Japan raises nuclear alert level - 18th March 2011

Combo pictures of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. The nuclear plant is mainly for generating electricity and is fortunately located 50 miles from Fukushima town which has more than 300,000 populations as of 2003.















Exactly one week after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake on 11th March 2011 that shook Japan and the subsequent 4 meters tsunami that left approximately 16,000 people dead or missing, the country is still under threat of a serious nuclear breakdown which is deadlier than the Tsunami and Earthquake combined, for the radiation can reach far flung countries.



BBC reported on 18th March 2011 that Japan has raised the alert level at a stricken nuclear plant from four to five on a seven-point international scale for atomic accidents.

The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi site is now two levels below Ukraine's 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

The head of the United Nation's nuclear watchdog warned in Tokyo the battle to stabilise the plant was a race against time.



The crisis was prompted by last week's huge quake and tsunami, which left more than 16,000 people dead or missing.

The Japanese nuclear agency's decision to raise the alert level to five grades Fukushima's as an "accident with wider consequences".

It also places the crisis on a par with 1979's Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the US.





Meanwhile, further heavy snowfall overnight brought more misery to survivors of the 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami, all but ending hopes of finding anyone else alive in the rubble.

According to the latest figures, 6,405 people are confirmed dead and about 10,200 are listed missing.

On Friday 18th March 2011, people across Japan observed a minute's silence at 1446 (0546 GMT), exactly one week after the disaster.

Relief workers toiling in the ruins bowed their heads, while elderly survivors in evacuation centres wept as the country paused to remember.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, arrived in Tokyo and said the Fukushima crisis was a "race against the clock".

"This is not something that just Japan should deal with, and people of the entire world should co-operate with Japan and the people in the disaster areas," said Mr Amano, a Japanese citizen.

He said he would not visit the Fukushima Daiichi site on his current trip to the country.

His four-member team of nuclear experts would start by monitoring radiation in the capital, he said, before moving to the vicinity of the quake-hit facility, reports Kyodo news agency.

Military fire trucks have been spraying the plant's overheating reactor units for a second day.

Water in at least one fuel pool - in reactor 3 - is believed to be dangerously low, exposing the stored fuel rods.

If the ponds run dry, a nuclear chain reaction could release more radiation into the atmosphere.

God bless Japan.. God bless the World.. God Bless us..

Japan hit by 6.9 magnitude Earthquake as tensions in Korean Penisula continues

As tension in the Korean Penisula continues after North Korea shelled Yeonpyeong, a South Korean island with artillery fires on Tuesday, 23rd November 2010, nearby Japan was also jolted by a powerful force, exactly a week after the North Korean attack.

But it was not North Korean bombs or missiles, but rather a 6.9-magnitude earthquake.

The earthquake struck off Japan's southern coast Tuesday, 30 November 2010, shaking a broad swath of the country and swaying buildings in downtown Tokyo.

The Associated Press reported that no damage or injuries were immediately reported, and Japan's meteorological agency said there was no danger of a tsunami.

The temblor hit at 12:25 p.m. local time (0325 GMT), with the epicenter near the Ogasawara Islands, about 500 miles (800 kilometers) south of the main Japanese island, the agency said.

It struck at a depth of 300 miles (480 kilometers).

Japan's meteorological agency reported a magnitude of 6.9, however, the U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was 6.6. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.

The Ogasawara are known as the Bonin Islands outside of Japan.

Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. In 1995, a quake of magnitude 7.2 killed 6,400 people in the western port city of Kobe.

Meanwhile tensions in the Korean Penisula continues, a week after Kim Jong Il attacked Yeonpyeong island, killing 2 South Korean Marines personells.

Yonhap News Agency on Tuesday, 30th November 2010 reported that South Korea's military plans to toughen its rules of engagement with North Korea in a way that gives its troops greater leeway to determine the intensity of a counterattack by the level of damage and threats received, the defense ministry said Tuesday.

The revision plans came amid mounting public criticism in South Korea that the country's military responded too slowly and too weakly to North Korea's Nov. 23 artillery strike on Yeonpyeong Island, which killed four people, including two civilians, and wounded 18 others.

The envisioned change, reported to the National Assembly, will free South Korean forces from the existing regulations that stipulate they should respond to an enemy attack with the same kind of weapons and the same amount of firepower the enemy used.

"We plan to make supplements to guarantee conditions for punishing the enemy," the ministry report said.

The military also plans to give greater leeway to field commanders in counterattacks and give more power to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in order to help the military respond to an enemy attack in a timely manner, the ministry said.

"We plan to differentiate the levels of responses to attacks on the military and attacks on civilians," the ministry said. Revision of the rules of engagement will be made in consultation with the U.S.-led United Nations Command and the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command, it said.

