effectively destroyed.
Nobody was hurt, fortunately, but I'm really glad this quake wasn't any stronger... I've been through a lot of quakes here, and this is the first time I thought I might be going home in a black bag.
I don't know if this is appropriate here, but the Red Cross donation site has been down for awhile (at least, for me). I took the liberty of setting up a WePay group for donations:
I'm feeling shakes every 20 minutes or so; one of the earthquake alerts on my phone actually preceded the shaking by about 10 seconds. My body's so used to the shaking that it always thinks it's shaking -- I set up a bottle of water to look at just so I don't go insane.
4:00 am JST, had a 30 second quake that bashed my head on the wall and woke me up.
Edit: I'm from seismically-inactive Pennsylvania and completely not used to this, even after four years. It took me a while to fall asleep the first time since I kept feeling like I was shaking and would jerk awake. Now I don't know if I should try to fall asleep again or what.
I can't imagine being in one of the top floors of a high-rise with it wobbling around. I'd be paralyzed with fear clinging to the carpet. Mighty respect to the architects and engineers, though.
It's not fun. Clinging to the carpet is a good instinct. Many people run around in a crazy panic but there's really nowhere to go. Most people here climb under something sturdy right away. I visited an elementary school and they had special towel type things to tie over your head for padding during drills. Japanese people get lots of practice.
I believe most people in a quake get killed or injured by falling debris. You're probably more likely to get injured trying to run out of the building or by having glass or a piece of a building fall on you than you are of having the building collapse.
If you live in a coastal area, after the quake stops, we have now all learned step two: get your ass to high ground in a hurry.
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
But, I don't mind it all as I get to read views and firsthand accounts from fellow hackers that is much different from what I see on TV.
I was particularly interested in "is patio11 ok?" (and, are there any transpac fiber cuts?)
I think it's fair to post stories which are headlines in ~all news simultaneously, even if not "hacker news" -- nuclear explosions, assassinations of G7 leaders, major wars, etc.
No, it is not. From the HN guidelines:
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
And unlike cosmok, I do mind it, because this type of news is slowly turning HN into something it shouldn't be. There's a reason for this particular guideline, and I think we should honor that.
EDIT: I don't mind the downvoting, but please, if you do that, at least post a comment on why you think my comment deserved to be downvoted.
I didn't down- or up-vote you, but my immediate response to your comment was: "is this really the time to worry about what HN is or isn't turning into?"
If your downvoters think the same way I do, they're downvoting because they don't think right now is a good time to worry about the future of HN, no matter what the guidelines say. This isn't to say your opinion is invalid (it's a perfectly legitimate thing to worry about); it just seems ill-timed in the face of potentially catastrophic disaster, and downvoting is an easy way to express disapproval.
I agree it's important that we maintain a culture of curation here, but some events are big enough that they eclipse cultural mores.
With respect to the kind of exceptions we make every day, I agree with you. But once or twice a year, a lot of people die, and everyone kind of stops what they're doing and pays their respects, wherever they happen to be, whether you're in line at the bank, or on the floor of the senate.
We all happen to be on HN 24 hours a day, so this is where we all stop and take notice.
They may be downvoting you because they are emotional. Or they may be downvoting because you are wrong. ;)
This story violates neither the letter nor the spirit of the rule against "video" of a disaster; aka cheap sensationalism. Rather, much of the thread is the opposite of sensationalism: e.g. patio11 on the average state of Japanese disaster preparedness.
This story has all sorts of HN community relevance, ranging from how are community members experiencing this on the ground to how do otherwise abstract geology papers manifest in real life to hey, wait, my startup is sitting in a prime earthquake zone; how should we prepare?
And, you know, this is a magnitude 8.9 earthquake. They don't happen every year. We can afford a handful of threads on each one. It's nice to try to have an interesting news site, but if this isn't news one has to question the entire concept of news. Which is fair: News is not for everyone, and perhaps news is not for you. It's just not to your taste. Have you tried an exclusive diet of decade-old paper books?
While I agree with what you're saying, there's an exception to every rule. Normally I'd be one of the first to point out something is off topic. I've done so in the past.
However, the strongest earthquake to hit Japan in three centuries, causing loss of who knows how many lives and how much damage?
This is news worth looking beyond the "hacker" moniker for.
Why would his post deserve being downvoted to hell without so much as a discussion? You and I may disagree with him, but he has a valid point and doesn't appear to be trolling.
I would like to think that HN had some compassion for their fellow users (HN has a lot of Tokyo based startups/hackers), not to mention humans in general.
In a scenario like this, who gives a fuck if it's off topic? And for the record, I saw the story here first, so I am thankful for that.
