Empress Jelaine

The most powerful quake to hit Japan since records began has collided with the area's north-east and sparked a annihilating tsunami.

Nipponese TV showed railcars, ships and constructions swept away by a Brobdingnagian wall of body of water after the 8.9-magnitude seism.

A state of pinch has been announced at a nuclear power flora but functionaries said there were no radiation news leaks.

At least 60 peoples have been voted down by the temblor, which impressed about 400km (250 miles) north-east of Tokyo.

The death toll is expected to go up importantly.



Some accounts cite Japanese laws as saying 200 to 300 bodies have been felt in the larboard metropolis of Sendai.
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At the scene.
Roland Buerk.
BBC News, Tokyo.

When the quake bang, edifices in Tokyo swayed. Walking was like passing over the deck of a ship at sea.

Peoples poured down from their agencies and stood in the street staring up.

A big firing seemed to have divulged out in one portion of the city and, in another place, injured peoples were being brought out of a station.

The authorities immediately made out a tsunami warning.

In Tokyo, public transport has been debarred, elevators are switched off in many constructions and thousands of peoples have gathered in squares and around train stations.

The earth tremor, quantified at 8.9 by the US Geological Survey, hit at 1446 local time (0546 Greenwich Mean Time) at a depth of about 24km.

A tsunami warning was led across the Pacific to North and South America.

The Red Cross in Hollands warned that the undulations could be higher than some Pacific islands, Reuters news agency said.

Coastal areas in the Philippines, and other parts of the Pacific were voided ahead of the tsunami's required comer.

The first waves, currently under a cadence richly, have begun giving Hawaii.

New Zealand downgraded its watchful to a marine menace, meaning strong and strange streams were expected.

'Train missing'

Strong undulations hit Japan's Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, functionaries said, prejudicious xiis of coastal biotic communities.

Kyodo news agency said a 10-metre undulation (33ft) moved Sendai, which is in Miyagi.


Japan's NHK television showed a massive spate of debris-filled body of water sweeping away buildings, machines and ships and passing far inland.

Automobilists could be seen trying to speed away from the bulwark of body of water.

A passenger train with an unknown number of people aboard was missing in one coastal surface area, law told Kyodo.

And a ship transporting 100 hoi pollois was swept away, Japanese media reported, citing police in Miyagi. It is not clear what bechanced to the vessel.

Farming area around Sendai was inundated and the undulations forced automobiles across the rails of the city's drome. Kindles revealed out in the city's center.

A state of pinch was announced at the Fukushima power plant after the cooling system went wrong in one of its nuclear reactors when it shut down mechanically because of the earthquake.


Deadliest earthquakes.
xBL .27 July 1976, Tangshan, China : est 655,000 killed, 7.5.
xBL .26 Dec 2004, Sumatra, Indonesia : 9.1 earthquake and tsunami kills 227,898 across Pacific region.
xBL .12 Jan 2010, Haiti : 222,570 killed, 7.0.
xBL .12 May 2008, Sichuan, China : 87,587 killed, 7.9.
xBL .8 Oct 2005, Pakistan : 80,361 killed, 7.6.
xBL .31 May 1970 Chimbote, Peru : 70,000 killed, 7.9.
xBL .20 June 1990, Manjil, Iran : 40,000 killed, 7.4.
xBL .26 Dec 2003, Bam, Iran : 31,000 killed, 6.6.
xBL .26 Jan 2001, Gujarat, India : 20,023 killed, 7.7.
xBL .17 August 1999, Izmit, Bomb : 17,118 killed, 7.6.
xBL .30 Sep 1993 Latur, India : 9,748 killed, 6.2.
xBL .16 Jan 1995, Kobe, Japan : 5,530 dead, 6.9.


Account of deadly earthquakes.
How to quantify earthquakes.
Livened guidebook : Earthquakes.
Invigorated guidebook : Tsunamis.

The local government urged on 2,000 nearby occupants to empty the area as a precaution. Prime Minister Naoto Kan said no radiation news leaks at that power plant or any of the other nuclear reactors in the quake-hit zone had been detected.

The UN's nuclear federal agency said four nuclear power plant lifes had shut down safely.

In Iwate prefecture, also near the epicenter, an functionary said it was hard to gauge the extent of the death.

"Roads were severely damaged and cut off as the tsunami washed away junk, railway cars and many other things," said Hiroshi Sato, a calamity management official in Iwate.

The earthquake also triggered off a monumental blazing at an oil refinery in Ichihara metropolis in Chiba prefecture near Tokyo, engulfing storage tanks.

There were reputations of about 20 peoples wounded in Tokyo after the roof of a hall broke down on to a gradation ceremony.

Occupiers and workers in Tokyo rushed out of apartment buildings and office blocks and gathered in parklands and overt spaces as aftershocks went forward to hit.

Many peoples in Tokyo said they had never found such a herculean quake.

In central Tokyo, Jeffrey Balanag said he was stuck in his bureau in the Shiodome Sumitomo edifice because the lifts had halted working.

"We 're almost seasick from the perpetual peal of the construction," he told the BBC.

Bullet train services to northern Japan were stopped and rapid transit in Tokyo was debarred, stranding many workers in the city center.

About four million homes in and around Tokyo suffered power outages.

In a telecast speech, Mr Kan covered his fellow feeling to the dupes of the tragedy and said an emergency reply headquarters had been set up.