Arigato....

...Indeed. What a courageous and humble people.

Anguish

An elderly farmer found stranded in an empty Japanese town…alone since the Tsunami.

The farmhouse sits at the end of a mud-caked, one-lane road strewn with toppled trees, the decaying carcasses of dead pigs and large debris deposited by the March 11 tsunami.

Stranded alone inside the unheated, dark home is 75-year-old Kunio Shiga. He cannot walk very far and doesn’t know what happened to his wife.

His neighbors have all left because the area is 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant — just within the zone where authorities have told everyone to get out because of concerns about leaking radiation.

When a reporter and two photographers from The Associated Press arrived at Shiga’s doorstep Friday, the scared and disoriented farmer said: “You are the first people I have spoken to” since the earthquake and tsunami.

“Do you have any food?” he asked. “I will pay you.”

...The journalists spotted the relatively undamaged house about 500 meters (yards) away. Unable to drive on the road because of the debris, they navigated the rest of the way on foot, sometimes crawling over large branches.

Shiga was seen wandering in front of his house but went inside. The journalists went to greet him.

He said he spent his lonely days since the disaster sitting in bed in his dark home and listening to a battery-powered radio. A scruffy beard covered his face.

"The tsunami came right up to my doorstep,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to my wife. She was here, but now she’s gone.”

...“I‘m old and I don’t know if I could leave here. Who would take care of me?” he said, staring blankly through his sliding glass doors at the mess in his yard. “I don’t want to go anywhere. But I don‘t have water and I’m running out of food.”

On The Seventh Day They Rested

Japan's world-class transportation infrastructure couldn't withstand this month's 9.0-magnitutde quake, but their construction teams are still amazing. This stretch of highway was repaired in just six days by a Herculean road crew. This is the triumph of Japanese engineering.

Under Pressure

As demand spikes for potassium iodide in the wake of Japan’s nuclear crisis, U.S. poison control centers are starting to receive reports of illness in people who’ve ingested the drug aimed at protecting against radiation sickness.

At least seven people have reported reactions to the drug, often called by its chemical name, KI, including two who said they were suffering from serious symptoms including vomiting, racing heart and dizziness or vertigo.

Leadership

Obama’s most self-indulgent moment was broadcast on national television this week when, in the midst of numerous crises crying out for American leadership, he took time to film his picks for the NCAA basketball tournament brackets for broadcast by the ESPN sports network.

This follows a two-year string of self-indulgences by Obama since he became president that has demonstrated to the world that nothing comes before Obama’s me-time.

...Now, with the Middle East in flames and America’s closest Asian ally teetering on collapse from the triple-whammy of a 9.0 earthquake, subsequent apocalytic tsunami and multiple nuclear power plant failures, Obama has spent his time golfing, partying with the press, fundraising, hanging out with athletes, prepping for his NCAA brackets presentation and getting ready for the Obama family taxpayer funded Spring Break trip to Rio de Janeiro this weekend.

The f*ing world is on fire and Commander in 'Tard is partying.
There's a time and place for that. Be a man.

Srsly, Why Would He Care About The Quake In Japan or Anything In The World?

Japan is suffering from a natural disaster that threatens to turn into an existential crisis. Colonel Q-ball has unleashed a blistering assault on pro-democracy rebel forces. Large swaths of the Middle East are in turmoil. The federal government is bleeding red ink, with absolutely no end in site. The economy sucks and is getting battered by skyrocketing commodity prices and a volatile oil market. Near-record numbers of Americans are leaving the work force. If the world isn’t quite on fire…it is at least approaching a slow burn.
But, what’s all that against a little MARCH MADNESS!
Barack Obama will take some time to fill out his bracket for the upcoming NCAA College Basketball tournament.

In The Face Of Darkness...There's Light

Close to the epicenter of Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami, workers at a warehouse hauled out cans of coffee and soda this week to offer to passers-by for free.

Help yourself! Take what you need!" they yelled as they put box after box on the sidewalk. Their boss Kazuyoshi Chiba said the phone lines are down, so he can't reach company headquarters, but "I think this is the right thing to do."

With the same mixture of resilience and resignation that has lifted Japan out of previous disasters, many survivors of last Friday's calamity are calmly pitching in to help themselves and others, taking life one day at a time. Four days on, there is little of the public anger and frustration that so often bursts forth in other countries.

Japan has experienced the most horrific devastation like never before in modern history, yet there are scenes of an incredible sense of calm and self-control. Journalists, reporters are searching for any sign of looting but there is none to be found.

There's a lesson to be learned in respect, selflessness, humility.

Japan Death Estimates Rise To 10,000

The world’s third richest country was forced to send out an urgent international appeal for tents, blankets and other life-saving supplies to prevent the death toll rising beyond the current estimate of 10,000.

With night-time temperatures dropping below zero in some of the isolated towns and villages worst-affected by the disaster, charities warned that further lives could be lost if survivors were not given food and shelter quickly.