There are plenty of sites for general news. HN is not one of them.
The reason you saw it here first is because somebody posted it here despite what the guidelines say, and you happened to come at the right moment, before you checked other news sites you usually do.
The fact that you saw it here first does not change the fact that the article is, according to guidelines, off-topic.
Oh, and FYI, not posting this article on HN != not having compassion for fellow hackers.
I find it strange that you and others question whether this article should be on HN - the fact you and others are commenting must mean that the topic grabbed you enough for you to want to read and comment on what people are saying on the subject.
Also the fact that the post has over 300 points and is comfortably the most talked about thing within the community is proof enough that topics like this should be allowed to remain within HN
Just because you're sitting in a gentlemen's club in the midst of erudite conversation doesn't mean you're not going to point out that the place across the road is currently on fire.
50 crap articles get front-paged every single day and you choose the one about breaking news from a national disaster to start whining about what's right and wrong for HN? Sheesh.
Interesting to view of all 5+ quakes the past 3 days http://cl.ly/3G0f0t0d1C2Z381s3O31 . Loads of activity in the area. Is that kind of activity common, or could that have been an indicator that there was a chance of a major quake?
"The March 11 earthquake was preceded by a series of large foreshocks over the previous two days, beginning on March 9th with an M 7.2 event approximately 40 km from the March 11 earthquake, and continuing with a further 3 earthquakes greater than M 6 on the same day."
I'm in this picture (the blobby looking guy) and yeah we were working under the desks while all of the aftershocks were happening. It was pretty intense as we've been having earthquakes here the last few days and thought it was going to just be another small one. It kept intensifying, however, until we were forced to go under the desks. Definitely a very long 3 minutes.
An interesting thing I noticed was that all cell phones were completely useless for a pretty long time following the quake. That's normal, but one difference this time, compared with several years ago, is that most people I know no longer have a landline phone at home. People were queuing up for like 20 minutes to use the one old green plastic coin-op pay phone accross the street.
At first, I didn't think to use a phone, since I was sitting at my desk and email worked normally. I could email a colleague in a different building back and forth in neartime while the quakes were happening. About 15 minutes later it occurred to me to try my (naz)iPhone and see if it was useful. It was not--could not make or receive calls, and the test text message I sent did not arrive in a timely manner (took more than 30 minutes).
stay with it. The telcos in New Zealand got COWS (mobile cell sites) and new cell sites/equipment down to Christchurch very quickly - importing some from China (Huawei gear I guess). Landlines take much longer to repair, and cells have redundancy - can link together with fibre or microwaves.
Isn't that strange ? I mean cable should be more easily broken than airwaves, no ? Is it because the landlines in Japan are designed to resist and the cell phone tower got power disruption ?
It's because everyone in Japan started sending SMSes to everyone they knew practically before the shaking stopped and that DOSed the network. This happens fairly regularly (e.g. for a few minutes after midnight on New Years, when a large portion of Japanese people send well wishes within the same 15 second window).
Landline phones (pre-ISDN) can get their power from the network, thus mitigating one failure vector.
Also, it is much cheaper to provide enough cable than radio transceivers. Thus mobile networks nearly always run close to full capacity... ever had "network busy" on your phone when dialing in a downtown? So they are easily overwhelmed in emergencies. With landline, in contrast, you always have the line, so it is mostly a matter of installing big enough BX station.
I experienced this after the Christchurch earthquake. Without electricity cordless phones are also useless. Our national communications company put a message out asking everyone to bring in their old corded phones so they could be sent down to Christchurch.
Smartphones were better than regular phones during this emergency. My android phone was useless for voice and SMS, but still had a data connection. So, my wife and I were able to send gmail back and forth to stay in touch.
Also, the landline data networks seemed to be up and stable, so Skype worked great. Something to remember next time you're in an emergency and need to get a call out.
I strongly suspect this is not due to an outage in the network, but rather intentional. Some years ago I worked on a project for a Japanese mobile operator to implement a system that prevents "normal" mobile phones from making calls to avoid overloading the network. When activated, only emergency services (fire fighters, police, medical, ...) are allowed to call. At regular intervals, a batch of the "civilian" phones are allowed too for a while, then a different batch, etc, so everyone gets its chance to call if they wait long enough.
The system was a government requirement for events such as yesterday's quake, but I can't confirm all phone disturbances reported were/are due to it.
Technically, it relies on a bitpattern called "accessClasssNBarred".
Thanks very much, InfinityX0. We are in California and are hiring for our Tokyo office. So far, everybody I know is in good health and nobody was hurt.
