tsunami warnings are up in at least 20 countries, including here in the u.s. most specifically hawaii and the u.s. coastline stretching from the california/mexico border all the way up to alaska. back in japan near tokyo, there are incredible pictures of some of the disastrous effects of this earthquake, including this oil refinery burning out of control. japan also shutting down some of its nuclear power plants. we also had a chance to hear from kyung lah that they made an declaration. concerns that the electrical power is not as strong as they would like. they ve told people in that vicinity to stay in their homes but warn this is not any type of nuclear meltdown or leak. the prime minister of japan saying as of right now that there are no reports of any radio active materials leaking from any of these plants. we are not going far away from that story at all. but i want to update you on other stories. including what s happening in wisconsin. the state assembly has passed that contr
this is a buckling city, tokyo, she said it was shocking and unusual to see this city completely come to a halt. would you agree with that assessment? it was gridlock, ground to a complete halt. and one of the scarier parts of it there was no phone service. none of the land lines would go through. fortunately the internet never stopped working the entire time and that s how we were able to keep updated. the downtown area was literally a mess. but it was a sea of humanity, if you will. it wasn t a lot of destruction down there. and last thing to you here, would you say it s strange we would hear an 8.9 earthquake and it s odd to think people were relatively calm. but you hit on this before. even though this one was powerful, would you say people were fairly calm and orderly and knew what to do? absolutely. i think a lot of people kept a
japan. right, northeast of tokyo. unbelievable. and this is where they ll need a lot of their rescue operations obviously if they re able to get people out of there alive. that s something that s actively happening right now as we continue to follow. in the meantime, an american writer and translator living in tokyo at the time. let s listen to his account. it was absolutely unlike anything i ve ever experienced before. i ve been living here for eight years now. and this was quite simply the biggest, longest lasting earthquake i ve experienced here. there are earthquakes from time to time, but we have never ever felt anything on the magnitude, literal magnitude of what with experienced today. it was a beautiful spring day, sunny outside. i d just come home from a little errand to the grocery store and all of a sudden, bam, it just hit. you could tell this was different instantly from other tremors. it picked up, the gentle
thoughts? well, the only thing you can really compare it to is the sumatra earthquake. you had that up there a moment ago. it s important to take lessons from that. there was a tsunami similar to this one. after the sumatra earthquake, there was another earthquake magnitude 8.4 that occurred. these things don t happen in isolation. in japan in 1836 there was a famous sequence of two earthquakes larger than magnitude 8.0 which were separated by 36 hours. earthquakes are clustered in space and time. unfortunately for japan, it s likely there will be major aftershocks. there have already been some, but even some as large as 8.0, and those could also cause major damage and destruction and tsunamis. in addition, there was an earthquake not recorded by any instrument, but we know that it existed, happened between 1699 and 1700 a.d.
sway. people are prepared for it. the train lines are prepared to shut down if there is a disaster. is so for the most part, infrastructure is intact, it s simply not working right now trying to get the people out because there is concern of the aftershocks. kyung lah, we ll continue to check in with you. about 19 minutes past the hour on this american morning. breaking story, two-prong disaster we re calling this after an initial massive earthquake that triggered a massive tsunami. tsunami warnings in place for the western coast of the u.s. dave applegate, sir, we appreciate you being here with us. help us put this in perspective. we know this is one of the largest earthquakes the world has ever seen. just how rare of an occurrence is an 8.9 magnitude earthquake? well, as you ve mentioned, this is we ve only had a handful of these in the past century. this is the biggest earthquake we ve had since the magnitude