familiar with hit in 2004 right after the christmas holiday. that was a 9.1 earthquake that triggered that enormous tsunami that cost so many people their lives. now, looking at this right now, we re hearing reports of 8.9. just slightly less than the 9.1 that caused that tsunami. you can imagine that really what we re looking at right now as we see this water roll ahead, what this could mean. it s staggering. keep in mind, this figure with blow my mind and most folks mind, that tsunami from 2004, 200,000 plus people perished in that disaster. 200,000 plus. obviously, details are still coming in or scarce at this point as to what, you know, extent of the damage and death toll may be from this. those other disasters give you some perspective. this an international event. warnings in russia, the philippines, indonesia, taiwan, guam and u.s. state of hawaii. a major, major disaster in that part of the world on this friday morning. we ll continue to bring you
countryside. just absolutely unbelievable images here. again, tsunami warnings not only for japan but other countries as well. that is a picture of a natural gas refinery. you can see the flames shooting into the sky there. the extent of the damage, possible death toll is still unknown at this point. details, as you can imagine, are slowly coming into us here. just an incredible tragedy here. the biggest earthquake in that country since 1995. that was, i think, a 6-point magnitude, this is an 8.9 or 8.8, there are conflicting reports of the strength, but a monster earthquake followed by this devastating tsunami in northeastern part of japan. a country very much in crisis at this point early on what was up until 2:46, what was a normal afternoon local time. the foreign minister asking for aid from other countries. we re taking a look at live pictures from downtown tokyo. some things appear to be moving along, you know, the traffic there being able to move along. however, earlier w
magnitude scale centered around the shores offshore, a very strong earthquake and in the tohoku region and over a wide area damage has been estimated. i offer my deepest sympathy to the people who have suffered the disaster. regarding our nuclear power facility, some of the nuclear power plants have stopped automatically, but so far no radioactive material or radiation has been confirmed to have been leaked to the outside. there has been no information of those lines so far. and given the situation, an emergency disaster response headquarters have been set up with myself as the head. we will secure the safety of the people of japan and in order to minimize the damage, the
cars floating down in the water that was tsunami water that overtook the area. we do have a correspondent in tokyo who said she felt the earthquake, of course, and many people evacuated. and she was live. i mean, she was in that building and felt the aftershocks, one of which was a 7.4. pictures of live downtown tokyo right now. again, this earthquake happened a few hours north of tokyo, but they said they even felt the shaking in that part of the country, to give you some sense of just what a massive earthquake this was. other parts of the country and world are concerned about a follow-up tsunami, guam, taiwan, philippines, indonesia, also, hawaii has been issued a tsunami warning that can also be affected. we have also heard reports of injuries in tokyo. as you can imagine, the mass evacuation. take a look at the airport. people looking for higher ground in light of the tsunami warnings. but really incredible just to see it absolutely covered in water. turned into an island lit
as word of this begins to trickle out through the news media. he also warned people in japan be ready for more aftershocks and waves. this thing is not over. of that whole part of the world impacted because this quake was so big. and also going to impact other parts of the world right now. talking about hawaii, a tsunami warning was issued at about 9:31 there. it could be that the earliest arrival of a tsunami wave would reach hawaii about 2:59 a.m., hawaiian standard time. they re urging people in that area to get to higher ground, especially if they live in a flood zone. they want them to get to higher ground immediately. they re hearing tsunami warnings sirens in honolulu. we talked about australia, chile, other islands in the pacific heeding this warning after this massive, massive earthquake descends upon japan. this is not an isolated incident. be sure to stay tuned to abc news. we ll be back with more after this. ter this. medicare. it doesn t cover everything.