My thoughts are with those in Sendai and the other affected areas, the helicopter shot on tv is terrifying. The tsunami appears to have been more destuctive than the actual earthquake. The earthquake was a long way offshore (150km) so I imagine the shaking intensity was relatively low on the mainland and the buildings and other infrastructure will be alright.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 277 ms ] threadOr direct 256k: mms://nhk-world.gekimedia.net/nhkw-highm
They have revised the earthquake to 8.4 as of 11:08PM PST.
watching the 3-meter tsunami roll over land is surreal
My friends in Osaka (San Fran) felt it.
I live in Ogaki (Kansas). There was a mild panic in the mall, and our trains stopped for a few minutes.
Folks in Tokyo are largely shaken but not terribly affected (Boston/DC ish).
Miyagi/etc (Maine-ish) got a wee bit whacked by a tsunami. They had a few minutes of warning. Reports will come in for a few hours, but we're really good at dealing with this.
Video: No Tsunamis. Clear water
Announcer: 6 Meter Tsunami Warning
American News: 10 METER TSUNAMIS!!!! BWAAAA!!!!
http://xkcd.com/723/
It took the US news (nytimes.com) at least 20 minutes to have anything up, but twitter and facebook exploded instantly.
I want mass media to diligently collect all the information they can get and I know that that takes longer than just sending a tweet. Whether the New York Times writes about the event five minutes or an hour after it happens doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
This used to be a huge problem for me, sine I would be constantly out-of-touch. But nowadays, I find that Twitter/Facebook tend to keep me up to date on anything that's really big.
It's just outside of the "tsunami zone" in Waikiki, so I know my dad will probably be working until the police make him evacuate. He did that on the last tsunami warning, and Vit's was pretty much the only restaurant open for several blocks. There was a line out of the door, haha.
Hope your family and the restaurant are safe. I have a lot of friends down there as well. I actually wish that I could be there for this, the last time there was a tsunami warning (almost a year ago exactly) I was out of town on the mainland =/
I remember growing up on the beach at the North Shore though, there were a few times when we had to evacuate in a hurry because the early warning systems were not nearly as good as they are now.
Wait, you want to be in the path of a tsunami? I'll admit being in Wisconsin can be a little boring weather-wise but the lack of natural diasasters is kind of nice. The one tornado warning I've lived through was quite enough for me.
On a side note, twitter and fb feeds are going off right now.
Update 2: About an hour later, still very moderate waves, although the water has been receding so far that you can see the reefs. No damage reported. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center doesn't expect this to be a major event, although there's still a few hours left in the danger zone.
I'm in Hawaii right now (out of the evacuation zone). They expect the tsunami to hit in about 45 minutes. The tsunami sirens have been going off about every hour, the evacuation zones have been blocked off, and even the police are starting to move to higher ground. Honolulu Harbor is pretty much empty, and it seems like all flights in and out of the airport have been cancelled.
Also, Waikiki Beach is deserted, the hospitals are being inundated with people seeking shelter, and we're all basically holding our breath. The scary thing is that many people don't realize that a tsunami wave is not like a surfing wave; it's basically a solid wall of water, and we're expecting 6-7 feet at the moment.
If you want to follow what's going on, check out #hitsunami on twitter; it's being updated very frequently. Also, there's a live webcam of Waikiki Beach at http://hitsunami.info.
[edit with more information]
Luckily, it seemed to be a long, hard earthquake rather than a short hard earthquake, which means that buildings are able to withstand the shaking better. The shaking went on for about 3 minutes here, and there were some after shocks that lasted for about a minute.
The Great Hanshin Earthquake was only a 7.2, and it was much more destructive.
The energy release of an earthquake, which closely correlates to its destructive power, scales with the 3⁄2 power of the shaking amplitude. Thus, a difference in magnitude of 1.0 is equivalent to a factor of 31.6 ( = (101.0)(3 / 2)) in the energy released; a difference in magnitude of 2.0 is equivalent to a factor of 1000 ( = (102.0)(3 / 2) ) in the energy released.[2]
However earthquakes may be "flat", in which case it's by r (i.e. r^1). It's probably somewhere in between those.
Unless you also expect a linear attenuation, due to energy loss through the bedrock.
Larger earthquakes have more low-frequency energy, so they go further.
There's no simple equation, they just use regression to fit the attenuation as a factor of 1/r, 1/r^2 (...), and for magnitude, and for frequency.
You can start here: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/hazards/about/attenuation.php
PGV (peak ground velocity) is a more accurate way to estimate the strain put on infrastructure. This shakemap shows the preliminary recordings: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/shakemap/global/shake...
