SEA RISES, JAPAN QUAKES Toll 1,000 And Rising Tsunami Alerts In US, South America

Tokyo: A ferocious tsunami spawned by the biggest earthquake ever in Japan slammed the country’s eastern coast on Friday, killing at least 1,000 people, sweeping away houses, boats and cars across cities and farmlands. Hours later, the tsunami hit Hawaii and set off warnings as far away as the west coast of the United States and South America.

Japanese police officials said toll was at least 1,000 with 300 bodies found in Sendai, a port city in the northeastern part of the country and the closest large population to the epicentre. The full extent of injuries wasn’t known and the toll is feared to rise substantially. Walls of water whisked away houses and cars in central Japan, where terrified residents fled the coast. Train services were shut down across central and northern Japan, including Tokyo, and air travel was severely disrupted. A ship carrying more than 100 people was swept away by the tsunami, Kyodo News reported.

Even for a country used to earthquakes, this one was of horrific proportions because of the tsunami that swallowed everything in its path as it surged several kilometers inland before retreating. The apocalyptic images of surging water and uncontrolled conflagarations broadcast by Japanese TV resembled scenes from a Hollywood disaster movie. The government evacuated thousands of residents near a nuclear plant about 250km northeast of Tokyo after a backup generator failed, compromising the cooling system.

The US Geological Survey said the quake measured a magnitude of 8.9, making it the most severe since an 8.8 quake off the coast of Chile a little more than a year ago. It was less powerful than the 9.1-magnitude quake that struck off Sumatra in late 2004, which triggered a tsunami that killed more than 3,00,000 people, including many on India’s east coast.

“This tremor was unlike any I’ve experienced previously, and I’ve lived here for eight years,’’ said Matt Alt, an American writer living in Tokyo. “It was a sustained rolling that made it impossible to stand, almost like vertigo.’’ Dozens of aftershocks have been felt in the hours after the quake, some of them of magnitude 6.0 or greater, strong enough to do significant damage of their own. A second major earthquake, of 7.4 magnitude, was reported as aftershocks shook the region.