earthquakes

Earthquakes of the 20th Century

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has this excellent visualization of the earthquakes recorded between January 1, 1901 and Decemeber 31, 2000. Each earthquake is shown as a circle, where the size indicates the strength and the color indicates the depth. Interesting, how most of these make up lines, showing the tectonic plate borders.

Japan, three month after the earthquake

Big Picture has a few images of a stunning progress achieved by Japanese people just 3 month after the disaster.

Japanese tragedy continued

Big Picture continues the series on Japanese disaster. As on of the comments says:

It’s just incredible how tragedy is heaping upon tragedy – the earthquake, then tsunami, then reactor problems, volcano – and now frigid weather. Love and strength to the people of Japan – your grace through fire is an inspiration to all.

I’ve only seen scenes like this one in the movies about World War II and in post-apocalyptic video games. This one is not a result of someone’s imagination. It is actually how things are now, today, a mere 10,000 km from me. Unbelievable.

Japan : aftermath

Big Picture has a collection of aftermath images for the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan. Horrifying, mind blowing, unbelievable images.

Earthquake and tsunami in Japan

We’ve all heard the words “earthquake” and “tsunami” before. We are all aware that these phenomena are not a stranger to Japan. We all secretly hope that Japanese know how to handle such events. And they in fact do a really good job. But what happened today was different. It was on the Grand Scale. According to this Wikipedia page, today’s earthquake measured 8.9 on Richter scale, which earns it a 7th place in the list of largest earthquakes worldwide.

Such powers of nature are difficult, almost impossible to imagine. And of course the effects of these are profound – people dead and hurt, houses and other properties destroyed, lives dramatically changed, and so on and so forth. All that will not go away tomorrow. On the contrary, this will from now on be a part of Japanese history. And world history. Since it will affect more than just Japan (look at what happened to financial markets today, for example), and it will take more than just Japan to recover from this event.

Gladly, the world is full of kind and considerate people. Several donation efforts started already. Humanitarian organizations jumped in. And the recovery works have already begun. Needless to say it will take time. A long time…