it s called. japan gets earthquakes. you are familiar with earthquakes, but this one felt different? yeah, normally when earthquakes hit japan, you just wake up and turnover and go back to sleep or if you are awake already, you kind of look up and say, oh, an earthquake and go back to what you are doing, and that s what we did during our interview, and then all of a sudden the diet member i was talking to said, wait a minute, this is not an ordinary earthquake. we tried to get up and walk around her office, and we couldn t because the shocks were so severe and then we noticed her belongings kind of flying around the room. things were falling off the shelves and what not, and so we evacuated the building like everyone else was doing, and then i wanted to get back on the train and go back to my office, and the trains were stopped. then i came upstairs, and the traffic wasn t moving properly. things were starting to seem not like what we re used to, and i ended up walking back to my off
of course, we ll stand ready to provide them with what any assistance they require, john. that s mark bartolini from the u.s. agency for international development a short time ago. and i know from your experience covering the tsunami several years ago, it is remarkable, when you see a government, a country in need not only from the united states but around the world, i remember teams there when i there was from australia, new zealand. it s remarkable the outpouring that comes in. and certainly we hope, we hope that japan s challenge is nowhere on the scope of the challenge in southeast asia a few years back. it is heartwarming to see this play out. we definitely hope so. and one thing in particular i wanted to note is unlike the 2004 tsunami, we were able to watch that tsunami hit sunday live in our screens. the aerial footage was seen in numerous, in living rooms, hotel rooms across the world, one hour after the earthquake struck, roughly around 3:30 p.m. local time yesterday as w
look at these pictures. saturday morning now in japan. a little more than 18 hours after a devastating earthquake followed by a punishing tsunami. if you look at these pictures here, people trapped on the roof. that s multi-story building, and they are up on the roof trying to get help. if you look around that building, you can see the debris caused by the quake and the tsunami that followed. at one point we are told that everything, everything but the roof, was under water as the tsunami came through. among those in japan is the wife of u.s. daniel inouye was in toek yes. mrs. rhirano inouye, thank you for joining us. what did it feel like and how did you first know this was different, this was not just another quake in tokyo? well, i have been here in tokyo in my capacity of president of the u.s.-japan
another distant part of the range. i showed some of this to our viewers earlier. i want to show them again and ask you gentlemen if we are in the right place or if more needs to be done. i m showing the warning system. first, the seismic places that are on land and on the ocean floor, and then you bring in the sea level nemg network, largely buoys around the world and different governments and different organizations control these, which is why they are different colors. i soom assume japan has the best early warning system in the world, if you see the network up in here. is this system as good as it can be, or does it need to be updated? well, they have an excellent system, and recently they have even been augmenting their system on land with sensors under the ocean. i imagine there are ways to make it better, but certainly it s an excellent system, and i m sure it saved many, many lives today by warnings that were put out when the earthquake first happened. there was probably ten
council, and i brought a large delegation of japanese-american leaders. we were in a hotel. i was in a hotel coming down an escalator when i began to feel the escalator and the building moving. i got outside. i was with another person who lives here in japan, and he said i have never felt an earthquake like this. i realized it was not the normal normal occurrence, so we stood by the side of the building and the building continued to shake. i m originally from southern california, so i have been in earthquakes, and it lasted quite a long time. i think what has happened since then have been the aftershocks. as recently as a few minutes ago. we are continuing to feel the aftershocks. and as you feel the aftershocks now, as someone who has this experience, both in the united states and from your trips there, help me get a sense of, number one, were others panicking or citizens of tokyo