Hundreds dead after quake, tsunami slam Japan

Houses burn as the Natori river floods the surrounding areas after a tsunami in Natore, Northern Japan - photo by AP

Story by NBC News, msnbc.com staff, Reuters and AP

Key details:

• Police say 200 to 300 bodies found in Sendai after tsunami
• Dam breaks in Fukushima prefecture, washing away homes
• Coast Guard searching for ship carrying 80
• At least 90 fires in northeast Japan
• Train with unknown number of passengers is missing
• Pressure rising at nuclear plant , thousands evacuated
• Japanese PM cites 'major damage'
• 4 million lose power in Tokyo area
• 65 aftershocks, many above 6.0
• Tsunami reaches Hawaii
• Smaller waves reach Oregon, Calif. coasts

NOAA via AFP - Getty Images

This graphic provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows estimated tsunami travel times following the massive Japan earthquake.
 
TOKYO — A magnitude 8.9 earthquake — the biggest in modern Japanese history — slammed the island nation's eastern coast Friday afternoon, unleashing a 23-foot tsunami that swept boats, cars, buildings and tons of debris miles inland and prompting a "nuclear emergency."

Hours later, the tsunami reached Hawaii, with initial reports citing little damage. Warnings blanketed the Pacific, putting areas on alert as far away as South America, Canada, Alaska and the entire U.S. West Coast. According to Japanese police, 200 to 300 bodies were found in Sendai, the coastal city closest to the epicenter. Another 137 people were confirmed killed, with 531 missing. At least 627 people were injured.

TV footage taken from a military plane showed fires engulfing a large waterfront area in northeastern Japan. Houses and other buildings were ablaze across large swathes of land in Kesennuma city in Miyagi prefecture, near Sendai. The city, with a population of 74,000, has residential, light industry and fishing areas.

According to reports, police told the Kyodo news agency that a passenger train with an unknown number of people aboard was missing in one coastal area.

The government ordered thousands of residents near a nuclear power plant in Onahama to evacuate because the plant's system was unable to cool the reactor and pressure inside is rising. The reactor's core remained hot even after a shutdown, and a radiation leak was seen as possible. The plant is 170 miles northeast of Tokyo.

The Defense Ministry dispatched dozens of troops trained to deal with chemical disaster to the plant in case of a radiation leak.

Tsunami tidal waves hit houses after a powerful earthquake in Natori on Friday, March 11.

'Major damage in broad areas'

Overall, dozens of cities and villages along a 1,300-mile stretch of coastline were shaken by violent tremors that reached as far away as Tokyo, hundreds of miles from the epicenter.

"The earthquake has caused major damage in broad areas in northern Japan," Prime Minister Naoto Kan said at a news conference.

Even for a country used to earthquakes, this one was of horrific proportions because of the tsunami that crashed ashore, swallowing everything in its path as it surged several miles inland before retreating. The apocalyptic images of surging water broadcast by Japanese TV networks resembled scenes from a Hollywood disaster movie.

Large fishing boats and other sea vessels rode high waves into the cities, slamming against overpasses or scraping under them and snapping power lines along the way. Upturned and partially submerged vehicles were seen bobbing in the water. Ships anchored in ports crashed against each other.

Sendai airport was inundated with thick, muddy debris that included cars, trucks, buses and even light planes.

The highways to the worst-hit coastal areas were severely damaged and communications, including telephone lines, were snapped. Train services in northeastern Japan and in Tokyo, which normally serve 10 million people a day, were also suspended, leaving untold numbers stranded in stations or roaming the streets. Tokyo's Narita airport was closed indefinitely.

'Really nerve-wracking'

Tomoko Koga, a 34-year-old translator and interpreter, told msnbc.com she couldn’t see any damage from her house in Chiba, outside of Tokyo, but was watching reports of devastation on the news. “I don’t even know what to say. I feel sorry that I’m safe and OK because there are so many people affected by this disaster.”

Koga was waiting to hear back from her father, who was stranded in his office in Tokyo. “He texted us right after the earthquake that there wouldn’t be any way for him to come back home. But after that, we didn’t hear from him. It’s really nerve-wracking.”

Austrian Lukas Schlatter said he saw houses and cars moving when the quake struck Japan, and it was even hard for him to stand, “like I was a little bit drunk.”

Schlatter, a 22-year-old intern at the Austrian embassy in Tokyo, said there was a lot of shaking and books fell off shelves in their office. “My Japanese co-workers were also scared because they said they had not experienced that strong of an earthquake in a long time,” he told msnbc.com in a Skype interview.

More than 4 million buildings were without power in Tokyo and its suburbs, the NHK news agency said.

Around Sendai, waves of muddy waters flowed over farmland, carrying buildings, some on fire, inland as cars attempted to drive away. Sendai airport was inundated with cars, trucks, buses and thick mud deposited over its runways.

More than 300 houses were washed away in the city of Ofunato alone. Television footage showed mangled debris, uprooted trees, upturned cars and shattered timber littering streets.

The tsunami roared over embankments, washing anything in its path inland before reversing directions and carrying the cars, homes and other debris out to sea. Flames shot from some of the houses, probably because of burst gas pipes.

A large fire erupted at an oil refinery in Ichihara city and burned out of control with 100-foot-high flames whipping into the sky.

Jefferies International Limited, a global investment banking group, said it estimated overall losses to be about $10 billion.

Struck at a depth of six miles

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake hit at 2:46 p.m. local time and was a magnitude 8.9, the biggest earthquake to hit Japan since officials began keeping records in the late 1800s — and the fifth strongest ever recorded worldwide.

The quake struck at a depth of six miles, about 80 miles off the eastern coast, the agency said. The area is 240 miles northeast of Tokyo.

A tsunami warning was extended to a number of Pacific, Southeast Asian and Latin American nations, including Japan, Russia, Indonesia, New Zealand and Chile. In the Philippines, authorities ordered an evacuation of coastal communities, but no unusual waves were reported.

In downtown Tokyo, large buildings shook violently and workers poured into the street for safety. TV footage showed a large building on fire and bellowing smoke in the Odaiba district of Tokyo. The tremor bent the upper tip of the iconic Tokyo Tower, a 1,093-foot steel structure inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

The quake was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that struck New Zealand late last month, devastating the city of Christchurch.

Japan's worst previous quake was in 1923 in Kanto, an 8.3-magnitude temblor that killed 143,000 people, according to USGS. A 7.2-magnitude quake in Kobe city in 1995 killed 6,400 people.

Japan lies on the "Ring of Fire" — an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 percent of the world's quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 nations. A magnitude-8.8 temblor that shook central Chile last February also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.