no someone sure how many if anybody survived. this is what it looks like today. and this is what it looked like yesterday. absolutely shocking. now those who are still alive are living with another terrible fear nuclear contamination. the city is a few miles from the nuclear power plant, and it is a problem with its reactor. the earthquake knocked out power at the facility, and when a backup generator failed, the cooling system was unable to provide power to cool the plant s number-one reactor. temperatures are rising inside, and so are radiation levels which are now 1,000 times higher than they should be . the japanese government declared the first state of emergency ever at a nuclear plant. you ve been looking at the issue, what are we finding out about it? we ll be talking to an expert in disaster management. somebody who actually investigated the awful chernobyl meltdown in ukraine in the 1980s.
dangerous with our next guest. that s james actin who has been following the nuclear situation in japan today. i understand once you lose, as they say here, the power to the cooling supply in s an hour before basically you have coolant boiling off and possible meltdown. is that right? that s basically right, cenk. when you scram a reactor, when you turn it off, it continues to produce heat. you need a source of water to cool that while the reactor cools down over the course of a number of days. an internal power supply and backup generator all failed. it caused a series of events we don t fully understand at the
excessive celebration would be the penl. there s no time left to charge. 31-24 the final and finally the biggest upset. to new jersey where they forgot to pay the electric bill to the brand new stadium. can you believe this? someone didn t use the backup generator. the stadium goes dark twice and after the lights go back on, the cowboys continue to roar. they got off to a quick start and never looked back. they win their second game of the year. the backup lit it up for 327 yards against what many people thought was the best defense in the league. you ll see in that great run. cowboys coach out of princeton gets his first game. his first game, first win. 33-20 is the final. what caused the lights to go out? i don t even know. i think they re trying to find out now. they were interviewing the guy who is in charge of the stadium. ok, not a good thing to happen during game time. i m wondering why i m watching the rams game. 25 minutes before the top of the hour. in the days that f
on slowly but surely as i was getting through there. a lot of people were in the streets. i saw buildings with the facades knocked down. i do know that one church tower in the region fell down with to injuries. so i didn t see any of that firsthand because i came directly into the office. so i haven t been out since then. and i hear the newsroom working behind you. obviously there s power there, did you see power no, actually there isn t power here. backup generator? yeah. in fact, it was a challenge because it operates on gasoline. we had to get out and make sure that we had extra gasoline on hand for this. and at least in the general area of central part of santiago, the power is coming on in parts that didn t have it, but it ll be a while according to the electrical service people before most of the city is back up to speed completely. all right. so power in some of the major basic services are out throughout the city of santiago.
philippines and taiwan and japan could be feeling effects from this and that would be a number of hours later, but hawaii at eleven o clock local time is when they potentially could be feeling the effects of this. one last thing, brian, if you re out there and seeing the affects of this and the tsunami has come in or you think it s come in. it can come in waves, you can get another one, five minutes maybe up to about an hour later so don t think that you re safe. because continual tsunami waves can come in, and that the subsequent ones at times can be more devastating, the first one as well, and that s important to keep in mind. brian: all right, rick reichmuth is on the job at the weather center, jen ross has restained us from santiago. what can you tell us about what people are facing there in the capital city. he well, when you go to virtually any store or corner store that has a backup generator and is