Japan Relief Donations

Save the Children: Emergency Relief for Japan Quake
www.savethechildren.org/japanquake
Toll free: 800-728-3843
Text JAPAN or 20222 to donate.

The American Red Cross: Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Relief
www.redcross.org
Text REDCROSS or 90999 to make $10 donation by text message.

Salvation Army
donate.salvationarmyusa.org
Toll free: 800-SAL-ARMY
Text QUAKE or 80888 to donate $10

International Medical Corps
www.internationalmedicalcorps.org
Text MED or 80888 to donate $10

Doctors Without Borders
www.doctorswithoutborders.org

Global Giving
www.globalgiving.org
Text JAPAN or 50555 to donate $10

Spring Is Here

Via SondraK

Patients wait to be rescued from a hospital where there is no electricity or medicine in Otsuchi town in Iwate Prefecture after the magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck the area March 13, 2011.

President Obama just could not wait for spring weather to arrive.

For the second week in a row, the most powerful man in the world stepped away from the White House to hit the golf course.

Even as his administration and the U.S. military help Japan recover from a devastating earthquake, and as the world worries about Fukushima's nuclear reactor, the president could not resist taking advantage of the 48-degree weather in the Washington, D.C., area.

Out Of Adversity, There Remains Respect

The layer of human turmoil - looting and scuffles for food or services - that often comes in the wake of disaster seems noticeably absent in Japan.

“Looting simply does not take place in Japan. I’m not even sure if there’s a word for it that is as clear in its implications as when we hear ‘looting,’" said Gregory Pflugfelder, director of the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University.
Japanese have “a sense of being first and foremost responsible to the community,” he said.

H/T to SondraK

Armageddon: Japan Gets Hit With 8.9 Quake

Via HotAir:

To call it the biggest story in the world doesn’t capture the magnitude. At the moment, it’s really the only story in the world. But even so, it’s confounding to write about. No words are adequate to convey the scale of the forces at work; the obvious points, that the entire country would look like Hiroshima right now if not for Japanese engineering and preparedness.

This image provided by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center shows a ‘tsunami forecast model’ created by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii predicting the wave height of the tsunami generated by the Japan earthquake. The Hawaii’s islands are located at the edge of the yellow pattern, but waves could be higher along the coastline when the tsunami arrives.[AP Photo/Nathan Becker - Pacific Tsunami Warning Center]

The horror...

Anatomy Of A Tsunami

h/t to Ace

Massive 8.8 Magnitude Earthquake Hits Chili

The most powerful quake to hit the country in a half century cut electricity, water and phone lines to many areas, meaning there was no word of death or damage from many outlying areas.

...A tsunami set off by the quake threatened every nation around the Pacific Ocean — roughly a quarter of the globe. Warnings were issued over a wide area, including South America, Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, Russia and many Pacific islands.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's tsunami warning monitors reported a wave measuring nearly eight feet hit near Talcahuano, Chile, about 90 minutes after the quake hit. Other waves of up to four feet hit other coastal areas. The NOAA has placed its alert on the highest level — severe.

Photos of Chili quake.

A personal note by DrewM at AofSHQ

Dubai Mall Shark Tank Cracks

I had a feeling. It was just a matter of time something like this was going to happen.

Engineers in the Middle East battled to shore-up a shark-filled aquarium gushing torrents through a crack.

Shoppers at the Dubai Mall fled in terror today fearing that they were about to be engulfed by 10MILLION gallons of water holding 33,000 sea creatures.

Among the sea life in the tank were 400 SHARKS and killer stingrays.

But Enough About Me...

Via Rush Limbaugh.

MSNBC Reporter Complains About the Media Accommodations in Haiti.

This is MSNBC correspondent Kerry Sanders this morning at Port-au-Prince where the NBC crew slept.

SANDERS: These are the tents that we slept in last night. Some of us just slept outside under the stars. There's a container there that's used for our airplane. One of our colleagues actually just slept inside there.

RUSH: As though people are concerned about where the media is staying, as though there is a lot of concern over their living conditions. You may have half a million people dead in Haiti, and the media continually making it about them. It's just interesting.

@ SondraK

Good Vibrations

CCTV footage has emerged of a news station office in North Carolina seconds before an eathquake struck on January 9.

It shows a dog idly passing the time on the floor before, apparently without any duress, springing up and making a swift exit.

Seconds later seats swing out of position, draws slip open and fixtures and fittings begin to wobble. Then, the shuddering really starts.

Hell On Earth

Dazed survivors wandered past dead bodies in rubble-strewn streets Wednesday, crying for loved ones, and rescuers desperately searched collapsed buildings as fear rose that the death toll from Haiti's devastating earthquake could reach into the tens of thousands.

The first cargo planes with food, water, medical supplies, shelter and sniffer dogs headed to the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation a day after the magnitude-7 quake flattened much of the capital of 2 million people.

Tuesday's earthquake brought down buildings great and small — from shacks in shantytowns to President Rene Preval's gleaming white National Palace, where a dome tilted ominously above the manicured grounds.

More...