apocalyptic is the only word that comes to mind. you re seeing huge ships overturned and you re seeing cars that were flung in the waters against busy highways. cars that looked like toys when you look at these images from aerial shots that came in to cnn. this looks like some sort of boat, some sort of ship overturned. we re hearing in sendai up to 300 bodies discovered, close to the epi center. look at this. this is the moment the earthquake struck in a supermarket in tokyo, japan. it is 400 kilometers, 250 miles or so away from the epi center. kate, they may be used to this in japan, but even by japan standards. which gets a lot of earthquakes. this was something very much out of the ordinary. 8.9 magnitude earthquake. very scary scenes. our kyung lah was there and describes the scene saying it was nothing like anyone that lives in japan has seen in quite some time. the reaction was very different,
earthquake off the coast of japan. 8.9 magnitude. we re talking historic strength here for an earthquake, even by japan standards. this rattled nerves and caused massive amounts of damage, and the death toll, as far as we can tell you, and we re expecting it to rise tragically, at least 200 people, if not 300 in one village alone, sendai on the northern coast of japan. as we re learning, one of the closest closest coast to the epicenter of where it hit. it hit 80 miles off of the coast. you re looking at more pictures from japan. as you can see, we re seeing now on some of the raw video coming in kind of scrambled, we re seeing it here. rescue efforts under way. you can just imagine kind of the chaos that s happening right there, happening there, and happening all over the country. this is nhk, the japanese network showing images of the devastation. we will be right back with more.
pacific ocean and racing is almost an understatement toward the west coast of the u.s. the wave was unleashed by an 8.9 magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of japan earlier. and listen to these figures here. police in miaji are saying 200 to 300 bodies have been found in the coastal city of sendai alone. closer to the epi center than the capital city of tokyo. still important to underironically this. we haven t gotten the casualty count numbers yet. people not on the ground there. that is why our teams are racing as fast as they can to the hard-hit areas and dozens of countries in territories are still under tsunami warnings this hour still. 45 minutes ago the tsunami waves began hitting hawaii and carter evans is live on the phone in honolulu.
roof waiting for rescue. fires burn and these flame flames at an oil refinery rage out of control all of this as the government tries to take stock of the destruction and coordinate a response. a number of confirmed deaths. dozens of injuries. but it s just too early to know the full scope of this disaster. in bustling tokyo, a city of 13 million, about 230 miles away from the epi center, they felt powerful aftershocks. train stations shut down. commuters panicked and babies cried. though earthquakes are common in japan, people who live there say this is unlike anything they have felt before. my wife and i stood outside and basically held on to the outside of our house. you couldn t even stand up. we have never, ever felt anything on a magnitude literal magnitude what we experienced today. reporter: according to the u.s. geological survey this is one of the most powerful earthquakes of the last century.
reporter: it is such a good if he question and one i asked congressman king. he says with his connections with local law enforcement in new york he says is the epi center of this he hears all the time is there a lack of cooperation but he is not i inviting the fbi director or attorney general or anybody from local law enforcement. his answer effectively was he doesn t necessarily think they are going to say what he hears privately. he says they are not going say that and publicly say they are getting cooperation which we should note for the record does jibe with academic studies that say the same thing. one serve from will be there. the witnesses he invited what he calls average muslims but they are two family members of muslims in america who were radicalized and also another doctor from arizona who agrees with him. amazing how much this hearing which as we know, hearings don t often create so many hearings on capitol hill and don t often create this much conversation