Earthshakin!!!

An earthquake shook Japan's northwest coast Monday the epicenter being in Niigata, setting off a fire at the world's most powerful nuclear power plant and causing a reactor to spill radioactive water into the sea. The 6.8-magnitude temblor killed at least nine people and injured more than 900 as it toppled hundreds of wooden homes and tore 3-foot-wide fissures in the ground. Highways and bridges buckled, leaving officials struggling to get emergency supplies into the region. 10,000 people fled to evacuation centers as aftershocks rattled the area. Tens of thousands of homes were left without water or power. The quake triggered a fire in an electrical transformer and also caused a leak of radioactive water at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, the world's largest in terms of electricity output.

About 315 gallons of slightly radioactive water apparently spilled from a tank at one of the power complex's seven reactors and entered a pipe that flushed it into the sea, said Jun Oshima, an executive at Tokyo Electric Power Co. He said it was not clear whether the tank was damaged or the water simply spilled out. The U.S. Geological Survey put the intital quake's magnitude at 6.6 and the second at 6.8. There were also a few little aftershocks that took place through out the day. This all coming after a weekend typhoon hit Japan and put trains out of commission on Saturday in Tokyo. Now, after Mondays earthquake, trains again went out leaving people stranded wherever they were at the time of the incident. As of last night, the Joetsu Shinkansen was still closed down. I am so lucky that I decided to come back to Niigata from Tokyo the day before because not only did I get to experience a cool earthquake, I wasn’t stuck in Tokyo for a few more days…missing school…I guess, it wouldn’t have been such a bad thing after all!