> A massive 8.8 magnitude quake hit the northeast coast of Japan on Friday, shaking buildings in the capital Tokyo >
Why would you talk about the earthquake in Tokyo, when it happened in Miyagi? Tokyo only got hit with a 3 or 4. [EDIT: updated to 5 JMS. Tokyo got hit pretty hard too]
The actual earthquake was around 240 miles away. That's the same distance from New York to Boston.
Also, Al Jazeera is reporting 4+ million homes are without power in Tokyo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan#Nuclear_...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03...
Hope goes out to those more affected, looks insane from what I'm seeing.
Can this be accurate? It reiterated what I heard on the news regarding passenger trains missing due to the Tsunami - but 6MM???
EDIT: Looks like wiki-trolling...
From CNN:
The official death toll stood at 137, with 539 injured and 351 missing, according to Kyodo, citing police, but that death toll seemed almost certain to rise -- from 200 to 300 bodies have been found in the coastal city of Sendai alone, Kyodo reported. It said the death toll is likely to surpass 1,000.
Seems like this happened during the day but watching the news made me think about disasters that happen at night. How are people notified to get the hell out of there??
Are you familiar with the term "air raid siren"? The coast is wall-to-wall peppered with squack boxes. About a minute prior to the earthquake there would have been a "Earthquake is imminent -- brace yourself." broadcast and within a minute there would have been a "A tsunami warning is in effect for (here). Go to shelter immediately. Repeat..."
There are a couple levels of alerts they can pull, from "Be careful" to "MOVE NOW." Miyagi just got "MOVE NOW."
Can I tell you my favorite outsourcing story? Apologies for those who've heard it (and yes, this actually happened):
India: We can't log into the test server.
Patrick: Then you didn't set it up right.
India: No, we did, but we get an error message.
Patrick: What error message?
India: We can't read it.
Patrick: sigh Please take a screenshot then.
India: Here you go.
Patrick: Oh, that is just a weather report which correctly reflects the state of the test database. The system is operating normally. Please proceed with your testing of the function you were assigned.
India: Are you sure it isn't an error? It is written in red. And why would you put a weather report on the login screen anyway?
Patrick: Q1) That is because if you ignore it you'll die. Q2) See Q1.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=422043
Here is a screenshot of EMG1 and EMG2 both being shown at the same time, it was the first time for me to see more than one shown at the same time in production.
http://i.imgur.com/mZxyA.png
I forget what EMG3 is used for.
No, company policy and common sense would not let me tell you the names of the engineers I had that conversation with. You can read it as "An Employee Of A Japanese Megacorp's Indian Subsidiary" if that makes you feel better. I'm assuming most people understand I do not actually mean everybody in the country.
On CNN the newscaster is repeatedly mentioning how people on the ground are waiting in line to use the pay phone to notify loved ones etc...
I use my phone as an alarm so that's why I just thought it might be helpful if there was a public alert service you can sign up for or even a part of the phone (like emergency 911 always works on a cell phone even if you don't have minutes) that will make it ring, beep or do soemthing stupid to get your attention.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTT_DoCoMo#Earthquake_warning_s...
Or a central database and disaster management site where you just register the contact details of your loved ones including yourself. Also a good idea is a general notification for groups.
So say I learnt about it and am in the other end of the world, I would want to leave a beep so shrill that my family gets the hell out and run.
Another easy solution is setting up a reminder service from local trends on twitter+natural language processing+ Bloody loud notification depending on threat levels.
The siren systems are also automated. The signal is relayed by governmental offices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_911
// Although that was a warning message -- not an emergency one.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/poswald/5516954100/in/photostre...
I know some people up in sendai that I'm a bit worried about.
What to Do During an Earthquake
http://www.fema.gov/hazard/earthquake/eq_during.shtm
What to Do After an Earthquake
http://www.fema.gov/hazard/earthquake/eq_after.shtm
Nobody was hurt, fortunately, but I'm really glad this quake wasn't any stronger... I've been through a lot of quakes here, and this is the first time I thought I might be going home in a black bag.
https://www.wepay.com/donate/78062
Not sure how to get the word out, but you've gotta start somewhere. :)
11:30 pm JST and I'm still feeling quakes.
Some of the later quakes were als closer to Tokyo compared to the big one.
Edit: I'm from seismically-inactive Pennsylvania and completely not used to this, even after four years. It took me a while to fall asleep the first time since I kept feeling like I was shaking and would jerk awake. Now I don't know if I should try to fall asleep again or what.
I believe most people in a quake get killed or injured by falling debris. You're probably more likely to get injured trying to run out of the building or by having glass or a piece of a building fall on you than you are of having the building collapse.
