earthquake in Japan

Woke up this morning to this news. (And immediately went to the television to check up on the news; the semi-local Morning Radio Know-Little was talking about how some astrologer was predicting that the moon's perigee was going to cause more of this, and he was acting - or maybe not acting - as if he didn't know the difference between an astrologer and an astronomer).

Wow. It's horrifying. I think 8.9 is about as big as they get - I think the earthquake that caused the 2004 tsunami was that great, but it was in the middle of the ocean. I saw some video with part of the tsunami (? I think) in Japan carrying debris that was on fire. Horrible. My thoughts and prayers are with the people in Japan.

Also, there are tsunami warnings posted for all of the Pacific area. I know (well, "know" through the Internet) people in Hawaii and the Philippines. It looks like, from their Twitter streams, the couple that draw Nemu-Nemu (see sidebar for link) are somewhere safe from the tsunami. Haven't heard from any of the Ravelers I "know." But I think, since 2004, people are more serious about tsunami warnings.

I will say if any of the world's countries can cope with the aftermath of a monster earthquake, Japan is one of them. They're well organized and with a history of earthquakes, they have good disaster preparedness. But I'm sure there's going to be a huge loss of life. (I think CNN was saying 100 people, just before I left the house, so far).

(ETA, about 8:30 here: I am now seeing reports of 300 dead, 300 some missing, possibly a city of many thousands totally gone. Obviously these numbers will change and only 100 dead was way optimistic to hope for.)

I've been in one (tiny - like, 4.5) earthquake in my life (when I lived in Ohio...the semi-recent OKC quake, we didn't even feel here). But of course, the Richter scale is a logarithmic scale, so magnitude 9 quake isn't 4 times more than a magnitude 5, it's 1,000,000 times more. (I think...it's still early for me and I don't always "brain so good" on the different logarithmic levels)

I wonder if the Pacific plate could be moving, and if the recent big Christchurch earthquake, and the ones happening in Chile are related...

It seems like we're in a more seismically active period right now - more earthquakes (more big earthquakes) than I remember hearing of in the past. (Or maybe that's an artifact of the 24-hour news cycle, but I kind of think it isn't.)