8.9 quake hits Japan

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Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan



Due to the extensive damage in Japan caused by the massive earthquake and resultant tsunami on March 11, many have questioned if the island nation can recover in a year, much less a few months. If the swiftness with which the Japanese can repair roads is any indication, we wouldn't bet against the country cleaning up this catastrophe in short order.

As a result of the quake, a 150-meter section of the Great Kanto Highway in Naka was absolutely obliterated, with massive chasms running right through the middle of the road. Work crews at the NEXCO road repair company sprang into action on March 17, working at a fevered pitch to help get their country on the road to recovery, literally. Amazingly, after only six days of labor, the road is silky smooth and ready for travel. Look at the the before and after photos above to see just how amazing this feat is.

Given the fact that road crews in the U.S. can spend three or more months repairing a single lane of concrete, only to leave the orange barrels on the road for another two weeks, we're blown away by this feat of engineering. Simply amazing.

http://www.autoblog.com/2011/03/24/japanese-repair-quake-ravaged-road-in-just-six-days/

[DIDI]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

I assumed the top one was the before!! How did they do that ???

[feather]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

Hmmm I actually assumed the top one is AFTER the repair, but that would seem too miraculous, like nothing happened

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Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

This article shows the pictures as before and after the repairs ...

[DIDI]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

This made it to the news here tonight. Hope some road builders in Australia were watching , we need lots of new roads

[Huggie Smiles]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

2 weeks later and most of the media has already moved on

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/03/japan-earthquake-two-weeks-later/100034/

[dusk]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

^^^ Extremely intense some of those

[floridaorange]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

2 weeks later and most of the media has already moved on

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2...-later/100034/

thx man, these are really good photos, and horrifyingly sad.

[bobjuice]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

Note to UK Govt: Please call NEXCO road repair company, they could well offer a few tips to the guys who work on the roads in the UK. You know the ones that have been fucking about on the M1 for the last 4 years? Just a thought.

[DIDI]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

^^^ Great minds think alike !!

[bobjuice]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

Fear and devastation on the road to Japan's nuclear disaster zone

Daniel Howden travels through a post-tsunami wasteland to the gates of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi power station

Saturday, 26 March 2011


Fred de Condapappa
At the gates of the Fukushima Daiichi power station


Once this road was thronged with traffic: an expressway, one of the arteries of a nation's economic life, as familiar and modern a sight as you would find anywhere in Japan. The only barriers on the route to Fukushima Daiichi were the other people heading in the same direction.
Today the journey is different. It is a journey to the heart of a catastrophe. About 10 kilometres beyond the half-deserted city of Iwaki, the coastal road is blocked not by commuters but by landslides; the satellite navigation system that might once have flashed up traffic jams shows clusters of red circles that denote barred roads. And when we reach the inland expressway itself, the only vehicles disturbing the silence are the rumbling military trucks of Japan's Self Defence Force. Twenty kilometres out from the nuclear plant, abandoned road blocks mutely signal our entry into the nuclear exclusion zone.
It is a scene of devastation. Underneath us the road cuts across rice fields strewn with cars, their wreckages seemingly tossed by the hand of an angry child: in one paddy an upturned Nissan Micra; in another a Toyota people carrier filled to its sunroof with mud. The second storey of a nearby house perches on a single pillar, like a boxy flamingo. The ground floor has been erased, splinters of wood pointing the way the wall of water had gone.

