Thousands flee swaying buildings as 5.8 earthquake shakes East Coast from Washington D.C. to New York City

-Huge earthquake felt across the East Coast, from Toronto to South Carolina
-Damage reported in Virginia, while building evacuated for fear of collapse in New York and Washington
-The White House and the Pentagon among buildings evacuated
-Fears of Fukushima-like nuclear disaster because old nuclear plant a few miles from epicentre


By Thomas Durante, Paul Bentley and John Stevens

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Shocked: Office workers gather on the sidewalk in downtown Washington


A huge earthquake ripped through the East Coast of America this afternoon, causing terrifying tremors from Washington D.C. to New York.

Buildings in the major cities throughout the north east - including the Pentagon and the White House - had to be evacuated with the 5.8 magnitude earthquake, which originated in Virginia, shaking areas from as far north as Toronto, Canada, and as far south as Anderson in South Carolina.

In Virginia there were reports of damage caused by the quake, while the streets of downtown Washington and New York were filled with thousands of people hauled out of buildings for fear they could collapse.

There were also fears of a nuclear disaster of the kind seen in Japan's Fukushima because the epicentre was just a few miles from two nuclear power plants.

Thankful: Co-workers Susan Sproul, left, and Susan Davidson hug after evacuating from their building after an earthquake was felt in Baltimore

Bad timing: A bride in her wedding dress runs from the courthouse in Lower Manhattan in New York after feeling the terrifying shake


Federal officials said two nuclear reactors at the North Anna Power Station in Louisa County, Virginia, were automatically taken off line by safety systems.

At the Pentagon, it has been reported that staff ran from the building fearing they were under attack.

The 5.9-magnitude tremor struck at about 2pm local time with shallow tremors of about 3.7 miles deep, which is thought to explain why the shaking was so widespread.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was half a mile deep and centred near Louisa, Virginia, about 40 miles north west of Richmond.

Crushed: Cars were smashed in Virginia after the huge East Coast earthquake

Wreckage: Pictures show the devastating aftermath of the quake in Virginia

Fallen bricks: A man walks past bricks that fell off of a house in Baltimore


It is though to have been the strongest quake to hit the Virginia area since 1897.

The previous record for an earthquake in the Washington, D.C. area was on July 16, 2010, when a 3.6 magnitude struck.

'This is one of the largest earthquakes on the east coast in quite a while, in many decades at least,' USGS spokeswoman Lucy Jones told CNN.

Tremors were also felt as far north as New York City and Martha's Vineyard, where President Obama is vacationing.

Dangerous: One of the spires , left, of the National Cathedral in Washington is seen missing following the earthquake

Damaged: The spire, left, was smashed by the quake, leaving debris, right, on the floor

Barricaded: US Capitol Police officers secure the streets outside the US Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Precautions: Staff ran from the Pentagon after the earthquake, thinking it was an attack

Open space: Workers stand in Foley Square park in New York after the earthquake


According to reports, he had just been starting a round of golf when the floor moved underneath him.

The Capitol Building and the Pentagon were among buildings evacuated after the quake struck.

Pictures hanging on the walls at the Capitol reportedly fell to the floor from the shocks.

US aviation authorities halted flights at several airports after the shake was felt.

'We're getting a lot of calls on buildings shaking but there's no report of any structural damage at this time,' a spokesman for the New York City Fire Department said.

Buildings in Boston were evacuated, while witnesses said the quake was felt as far away as Toronto.

Paul Badger said he was sitting in his office in Troutman, North Carolina, when the earthquake hit.

'I could feel my chair slowly rocking back and forth and see my computer monitors rocking slightly,' he told the Charlotte Observer.

Another resident told the newspaper that dishes and plates in his house shook.

Control towers at John F. Kennedy and Newark Liberty International airports were also evacuated.

Andre Smith-Pugh, 25, felt the shaking from the top of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

'It felt like the scaffolding was coming down,' he told the New York Times. 'It felt like a big truck slammed into the side of the building right here at the White House.'

In New York, many office buildings were evacuated. 'Our townhouse started shaking a short time ago and branches started to fall off trees and hit our windows and hit our roof like crazy,' Bill Parks, from Hummelstown, said.

Ripples: Buildings were evacuated as far away as Toronto, in Canada after the earthquake

Shaken: Live pictures from Washington and New York, which felt the shudder


'It lasted about 10 seconds and was as bad as the Northridge after shock I had experienced while visiting in California. I ran outdoors and found my neighbour calling a friend in Virginia who also felt the profound quake. This quake was like none I ever experienced in the East in my life and I am 76 years old.'

