Wow! 8.8 oh, wikipedia says 8.9. That makes it the 7th largest earthquake in history. O.o
Actually, I've been watching the news all day and now they're saying that it's the 5th largest earthquake in recorded history. And they're still experiencing some pretty powerful aftershocks, too. Very scary stuff. (And yeah, the newspeople are saying it was an 8.9 magnitude quake now, too. Yikes.)
But really... I think Japan is probably the most earthquake-savvy nation in the world. Even more so than the United States. Their buildings and roadways and whatnot are built specifically to withstand earthquakes. For instance, the tracks for the bullet trains have built-in sensors that tell them if the tracks are even a tiny bit damaged--and if something happens to the tracks, they trains are automatically stopped. And did you guys see the footage of those tall high-rise buildings? They swayed a lot... but I didn't see any of them come down during the quake. It was pretty freaky to watch, but it was also impressive.
The worst part about this disaster is probably the tsunami damage. It's like Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans... only worse. That's going to take FOREVER to get cleaned up, and to repair all of the damage caused by those waves. =/
And the two nuclear reactors that were having problems. I think their backup generators failed, and they were overheating. But last I heard, they had that under control... so I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that they get those reactors cooled down and there aren't any meltdowns.