And yet after two weeks of minutely documented destruction, these scenes seem more familiar than eerie. The empty streets on the hillside of nearby Kumamachi, which escaped the tsunami, attest to a different kind of fear. Outside its abandoned houses a gentler tremor has shaken roof tiles to the floor and knocked over bicycles. But it feels as though the residents could return at any moment. Their doors are open.
The people here must have been able to hear the hydrogen explosions that rocked the power plant only three kilometres away. They can't have waited much longer to leave. No one will see the cherry blossom that's opening on the boughs of a tree in the school playground, or observe the custom to share a drink underneath it with friends. The children's umbrellas will stay in the rack outside their empty classroom.
Stray cats provide a flicker of movement as they wander in the newly emptied landscape. A few dogs have been left behind, one trailing its lead. In a village beneath one of the flyovers on Route 6, an elderly couple emerge from their car and run into a house. By the time we backtrack and climb down to find them they have gone.
Despite the hundreds of homes still standing they will be the only non-emergency workers we see. Their fleeting presence is a reminder of our own vulnerability, even inside a sealed car on a deliberately brief journey through the zone. We only venture outside the vehicle to remove heavy debris in our way. As we edge closer to our destination, we make our way over buckled tarmac where sand has been shovelled into yawning cracks and logs have been rolled into the broken steps carved by the earthquake.
The brooding presence of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is telegraphed by the crowds of transmission-tower pylons converging on their source. A stream of white vehicles manned by ghostly figures in protective overalls, all breathing through respirators, suggests no let-up in the fight against a meltdown.
Finally we are seeing people on our journey. When we wave one of the vehicles down, the driver removes his respirator long enough to say that yes, he is working on the emergency at the plant. But his speech is flecked with panic. He insists he cannot speak to journalists and hurries away.
But nobody stops us. And so we move closer. Tell-tale wisps of grey smoke rise above the tree cover to point the way. Japan's newest heroes, the "Samurai 50", flash past, almost invisible in their white body-suits and hoods aboard a white bus, going towards the reactors. Before long we, too, are at the main entrance of Fukushima No 1.
In the midst of an all-consuming havoc, it appears to be the only place that has escaped intact. Only a spotless white sign in the stone wall tells us we are at the centre of the crisis. Next to the Japanese characters that give the plant's name is the playful red logo of Tepco, the now notorious Tokyo power giant that finds itself in the eye of a nuclear storm.
We would learn later that Tepco has belatedly admitted that the pressure containment vessel at reactor No 3 "may" have been breached – the last step before molten fuel pours onto the concrete base of the reactor triggering a massive release of radioactive material. Three workers inside the plant have been taken to hospital with burns after wading into water contaminated by 10,000 times the expected dose of radiation.
The half-dozen reactors where small teams of engineers have been battling in shifts to prevent a meltdown are only a few hundred metres away. But even if the risks are manageable on a brief visit, there is no mistaking that we are close to disaster.
A Tepco vehicle comes in the other direction but stops abruptly on seeing a car from the outside world inside the stricken power plant. It reverses noisily towards us, and the driver's door opens to show two men inside wearing heavy-duty protective overalls. Unable to make themselves heard over respirators, they make the Japanese gesture meaning "forbidden", crossing and uncrossing their arms and then pointing back the way they had come. It was the closest thing to a security barrier that we encountered.
Our route away is just as unimpeded. But if the approach has been a powerful introduction to the destructive force of the tsunami, our journey towards Minamisoma, the nearest town to the ruined plant, does not offer a corresponding escape.
The town is trapped in what the government has called the "stay inside zone": a 10km-wide band not yet evacuated but too contaminated to go outside. As we escape the perimeter of the plant, the final stretch of Route 6 into Minamisoma breaks through the numbness. Remnants of boats and cars are scattered in unlikely poses for miles in all directions, while the pylons that flank the road have been twisted like the Spanish bearded trees of the bayou. Crows pick through the wreckage of a destroyed garden centre on the roadside.
The ghastly spell is broken by loudspeakers in the distance that are somehow still working. One of Japan's beloved town announcements echoes across the grey devastation, repeating the promise that petrol and kerosene rations will arrive that afternoon.
Picking our way through we find Haranomachi Tokusawa. An old man, he seems less terrified than others of the radiation and has taken his pickup down to the coastal stretch of Minamisoma to look for people lost in the maze of smashed junctions. "It's not safe for you here, you're still inside the exclusion zone," he warns, before leading us out to where everyone else is sheltering.
Only 20,000 of Minamisoma's population of 70,000 have stayed on here. In his office plastered with photographs of the aftermath, Sakurai Katsunobe, the town's lean and furious mayor, says residents have been left to fend for themselves. "Everyone here is angry with Tepco," he seethes. "They give us no information and no help."
Joking that he's a samurai, he vows to save his town with its crippled power plant, its poisoned rice paddies and terrified survivors. He is unlikely to get the chance. Late yesterday the government expanded the evacuation zone in response to the deepening emergency at Fukushima. Even the brave hangers-on will have to pack what they can and leave.
But until that order came, the few that remained were inhabitants of a kind of ghost world, removed entirely from the ordinary life they had once lived. Weighing that new reality in his office, Katsunobe stared at the images of devastation tacked to his wall. They were placed over the pictures that had decorated the room in more normal times. "We can't get supplies as drivers don't want to come here," he said. "We're like an island cut off from outside world."

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Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

First pictures emerge of the Fukushima Fifty as steam starts pouring from all four reactors at the stricken nuclear power plant


The darkness is broken only by the flashing torchlight of the heroes who stayed behind.


These first images of inside the stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant reveal the terrifying conditions under which the brave men work to save their nation from full nuclear meltdown.


The Fukushima Fifty - an anonymous band of lower and mid-level managers - have battled around the clock to cool overheating reactors and spent fuel rods since the disaster on March 11.