The military also said it plans to seek a 360 billion won (US$310 million) additional increase in its budget for next year to beef up firepower on Yeonpyeong and other front-line islands, including deploying K-77 armored vehicles and K-10 ammunition supply vehicles.

Multiple rocket launchers and anti-artillery radars have already been deployed to Yeonpyeong. In case of further provocations by North Korea, the UNC will provide support, the ministry said.

New Zealand 7.1 Earthquake

New Zealand continues to be shaken by big aftershock following the 7.1 magnitude earth quake that shook the nation, on the early morning of Saturday, 4th September 2010.

In and around CHRISTCHURCH, a magnitude-5.1 aftershock that hammered New Zealand's earthquake-hit city of Christchurch on Wednesday morning, 8 September 2010, sparked evacuations and fresh damage to buildings, causing authorities to extend a state of emergency for another week.

The latest quake, just four miles (6.4 kilometers) below the surface and centered six miles (10 kilometers) southeast of the city, was felt by residents as the strongest aftershock in Christchurch since Saturday's 7.1 magnitude earthquake wrecked hundreds of buildings.

The Associated Press, AP reported that fortunately, nobody was reported injured by the latest temblor.

"My guts is just churning up here. When will this thing end? It is like living in a maelstrom," Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said.

"We have got staff in tears, we have got fire engines going through the middle of the city, power is out and a lot of people are very, very churned up by that," he told the NewstalkZB radio station. "It was a devastatingly, vicious sharp blow to the city."

Initial reports from geological agency GNS Science that the Wednesday morning temblor was magnitude-6.1 were quickly corrected downward.

Officials closed the city's main road tunnel for inspection due to concerns that the aftershock may have caused cracking to the tunnel and retaining walls leading to it, New Zealand Transport Agency local spokesman Peter Connors said.

The tunnel, built in the 1960s, links Christchurch city to the port of Lyttelton.

More than 140 aftershocks have rattled the region since Saturday, and earthquake experts warned Tuesday that another strong temblor might hammer the region in coming days.

The weekend's powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake smashed buildings and homes, wrecked roads and disrupted the central city, though nobody was killed and only two people were seriously injured - which authorities attributed to good building codes and the quake's early morning timing.

"It was as strong as the earthquake in Haiti earlier this year, which caused widespread devastation and is estimated to have killed approximately 230,000 people," Prime Minister John Key said. "Although no one lost their life ... families have been traumatized and lost their valued possessions."

On Wednesday, Key traveled north of the city to inspect houses in the town of Kaiapoi that had been torn from their foundations by the quake.

"It shows you how well the building code works in New Zealand as they had been picked up, ripped apart and yet the structure has survived enough that people could escape," Key said after looking through one wrecked house.

"As this disaster unfolds what we're seeing is some areas are much more badly affected than we thought they were, and, in fact, the damage is much greater than we thought it was," Key told reporters.

The city center remained cordoned off by troops, as authorities extended a state of civil emergency for another seven days.

Only building owners and workers are allowed into the central city to begin clearing up the mess - with much of the center taking on the mantle of a ghost town Quake experts said aftershocks likely will continue for several weeks - and the worst of them may be yet to come.

"It is still possible that we'll have a magnitude-6 in the next week, and people ought to be aware of that, particularly if they are around structures which are already damaged," said Ken Gledhill, a monitor at GNS Science. "For a shallow earthquake like this, they will go on for weeks."

Key called off a planned nine-day trip to Britain and France, citing what he called the quake zone's continuing "instability."

The New Zealand government has said it plans to pay at least 90 percent of the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to rebuild Christchurch's water, waste water and road infrastructure.

In a statement to Parliament on Tuesday 7th September 2010, Key pledged to remove bottlenecks to reconstruction and said the government "is prepared to step up financially to rebuild the region."

The main quake struck at 4:35 a.m. Saturday, 4th September, 2010 near the South Island city of 400,000 people, ripping open a new fault line in the earth's surface, destroying hundreds of buildings and cutting power, which has been gradually restored in recent days.

The government has said that at least 100,000 of the region's 160,000 homes sustained some damage.

New Zealand sits above an area where two tectonic plates collide. The country records more than 14,000 earthquakes a year - but only about 150 are felt by residents. Fewer than 10 a year do any damage.

New Zealand's last major earthquake registered magnitude 7.8 and hit South Island's Fiordland region on July 16, 2009, moving the southern tip of the country 12 inches (30 centimeters) closer to Australia.

Why Chile suffered less damage and death compared to the Haiti earthquake..

The earthquake in Chile was far stronger than the one that struck Haiti last month — yet the death toll in this Caribbean nation is magnitudes higher.

