Here's a video of the town and the after-math. I cannot comprehend a 100+ foot wave coming through a town. I wonder if anyone that witnessed this wave is still alive???

Video

Jesus... look at the debris on the roof of that white building.

If you were there, you were dead.

Unreal.

Just a side note, I lol'd at the volume going to "11."

Wow.

If you notice the surrounding terrain from where that reporter is standing, that village is sitting in a small valley.  From what I understand, that type of terrain will amplify a tsunami wave causing it to be much higher than it would've been otherwise.
 

I've seen some videos with cars going up and down the roads with the wave seconds away from hitting the road... Sad stuff.

wierd how the road was passable

35 meters?  I think the guy is exaggerating a lot.  That would be almost 115 feet tall.  If you look at the buildings yeah the 2 story building had debris on the roof, that's 20 feet.  The house on the hill behind it sits a little higher than the roof of that building and looks fine.  At the end of the video they show a 3 story building with nothing on the roof.  Maybe the guy meant 35 feet instead of 35 meters.  I can't imagine being caught in a wall of water 35 feet tall either.

Journalist: "all the way up the road that has now been cleared by authorities....."

This.

Change your topic title - the story says 10,000 missing, not dead.





 

Holy shit!


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12725646

35m ASL?  Maybe only 10-15m by the time it got halfway through the town.

That's plausible.  An 8.9 has got to push a LOT of water...

With a little bit of wave amplification from the terrain (compression of the wave from the wide mouth of the bay to a skinnier place of landfall), I can see how the wave would have gotten over 100 feet in height.



BTW, just for a little history, here's an article on the highest wave ever recorded.  It was 1,720 feet high and happened in Alaska on July 9, 1958.



http://geology.com/records/biggest-tsunami.shtml

You can see cars still driving on the road when the water started cresting the barrier.

Yeah, when I first saw the post,  I thought you meant 35 feet.  You really did mean 35 meters.

Not too weird, he said the authorities had cleared the road.

Sorry, but that building is more than 20' tall. not a 100' but more than 20'.

I think this video is one of the most chilling....

Tsunami inland

The one thing overlooked.... notice some of the cars speeding along the highway.... seeing what's
coming for them. Terrible. Nobody gets out... nobody survives that. Not only is is a wall of water,
it's a 200 yard deep wall of trash/wood/cars/boats/houses coming at you. The front end of it would be
lika a trash compactor. It would roll over you or your car in a heartbeat and you'd be crushed under
all the debris instantly.

I'd say the eventual death toll will be in the HUNDREDS of thousands.

-ZA

Oops, a delayed double tap,

I saw a news report that showed a bus on top of a three story building and a house sitting on top of a 2 story building.

Maybe 35 feet

It's a flaming toxic blender mixed with water.  The death toll will be devastating.  It looks as if the nuclear aspect is only getting worse also.

We need to extend whatever resources we can to these people.  This is sad beyond words.

Just after the 2:50 mark of that video, there's a white vehicle on the road at the bottom left of the screen.

It takes a hard right and goes off-road, trying to escape. Don't think they made it.

(From the aerial shot, it's obvious that there really isn't anywhere for them to go.)

I watched a show about that very event, but I can not for the life of me remember what show it was...

Damn, that is fucking rough to watch.

The water just keeps rolling inland. Japan is pretty populous and not a lot of people could have possibly survived that. A death toll approaching 100,000 isn’t unrealistic.

I really don’t even know what to say, the whole thing is nightmarishly horrific. And the after effects may be pretty bad too. Think about the food problem. All of that cropland will be ruined. And all the fishing boats destroyed. I hope the Japanese like corn, because we might have to help feed them for a while.

God gave Japan mountains for a reason.

The aftermath shots of that town remind me of pictures of Hiroshima in 1945.

Mega-Tsunami on Discovery....you can see it on YouTube

Fail, none of those videos are working for me.
Firefox, Chrome or IE.

I hope the mountain on one of the Canary Islands doesn't go during my life time.

I don't think they're all hiding in the bushes until they get the all clear.





 

That was beyond surreal.  I don't see how anyone caught up in that grinder could survive.





 

Tsunami waves can get much higher than 115 feet.

1792: Mount Unzen, Japan

In 1792, Mount Unzen in Japan erupted, causing part of the volcano to collapse into the sea. The landslide caused a megatsunami that reached 330 ft (100 metres) high and killed 15,000 people in the local fishing villages.

1958: Lituya Bay, Alaska, USA

Damage from the 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami can be seen in this oblique aerial photograph of Lituya Bay, Alaska as the lighter areas at the shore where trees have been stripped away. On 9 July 1958, a giant landslide at the head of Lituya Bay in Alaska, caused by an earthquake, generated a wave with an initial amplitude of 524 meters (1,720 ft). This is the highest wave ever recorded, and surged over the headland opposite, stripping trees and soil down to bedrock, and surged along the fjord which forms Lituya Bay, destroying a fishing boat anchored there and killing two people. Howard Ulrich and his son managed to ride the wave in their boat, and both survived.


1963: Vajont Dam, Italy

On 9 October 1963, a landslide above Vajont Dam in Italy produced a 250 m (820 ft) surge that overtopped the dam and destroyed the villages of Longarone, Pirago, Rivalta, Villanova and Faè, killing nearly 2,000 people.


1980: Spirit Lake, Washington, USA

On May 18, 1980, the upper 460 meters of Mount St. Helens failed and detached in a massive landslide. This released the pressure on the magma trapped beneath the summit bulge which exploded as a lateral blast, which then released the over-pressure on the magma chamber and resulted in a plinian eruption. One lobe of the avalanche surged onto Spirit Lake, causing a megatsunami which pushed the lake waters in a series of surges, which reached a maximum height of 260 metres above the pre-eruption water level (~975 m asl). Above the upper limit of the tsunami, trees lie where they were knocked down by the pyroclastic surge; below the limit, the fallen trees and the surge deposits were removed by the megatsunami and deposited in Spirit Lake.

Could of sworn I seen a documentary like 15 years ago talking about Tsunamis and residents were talking about an event in the 50s or something and they had a wall of water about 100 feet high hit them in a tsunami.

I have read estimates done by scientists (taking into account the impact speed, estimated weight of it, etc.) of the Chichilub meteor/asteroid that hit 65 million years ago. You know, the "Dinosaur Killer"? They estimated that the tidal wave could have been as high as 3,000 feet!!!