Thomas McGarry, 55, has run a small convenience store kiosk above subway tracks right in front of New York city hall for the last year and a half.

He told MailOnline he was in the kiosk when the quake hit.

'We all looked at each other. I thought the floor was going to cave in,' he said.

Aghast: People who came out on the street after an earthquake look up at a window that cracked during the quake on Market Street in Philadelphia

Calling home: Office workers gather on a sidewalk after their building was evacuated following an earthquake in New York

Damage: A maintenance worker looks for additional cracked windows in a building on Market Street in Philadelphia


He added that it wasn't long before workers at the government buildings on Broadway poured into the street.

'They were flooding out, like on 9/11. We couldn't even get out of the shop to look because we were surrounded.'

Flora Gross, also 55, was working on the fourth floor of a federal office building on church street, just down the street from ground zero, when she felt the tremors.

Calm: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks after the earthquake

Just in case: Children are evacuated from the Jacob K. Javits Federal building in New York

Gathered: People gather for safety in a garden in Lower Manhattan after the earthquake in Virginia was felt in New York

Scared: Suzanne Beatty comforts her son Quentin Beatty, 7, on a street in TriBeCa, New York


'We thought it was construction,' she said. 'But then my daughter called from uptown and said: 'Mummy we just had an earthquake.'

Her husband, who works as a maintenance worker uptown, told her he was on a ladder when the quake hit. 'He thought his legs were giving out before realising the whole building was shaking,' she said.

In Mineral, Virginia, which is four miles from the quake’s centre, residents said there had been extensive damage, with pictures falling off walls and crockery smashing from shelves.

Wrecked: Damage can be seen on the street outside a library in Washington DC

Shattered: Part of the library's roof crumbled during the 5.9 magnitude earthquake

Broken: Cracks appear on the facade of a building on Market Street in downtown Philadelphia


In Charleston, West Virginia, hundreds of workers left the state Capitol building and employees at other downtown office buildings were asked to leave.

‘The whole building shook,’ said Jennifer Bundy, a spokeswoman for the state Supreme Court. ‘You could feel two different shakes. Everybody just kind of came out on their own.’

In Connecticut, play was stopped during a tennis match at the New Haven Open after the stadium on the Yale campus shook.

The umpire stopped the game between Jelena Jankovic of Serbia and Elena Vesnina of Russia after spectators felt three waves of shaking and water bottles sloshed back and forth.

According to reports, tremors were felt as far away as Toronto, Canada.

On King Street West in Toronto, office workers evacuated buildings. One, named Amanda, told the Toronto News her whole office rolled.

'It was very unnerving,' she said. 'I have no words.'

Social networking site Twitter lit up with reports of the earthquake from people using the site up and down the U.S. eastern seaboard.

‘People pouring out of buildings and onto the sidewalks and Into Farragut Park in downtown DC...,’ tweeted Republican strategist Kevin Madden.

Missouri senator Claire McCaskill tweeted that her staff in Washington was in an ‘emergency location. Hope everyone is OK.’

Blower: President Obama was busy on the golf course when he heard the news

On holiday: President Barack Obama, second from left, felt the quake while playing golf

Hard at play: President Barack Obama plays the first hole of the Farm Neck Golf Club today


John Gurlach, air traffic controller at the Morgantown Municipal Airport was in a 40-foot-tall tower when the earth trembled.

‘There were two of us looking at each other saying, “What's that?”’ he said, even as a commuter plane was landing. ‘It was noticeably shaking. It felt like a B-52 unloading.’

Not everyone, however, was quite so terrified by the tremors. On Wall Street traders could be heard shouting: 'Carry on trading!' despite the shaking.
No injuries were immediately reported.




source:dailymail

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Dark days in ghost town of Tokyo

By RICHARD SHEARS

Ghost town: A landmark crossroads in Tokyo's Ginza district is eerily dark and empty as people stay indoors after warnings about a radioactive cloud from the stricken nuclear plant 150 miles away


It is one of the great cities of the world, home to 13million and as advanced as any metropolis on the planet.

Now Tokyo, usually so full of life by day and night, has the aura of death about it.

Its lights have been cut, supermarket shelves are empty, there are queues for everything and aftershocks come every day.

You could find a few die-hard Brits and other expatriates who wouldn't leave their beers on the counter in the party-time district of Roppongi for any threatening radioactive cloud, but mostly Tokyo has become eerily quiet. Nobody wants to venture out and the streets are deserted.