Conundrum: Two of the Fukushima Fifty pour over plans as they try to work out how to fix the stricken plant


Efforts to control the leakage of radiation from the crippled nuclear plant in Japan received a setback early today when steam began pouring from four reactor buildings.


Until then, black smoke billowing from one of the reactors had been the only concern - an incident which resulted in all work to cool four of the reactors being suspended on Wednesday.


At first light in Japan today officials were alarmed to see steam pouring from reactors 1, 2, 3, and 4.


It is the first time that steam has been seen rising from the No.1 reactor since the Fukushima plant was hit by the tsunami nearly two weeks ago.


Rising steam suggests that the fuel rods in the reactors are overheating and evaporating the small amount of water that surrounds them.

Darkness: A worker looks at gauges in the control room for Unit 1 and Unit 2 at the plant



Grainy: Workers collect data in the control room for Unit 1 and Unit 2. They must wear rubber suits to prevent as much radiation from entering their bodies as possible



Firemen this week have been blasting water into the reactors using long hoses but officials were not able to tell whether the desperate work was covering the fuel rods.


Then, when black smoke began pouring out of one of the reactors - suggesting that something was burning - all water-blasting work was suspended and everyone trying to stabilise the plant was ordered to evacuate.


It is believed the steam rising from the four reactors today is from spent fuel rods that have been kept outside the main containment structure where currently active fuel rods are located.


But the spent rods must still be kept immersed in water. If they are not, radioactivity is released into the atmosphere.

Despite sweltering heat from the damaged reactors, they must work in protective bodysuits to protect their skin from the poisonous radioactive particles that fill the air around them.


But as more radiation seeps into the atmosphere minute by minute, they know this job will be their last.


Teamwork: Outside the men connect transmission lines to restore electric power supply to Unit 3 and Unit 4

Aiming high: Workers in protective suits work on a transmission tower to restore electricity to Units 5 and 6




Damage: A collapsed eave lies outside the security gate for Unit 1 and Unit 2. Much of the plant was destroyed by the tsunami




Five are believed to have already died and 15 are injured while others have said they know the radiation will kill them.
The original 50 brave souls were later joined by 150 colleagues and rotated in teams to limit their exposure to the radiation spewing from over-heating spent fuel rods after a series of explosions at the site. They were today joined by scores more workers.



Japan has rallied behind the workers with relatives telling of heart-breaking messages sent at the height of the crisis.


A woman said her husband continued to work while fully aware he was being bombarded with radiation. In a heartbreaking email, he told his wife: 'Please continue to live well, I cannot be home for a while.'



One girl tweeted in a message translated by ABC: 'My dad went to the nuclear plant, I've never seen my mother cry so hard. People at the plant are struggling, sacrificing themselves to protect you. Please dad come back alive.'
But it is becoming even more pressing that the Fukushima succeed after it was revealed today that Tokyo's tap water has been contaminated by unusual levels of radiation.


The government have issued a warning to all mothers urging them not to let babies drink the tap water.
The warning came after it emerged last night that radioactive particles have reached Europe and are heading towards Britain in the wake of the catastrophe that officials say could cost up to £190billion - making it the costliest natural disaster in history.


And fresh safety concerns arose today as black smoke was spotted emerging from Unit 3 of the plant, prompting a temporary evacuation of all workers from the complex, operators Tokyo Electric Power company said.
Tokyo Water Bureau officials said levels of radioactive iodine in some city tap water contained 210 becquerels per litre of iodine 131 - two times the recommended limit for infants.


They warned parents not to give babies tap water, although they said it is not an immediate health risk for adults.
Nearly two weeks after the twin March 11 disasters, nuclear officials were still struggling to stabilise the damaged and overheated Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, which has been leaking radiation since the disasters knocked out the plant's cooling systems.


Radiation has seeped into vegetables, raw milk, the water supply and even seawater in the areas surrounding the plant.


Meanwhile, officials in Iceland have detected ‘minuscule amounts’ of radioactive particles believed to have come from Fukushima, the site of the worst nuclear accident in 25 years.


Last night the British Government said radiation from Japan had not been detected by the UK’s network of monitoring stations set up after the 1986 Chernobyl explosion. A spokesman said any signs of radiation were not expected in the next few days.


However, France’s nuclear agency said tiny amounts were likely to arrive in the country by today.


Water spray: Workers at Fukushima yesterday try to cool the plant



Smoke: Fresh safety concerns arose today as black smoke was spotted emerging from Unit 3 of the plant, prompting a temporary evacuation of all workers from the complex

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1369216/Japan-nuclear-crisis-Fukushima-Fifty-pictures-inside-nuclear-power-plant.html

[DIDI]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

Thanks for this .

[feather]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

Man, these people know they're dead.

[unkle]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan