Massive Earthquake and Tsunami Hit Japan

In this image made off Japan's NHK TV video footage, houses are washed away by 
tsunami in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture (state) eastern Japan, after Japan was
struck by a magnitude 8.9 earthquake off its northeastern coast Friday, March
11, 2011. (AP Photo/NHK TV) 

A tsumani triggered by a powerful earthquake makes its way to sweep part of 
Sendai airport in northern Japan on Friday March 11, 2011. The magnitude 8.9
earthquake slammed Japan's eastern coast Friday, unleashing a 13-foot (4-meter)
tsunami that swept boats, cars, buildings and tons of debris miles inland.
(Kyodo News/Associated Press) 

A massive tsunami sweeps in to engulf a residential area after a powerful 
earthquake in Natori, Miyagi Prefecture in northeastern Japan. (Reuters) 

Reporters at the Associated Press Tokyo Bureau in Tokyo take shelter under a 
table while a strong earthquake strikes eastern Japan. (Itsuo Inouye/Assoctiated
Press) 

Tsunami swirls near a port in Oarai, Ibaraki Prefecture (state) after Japan was 
struck by a strong earthquake off its northeastern coast Friday, March 11.
(Kyodo News/Associated Press) 

This National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Global bathymetry 
map image released on March 11, 2011 shows features of the ocean floor depth (or
bathymetry) from a NOAA ETOPO-1 dataset. The image shows the entire Western
Pacific basin. Notice how abruptly the Japanese islands rise out of the ocean.
Other coastal Asian areas have much more gradual slopes. The islands and
mountain ranges throughout the ocean, visible in this imagery, also affect the
tsunami travel time and speed. In the open ocean, tsunamis can travel at speeds
up to 500 mph (800 kph). This momentum is what creates such a destructive force
as the wave moves inland. Tsunami waves rolled thousands of miles across the
Pacific Ocean after a massive earthquake off Japan and washed ashore in Hawaii
early March 11, 2011, but the tourist hotspot appeared to escape major damage.
As sirens blared and Hawaiian authorities rapidly evacuated low-lying areas, the
Pacific Tsunami Warning Center reported wave changes at Waianae Harbor at around
3:24 a.m. (NOAA/handout)

A man looks for supplies in a store in Tokyo that has almost sold out of food 
and drink as people are unable to return home after an earthquake March 11.
(Yuriko Nakao/Reuters) 

Residents check the damaged done on a road a house in Sukagawa city, Fukushima 
prefecture, in northern Japan. (Fukushima Minpo/AFP/Getty Images) 

Workers inspect a caved-in section of a prefectural road in Satte, Saitama 
Prefecture, after one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded in Japan slammed
its eastern coast March 11. (Saitama Shimbun/Associated Press/Kyodo News) 

A mother and child crouch on a street in Tokyo while an earthquake hits Friday,
March 11, 2011.

A stranded elderly woman is carried on the back of a Japanese soldier after being rescued from a residence at Kesennuma, northeastern Japan, on Saturday March 12, 2011, one day after a giant earthquake and tsunami struck the country's northeastern coast. (AP Photo/Kyodo News)