Everyone, it seems, shares the opinion that something very bad is happening at the Fukushima nuclear power plant 148 miles away, and nobody wants to risk breathing the air.

The British government has joined other nations in urging its citizens to leave the country whatever way they can, including banding together to join a charter flight. Other Britons trapped in the tsunami-stricken Sendai area have been offered the chance of being driven to Tokyo on a chartered bus.

But it will be a long journey because the vehicle will have to skirt around the nuclear power plant which stands between Sendai and the capital.

Some Britons have taken their own steps to get out of Tokyo, among them 23-year-old Kezia Poole, an English language teacher from London who has lived in Japan for 13 months.

'I'm flying to the Australian Gold Coast tomorrow,' she said. 'I'll sit back and breathe in the clean, fresh air. It's just not worth waiting around in Tokyo listening to officials telling us this and telling us that.'


Dimmer: Buildings in Tokyo turn down the lights as part of electricity saving efforts to avoid massive power outages and, right, its usual neon shine


She leaves behind a city in fear – a city that was plunged into darkness last night as electricity was cut to conserve power following the massive loss of production at Fukushima.

In Roppongi, the red-light district which is usually thick with crowds, where English girls play hostess to deceitful Japanese husbands, there was hardly a customer in sight.

A British hostess, who would give her name only as Jenny, was already on her way home before midnight, when usually business is thriving.

'They've said I can leave early,' the blonde, heavily wrapped in leather and furs, said in her north country accent. 'A lot of us haven't seen much of the news – how bad is it, then?'

There was no one in the whole of Tokyo who could tell her that, and even if they did, would it be the truth?
For the words coming from the lips of government spokesmen and the Tokyo Electric Company officials who have been holding daily press conferences carry mixed messages: 'We are working at the problem, the radiation is not harmful to humans, you should stay indoors and keep the windows closed, the levels have gone up, the levels have gone down, we've managed to pour water on the rods and that should cool them, the radiation has gone up again.'



No man's land: The normally bustling streets of the dynamic city are virtually deserted


Darkness falls: The usually brilliantly lit skyline has been shrouded in darkness to conserve scant resources of electricity as the crisis continues


Little wonder that many businesses sent their workers home early in the hope of beating the evening rush hour.

The result was long queues at stations for trains, many of which were suddenly cancelled because of fears that rolling blackouts would affect services.

'I just want to be with my children right now,' said an insurance company secretary waiting in the biting cold in a long queue.

'I don't know if my train is running, there are no cabs available and I have no other means of getting home. Everyone wants to leave Tokyo, or at least be home with their families because of the uncertainty.' Some, braving the cold and whatever they feared might be carried in the air, stood in front of public TV sets to watch government officials trying to explain what was happening at Fukushima. Their reaction was sceptical.

'We're living in modern times. We have robots in the factories, our technology is world famous and yet we end up pouring buckets of water on a nuclear plant,' said one office worker.

'This is taking us back years. We're going to be in darkness for a long time.' Whether he meant darkness at night because of power cuts or darkness because of what lies ahead for the nation, didn't seem to matter.

It is going to be dark in Tokyo and up the coast, where hundreds of thousands shiver and cry for everyone and everything they have lost, for a very long time to come.


Business is slow: A taxi driver reads a newspaper as he waits for a fare on an empty street


Contrast: An evacuee from a junior high school studies under the light of a kerosene stove at a makeshift shelter in stricken Ofunato


Eerie: People weave their way between blacked out high rises. Tokyo faces at much as six months of blackouts



What a contrast: While the streets of Tokyo are empty, the city's airports are packed with residents hoping to get away


source: dailymail

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Japan's apocalypse now: Rescuers pick their way through a wasteland of bodies, wreckage and people washing in rivers

By Daily Mail Reporter


-70-year-old woman found alive in house that had been washed away by the tsunami
-Japan injects £60.8bn into money markets after Nikkei plunges by more than 10 per cent
-Bread, tinned goods and batteries growing scarce as Japanese panic buy amid nuclear crisis
-Fears for hundreds of Britons believed missing. FO expresses 'serious concern' for at least 50


Wiped out: Rescue workers are dwarfed by the scale of the rubble as they pick their way through the shattered city of Otsuchi


With millions of people without electricity, thousands missing and warnings of an imminent second earthquake, the task for Japanese authorities is too daunting to imagine.