The 8.8 Ritcher scale earthquake that struck Chile was 501 times stronger than the 7.7 Ritcher scale earthquake that hit Haiti last January and caused some 220,000 deaths.

Infact, Chile was struck with a far more powerful earthquake in 1960 - measuring 9.5 on the Ritcher Scale!!!!



The reasons are simple.

Chile was ready and prepared, based on natural calamaties that struck the nation previously.

Furthermore, Chile is wealthier and infinitely better prepared, with strict building codes, robust emergency response and a long history of handling seismic catastrophes.

No living Haitian had experienced a quake at home when the Jan. 12 disaster crumbled their poorly constructed buildings.

And Chile was relatively lucky this time.

Saturday's quake was centered offshore an estimated 21 miles (34 kilometers) underground in a relatively unpopulated area while Haiti's tectonic mayhem struck closer to the surface — about 8 miles (13 kilometers) — and right on the edge of Port-au-Prince, factors that increased its destructiveness.

"Earthquakes don't kill — they don't create damage — if there's nothing to damage," said Eric Calais, a Purdue University geophysicist studying the Haiti quake.

The U.S. Geological Survey says eight Haitian cities and towns — including this capital of 3 million — suffered "violent" to "extreme" shaking in last month's 7-magnitude quake, which Haiti's government estimates killed some 220,000 people. Chile's death toll was in the hundreds.

By contrast, no Chilean urban area suffered more than "severe" shaking — the third most serious level — Saturday in its 8.8-magnitude disaster, by USGS measure. The quake was centered 200 miles (325 kms) away from Chile's capital and largest city, Santiago.

In terms of energy released at the epicenter, the Chilean quake was 501 times stronger. But energy dissipates rather quickly as distances grow from epicenters — and the ground beneath Port-au-Prince is less stable by comparison and "shakes like jelly," says University of Miami geologist Tim Dixon.

Survivors of Haiti's quake described abject panic — much of it well-founded as buildings imploded around them. Many Haitians grabbed cement pillars only to watch them crumble in their hands. Haitians were not schooled in how to react — by sheltering under tables and door frames, and away from glass windows.

Chileans, on the other hand, have homes and offices built to ride out quakes, their steel skeletons designed to sway with seismic waves rather than resist them.

"When you look at the architecture in Chile you see buildings that have damage, but not the complete pancaking that you've got in Haiti," said Cameron Sinclair, executive director of Architecture for Humanity, a 10-year-old nonprofit that has helped people in 36 countries rebuild after disasters.

Sinclair said he has architect colleagues in Chile who have built thousands of low-income housing structures to be earthquake resistant.

In Haiti, by contrast, there is no building code.

Patrick Midy, a leading Haitian architect, said he knew of only three earthquake-resistant buildings in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country.

Sinclair's San Francisco-based organization received 400 requests for help the day after the Haiti quake but he said it had yet to receive a single request for help for Chile.

"On a per-capita basis, Chile has more world-renowned seismologists and earthquake engineers than anywhere else," said Brian E. Tucker, president of GeoHazards International, a nonprofit organization based in Palo Alto, California.

Their advice is heeded by the government in Latin America's wealthiest nation, getting built not just into architects' blueprints and building codes but also into government contingency planning.

"The fact that the president (Michelle Bachelet) was out giving minute-to-minute reports a few hours after the quake in the middle of the night gives you an indication of their disaster response," said Sinclair.

Most Haitians didn't know whether their president, Rene Preval, was alive or dead for at least a day after the quake. The National Palace and his residence — like most government buildings — had collapsed.

Haiti's TV, cell phone networks and radio stations were knocked off the air by the seismic jolt.

Col. Hugo Rodriguez, commander of the Chilean aviation unit attached to the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti, waited anxiously Saturday with his troops for word from loved ones at home.

He said he knew his family was OK and expressed confidence that Chile would ride out the disaster.

"We are organized and prepared to deal with a crisis, particularly a natural disaster," Rodriguez said. "Chile is a country where there are a lot of natural disasters."

Calais, the geologist, noted that frequent seismic activity is as common to Chile as it is to the rest of the Andean ridge. Chile experienced the strongest earthquake on record in 1960, and Saturday's quake was the nation's third of over magnitude-8.7.

"It's quite likely that every person there has felt a major earthquake in their lifetime," he said, "whereas the last one to hit Port-au-Prince was 250 years ago."

"So who remembers?"

On Port-au-Prince's streets Saturday, many people had not heard of Chile's quake. More than half a million are homeless, most still lack electricity and are preoccupied about trying to get enough to eat.

Fanfan Bozot, a 32-year-old reggae singer having lunch with a friend, could only shake his head at his government's reliance on international relief to distribute food and water.

"Chile has a responsible government," he said, waving his hand in disgust. "Our government is incompetent."