If you live in a coastal area, after the quake stops, we have now all learned step two: get your ass to high ground in a hurry.
I think it's fair to post stories which are headlines in ~all news simultaneously, even if not "hacker news" -- nuclear explosions, assassinations of G7 leaders, major wars, etc.
And unlike cosmok, I do mind it, because this type of news is slowly turning HN into something it shouldn't be. There's a reason for this particular guideline, and I think we should honor that.
EDIT: I don't mind the downvoting, but please, if you do that, at least post a comment on why you think my comment deserved to be downvoted.
I upvoted you to keep you closer to cosmok's comment.
If your downvoters think the same way I do, they're downvoting because they don't think right now is a good time to worry about the future of HN, no matter what the guidelines say. This isn't to say your opinion is invalid (it's a perfectly legitimate thing to worry about); it just seems ill-timed in the face of potentially catastrophic disaster, and downvoting is an easy way to express disapproval.
With respect to the kind of exceptions we make every day, I agree with you. But once or twice a year, a lot of people die, and everyone kind of stops what they're doing and pays their respects, wherever they happen to be, whether you're in line at the bank, or on the floor of the senate.
We all happen to be on HN 24 hours a day, so this is where we all stop and take notice.
This story violates neither the letter nor the spirit of the rule against "video" of a disaster; aka cheap sensationalism. Rather, much of the thread is the opposite of sensationalism: e.g. patio11 on the average state of Japanese disaster preparedness.
This story has all sorts of HN community relevance, ranging from how are community members experiencing this on the ground to how do otherwise abstract geology papers manifest in real life to hey, wait, my startup is sitting in a prime earthquake zone; how should we prepare?
And, you know, this is a magnitude 8.9 earthquake. They don't happen every year. We can afford a handful of threads on each one. It's nice to try to have an interesting news site, but if this isn't news one has to question the entire concept of news. Which is fair: News is not for everyone, and perhaps news is not for you. It's just not to your taste. Have you tried an exclusive diet of decade-old paper books?
However, the strongest earthquake to hit Japan in three centuries, causing loss of who knows how many lives and how much damage?
This is news worth looking beyond the "hacker" moniker for.
In a scenario like this, who gives a fuck if it's off topic? And for the record, I saw the story here first, so I am thankful for that.
The reason you saw it here first is because somebody posted it here despite what the guidelines say, and you happened to come at the right moment, before you checked other news sites you usually do.
The fact that you saw it here first does not change the fact that the article is, according to guidelines, off-topic.
Oh, and FYI, not posting this article on HN != not having compassion for fellow hackers.
Also the fact that the post has over 300 points and is comfortably the most talked about thing within the community is proof enough that topics like this should be allowed to remain within HN
Absolutes are silly.
It's clear emotions are running a bit high in this part of the comments.
Edit: I mean this in earnest, we can and should help.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcaFBlH8tjM
"The March 11 earthquake was preceded by a series of large foreshocks over the previous two days, beginning on March 9th with an M 7.2 event approximately 40 km from the March 11 earthquake, and continuing with a further 3 earthquakes greater than M 6 on the same day."
and they are still working apparently
http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/g1qpy/massive_79_...
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/g1qrb/78_earthqu...
Docomo(NTT) http://dengon.docomo.ne.jp/Etop.cgi SoftBank http://dengon.softbank.ne.jp/pc-e1.jsp au(KDDI) http://dengon.ezweb.ne.jp/E/service.do
So now you know the full extent of the disaster.
At first, I didn't think to use a phone, since I was sitting at my desk and email worked normally. I could email a colleague in a different building back and forth in neartime while the quakes were happening. About 15 minutes later it occurred to me to try my (naz)iPhone and see if it was useful. It was not--could not make or receive calls, and the test text message I sent did not arrive in a timely manner (took more than 30 minutes).
Just as a data point.
Also, it is much cheaper to provide enough cable than radio transceivers. Thus mobile networks nearly always run close to full capacity... ever had "network busy" on your phone when dialing in a downtown? So they are easily overwhelmed in emergencies. With landline, in contrast, you always have the line, so it is mostly a matter of installing big enough BX station.
Also, the landline data networks seemed to be up and stable, so Skype worked great. Something to remember next time you're in an emergency and need to get a call out.
The system was a government requirement for events such as yesterday's quake, but I can't confirm all phone disturbances reported were/are due to it.
Technically, it relies on a bitpattern called "accessClasssNBarred".
http://t.co/szbTX4V
http://t.co/nK0p50d
http://t.co/5zfUh6b
Some tags to follow:
http://twitpic.com/tag/tsunami
http://twitpic.com/tag/earthquake
http://twitpic.com/tag/japan