Some 3,000 people have now been confirmed dead since last week’s earthquake and subsequent tsunami but officials believe the death toll could rise into the tens of thousands, with a further 2,000 bodies washing up on the shores of north-east Japan yesterday.

Bodies wrapped in blue tarpaulins were laid on military stretchers and lined up for collection while panic-buying has begun in Japan amid fears of a second quake and growing concern about nuclear leaks.

And tonight there were fresh fears over the possibility of a full-scale nuclear disaster as the operator of stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant said a fire has broken out again at its No. 4 reactor unit.

United in death: The bodies of victims at a village destroyed by the tsunami in Rikuzentakata (left) and the wreckage of Toyota Yaris at the port of Sendai

Firefighting: Ships try to extinguish a blaze at oil refinery tanks in Ichihara, Chiba Prefecture, which has been burning since Friday's earthquake and tsunami

Rescue: Japanese relief workers carry a man who survived being buried alive for five days in Ishimaki (left) and a truck dangles from a collapsed bridge in Ishinomaki, northern Japan

Precarious: A house perches on top of a bridge in Ishinomaki after being swept away by the tsunami


Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Hajimi Motujuku says the blaze erupted early Wednesday in the outer housing of the reactor's containment vessel.

The bad news came as survivors continue to struggle to find food and water as supplies run low. There have been major power outages since the double disaster, many planned to preserve resources.

As the stock market plunges and the government warns it is receiving just a fraction of the emergency aid it needs, it is unclear how Japan can even begin to tackle the destruction.

The level of desolation is on an epic-scale with many towns completely destroyed. A shattered infrastructure makes it almost impossible to move heavy lifting equipment and rescue crews have struggled to reach the worst hit areas.

The death toll from last week's earthquake and tsunami jumped today as police confirmed the number killed had topped 3,300, although that grim news was overshadowed by a deepening nuclear crisis. Officials have said previously that at least 10,000 people may have died in Miyagi province alone.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that radiation had been released into the atmosphere after yet another explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, inside Number 2 reactor.

Eerie: Cars drive along one of the few passable roads in the devastated Minamisanriku where 10,000 people are feared dead

People carry the body of a victim through debris in Kesennuma, Miyagi, northern Japan

Squatting amid the ruins: A woman cooks for her family in front of their devastated house in Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture (left) while an older survivor swaddles herself in blankets and gloves at makeshift shelter at Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture


Explosions had already occurred in the Number 1 and Number 3 reactors. Number 4 reactor is also on fire and there are fears for those who have not yet made it outside the 12-mile exclusion zone.

Rescuers have pulled a 70-year-old woman from her the wreckage of her home , four days after it was demolished in the Japanese quake.

The rescue of the elderly Sai Abe and a younger man pulled from rubble elsewhere in the region were rare good news following Friday's disaster.

Mrs Abe's son said he had tried to save his mother but could not get her to flee her home in the port town of Otsuchi. His relief at her rescue, he said, was tempered by the fact that his father is still missing.

'I couldn't lift her up, and she couldn't escape because her legs are bad,' Hiromi Abe said. 'My feelings are complicated, because I haven't found my father.'

Ship out of water: A boat dumped in the street in Hishonomaki, Miyagi, after being swept inshore by the tsunami

Heart of the wasteland: Japanese survivors of Friday's earthquake and tsunami walk under umbrellas through the leveled city of Minamisanriku

Swept away: A house drifts in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after being hit by the tsunami (left) while people are forced to wash their clothes by a river at Otsuchi, northeastern Japan

Vanished: An astounding aerial view of the tsunami-devastated town of Rikuzentakata shows the full scale of the damage. Very little remains

Match stick city: Heavy machines crawl through the rubble in Rikuzentakata (left) while a rescue crew surveys the damage in Ofunato, northeastern Japan

Mrs Abe was suffering from hypothermia and sent to a hospital, but appeared to have no life-threatening injuries.

Another survivor, described as being in his 20s, was pulled from a building further down the coast in the city of Ishimaki after rescue workers heard him calling for help.

Conditions for those still alive in the rubble worsened as a cold front arrived today, further pushing down temperatures. Snow is forecast over the next few days
Millions of people spent a fourth night with little food, water or heating in near-freezing temperatures as they dealt with the loss of homes and loved ones. Asia's richest country has not seen such hardship since the Second World War.

Hajime Sato, a government official in Iwate prefecture, one of the hardest-hit, said deliveries of supplies were only 10 per cent of what is needed. Body bags and coffins were running so short that the government may turn to foreign funeral homes for help, he said.

