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Posted on 05/09/2011 7:29:27 PM PDT by decimon
ISHINOMAKI, Japan – When water begins to trickle down the streets of her coastal neighborhood, Yoshiko Takahashi knows it is time to hurry home.
Twice a day, the flow steadily increases until it is knee-deep, carrying fish and debris by her front door and trapping people in their homes. Those still on the streets slosh through the sea water in rubber boots or on bicycle.
"I look out the window, and it's like our houses are in the middle of the ocean," says Takahashi, who moved in three years ago.
The March 11 earthquake that hit eastern Japan was so powerful it pulled the entire country out and down into the sea. The mostly devastated coastal communities now face regular flooding, because of their lower elevation and damage to sea walls from the massive tsunamis triggered by the quake.
In port cities such as Onagawa and Kesennuma, the tide flows in and out among crumpled homes and warehouses along now uninhabited streets.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Something of a catastrophe ping.
Folks, you are getting the wake-up call New Orleans failed to heed: Time to move on out.
And read up on how and why Houston came into existence.
Prayers up for Japan in their strongest hour of need.
Allen's Landing?
>>Allen’s Landing?<<
Poor turn of phrase on my part.
Prior to 1900, Galveston was Texas’ primary Gulf port. When The Great Hurricane of 1900 (they didn’t name them back then) hit, they (hardy Texans) not only rebuilt Galveston, after a fashion, but, more importantly, they moved all their critical shipping infrastructure INLAND — to Houston.
Had that hurricane not happened, Houston would be the Lodi of Texas and Galveston probably the State Capital, or at least the political center of gravity in Texas.
Can you imagine people today realizing New Orleans is a huge Mother Nature target and re-establishing it in Alexandria?
Well, Mother Nature may yet make that decision for them.
Next up...Seattle, Washington!
May as well throw Portland in too.
Well... Seattle rises pretty steeply away from the water in only about a block. So, that’s good...
There were places in Alaska that moved up or down as much as 20 feet or more, in the 1964 quake. It happens. The town of Valdez was utterly removed and had to be rebuilt miles away in a new spot.
Sometimes, you just gotta move the town.
Portland is a good hundred miles inland from the ocean. Not much chance of a tsunami hitting there, nomatter how much they need it. :-)
Seeing as how it is crust part of a subduction zone, the next big slip could bounce them up several meters. Not that I’d want to wait for that.
San Francisco and LA.
Not likely. It’s not even on the coast.
Dontcha love midwestern geography lessons..
It doesn’t bounce up. It very gradually rises, and then suddenly drops in an earthquake, over and over again.
On nov 3rd 2002, we had a 7.9 in Alaska. It really moved the ground level too, but you couldn’t see it until late winter when overflow from rivers flooded places that had never flooded before. Some places 15 foot change, but you couldn’t see it standing there.
Yikes.
There aint no fixin that...well, maybe the dutch could...
Boy...I don't know what I was thinking. I actually drove a 10k ton freighter up the Columbia River to Portland in, I guess, about 1966. We were hauling war supplies to Vietnam.
We had to wait for high tide to get over the sand bar at the mouth of the river...I suppose they still do. All I can remember about Portland is (ahem) Mary's Place.
Geologists have found that tsunamis in past have come up the Columbia River as far as Portland.
The last subduction zone quake was in 1700 and we are about 50 or 60 years overdue for another.
Portland isn’t going to escape damage if Seattle gets hit. One thing I learned recently about subduction zone quakes is that they don’t do as much damage to buildings as the more shallow, crustal quakes do.
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