before earthquakes and a minute two minutes later, boom you head for the hills, because there s nothing left to do but go to high ground. you mentioned what this sort of event has caused in history. that is right. in the year 1700 there was a massive earthquake and tsunami which surged over japan. and then, running the videotape backwards. you can see that it originated with this fault. and then we can calculate the magnitude and dynamics. once we have the two events linked together. that was what we have only done in the last decade or so. and you mentioned mt. everest. yes, it was created by the collision of two faults. that created the mountains. and mt. everest, that s the power, power packed by the subduction zone earthquake. predictions of when it will the happen is not reliable.
have been there are 400 casualties that are known right now. over 700 people unaccounted for. i i m afraid that number is going to increase a great deal today. this tsunami are they prepared for the eventuality in 10, 15 minutes, cars floating along like their made of balsam wood. going over waterfalls. cars and other refuge i have never seen the like of this. any large earthquake, even a medium-scale earthquake, they issue tsunami warnings that are on the television screen throughout the period you have to be careful of. it is very, very detailed and very particular. people get warnings on their cell phones. and television and radio. so they knew that it would time of arrival of the tsunami is alerted to them rather precisely. but a lot of people did not get
blocking energy production. apparently mr. boehner never heard of libya. what s behind the latest nonsense? everything republicans say is aimed at the ears of conservative iowa caucus voters next year. we start with the earthquake in japan. i have been watching your coverage and what had you to say about this. all i can tell you, i do see a lot of disaster movies. this look real and very scary. what was it like? reporter: yeah. talk about scary. this happened 188 miles north of tokyo but when it struck here, we felt it here all the way down in tokyo. it was so bad i couldn t stand. you had to sort of crouch a little bit to you know, not fall down. you know, i just saw a
what happened in japan was a subduction zone earthquake which created a magnitude 8.9 event which propagated a lot of energy into the shore there. creating a tsunami that you ve seen all sorts of information an videos on and provides a lot of damage onshore. is there any way, it s like asking what caused this weather. what causes an earthquake? what is the most basic give me a basic primer on that. basically what you see happening here is that there s a subduction zone. we ve got two plates moving together. one under the pacific ocean, diving underneath japan, sliding down underneath japan. it has to break every once in a while and that is a very large event which occurs on several hundred year recurrence intervals, but this is something that s not unexpected to happen in the long term. i ve got relatives that live
the 8.9 earthquake that hit japan this morning was the strongest to ever hit the country. it overtook coastal cities in japan. hundreds are dead and still missing others. japanese officials are trying to ease pressure on a nuclear reactor whose cooling system failed in the earthquake s aftermath. what triggered all of this under our earth? what should we expect in coming hours. joining us is frank vernon, geophysicist. jim walsh, research expert with m.i.t. s securities studies program. one at a time here. different topics. to you, mr. vernon. what happened under the earth? does this have anything to do that happened in new zealand and what might happen now and later?