Indonesian geologist Hery Harjono, who dealt with the 2004 Asian tsunami, said it would be ‘a miracle really if it turns out to be less than 10,000’ dead.

The 2004 tsunami killed 230,000 people - but only 184,000 bodies were found.

The impact of the earthquake and tsunami dragged down stock markets. The benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average plunged for a second day today, nosediving more than 10 per cent to close at 8,605.15 while the broader Topix lost more than 8 per cent.

To reduce the damage, Japan's central bank made two cash injections totalling 8 trillion yen (£60.8 billion) into the money markets today.

Initial estimates put repair costs in the tens of billions of dollars, costs that are likely to add to a massive public debt which , at 200 per cent of gross domestic product, is the biggest among industrialised nations.

The pulverised coast has been hit by hundreds of aftershocks since Friday, the latest a 6.2 magnitude quake which was followed by a fresh tsunami scare yesterday.

As sirens wailed, soldiers abandoned their search operations and told people on the devastated shoreline to run to higher ground.

The warning turned out to be a false alarm.

‘It’s a scene from hell, absolutely nightmarish,’ said Patrick Fuller, of the International Red Cross Federation.

‘The situation here is just beyond belief. Almost everything has been flattened.’

Pictures released by NASA shows the Japanese city of Ishinomaki (left) after the tsunami and in 2008 (right). Water is dark blue, plant-covered land is red, exposed earth is tan, and the city is silver.

Japan Red Cross president Tadateru Konoe added: ‘After my long career in the Red Cross where I have seen many disasters and catastrophes, this is the worst I have ever seen.’

The Japanese government and aid agencies are struggling to ferry food, water and medicines to survivors after panic-buying stripped shelves bare in the few shops left standing.

Far outside the disaster zone, stores are running out of necessities, raising government fears that hoarding may impede the delivery of emergency food aid to those who really need it.

‘The situation is hysterical,’ said Tomonao Matsuo, spokesman for instant noodle maker Nissin Foods, which donated a million items including its Cup Noodles for disaster relief. ‘People feel safer just by buying Cup Noodles.’

The company is trying to boost production, despite earthquake damage which closed down its facilities in Ibaraki prefecture until today.

The frenzied buying is compounding supply problems from damaged and congested roads, stalled factories, reduced train service and other disruptions caused by Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake off Japan's north-east coast and the major tsunami it generated.

Officials have been overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis, with millions of people spending a fourth night without electricity, water, food or heat in near-freezing temperatures.

A ship is seen perched on top of a house in the tsunami devastated remains of Otsuchi, Iwate prefecture

Details of the scale of the disaster (left) while destroyed houses are seen in the river at a devastated area hit by earthquake and tsunami in Kesennuma (right)

Ghost town: A once thriving industrial town off the coast in notheast Japan that has now been decimated by the tsunami wave that washed over the region


Officials estimate that 430,000 people are living in emergency shelters or with relatives.

The government has sent 120,000 blankets, 120,000 bottles of water and 29,000 gallons of petrol plus food to the affected areas.

The stock market plunged over the likelihood of huge losses by Japanese industries including big names such as Toyota and Honda following the 9.0 magnitude quake on Friday.

Almost 2million households are without power in the freezing north and about 1.4million have no running water while drivers are waiting in queues for five hours for rationed petrol.

Grim: The Japanese army search for bodies in Higashimatsushima City, in Miyagi, the state where up to 10,000 people may have died

Clean up: Police walk in file down a hillside today into a coastal town in northeast Japan that has been flattened by the tsunami wave


Experts are now warning a second huge quake - almost as powerful as the first - could hit the country, triggering another tsunami.

The director of the Australian Seismological Centre, Dr Kevin McCue, told the Sydney Morning Herald that there had been more than 100 smaller quakes since Friday, and a larger aftershock was likely.

'Normally they happen within days.

'The rule of thumb is that you would expect the main aftershock to be one magnitude smaller than the main shock, so you would be expecting a 7.9.

'That's a monster again in its own right that is capable of producing a tsunami and more damage.'

In a rare piece of good news, a 70-year-old woman has been found alive four days after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in north-eastern Japan.

Osaka fire department spokesman Yuko Kotani said the woman was found inside her house which had been washed away by the tsunami in Iwate prefecture.

Her rescuers, from Osaka in western Japan, had been sent to the area for disaster relief.

Ms Kotani said the woman was conscious but suffering from hypothermia and was being treated in hospital. She would not give the woman's name.



Source:dailymail

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