[NCC] W1NN Is Fine so Far

[Hal Offutt]

Thanks to everyone for their expressions of concern.  We are okay here in Tokyo but it's been a rough night with continuous, but small (for us) aftershocks.  The 8.8 earthquake occurred about 250 miles from here and they say that it registered 5.0 here.  I was walking on the sidewalk downtown when it happened and if that was a 5, I sure don't want to experience an 8.8.  The buildings were visibly swaying back and forth and the ground was moving rapidly back and forth for about two minutes.  Everyone ran out of the buildings into the middle of the street until the shaking was over.  The XYL and I miraculously managed to find each other (she had just boarded the subway when the quake occurred but the doors had not closed and she was able to get off and make it up to the ground.  A few minutes earlier and she would have been stuck underground until they inspected the tracks.  Not a pleasant prospect.)  We spent a couple of hours in a park until the aftershocks subsided and went back to our apartment. 

We finally went to bed around 12:30 but kept our clothes on and a small suitcase filled with water and food next to the front door in case we needed to escape during the night.  Neitherof us slept much.

The scenes on TV this morning are horrific.  The tsunamis were sometimes as large as 10 meters and wiped out quite a few seaside neighborhoods up in JA7 territory.  There are a lot of fires blazing away at oil refineries and other places where there is fuel to burn.  And radiation is leaking from a nuclear power plant and they have ordered an evacuation of the area 10 km around the facility.  You're probably hearing about this on radio and TV there so this may be redundant.

We have electric, gas, water and even Internet here so things are relatively normal for us.  It will be a long time before a lot of Japan is back to normal again.

A concern is a new round of 6.0-6.8 earthquakes occurring inland quite some distance from the big one.  Don't know what to think about that.

I was interviewed on Minneapolis Public Radio's Midmorning program.  You can probably find it on their website if you're interested.

73,

Hal