【新唐人2011年3月12日訊】
日本世紀強震和大海嘯證實導致至少7百多人喪生，另有近1900人失蹤受傷，大水沖走了汽車，甚至房子。（畫面是電視臺英語報導）
Video footage filmed on Friday (March 11) showed the force of the tsunami that struck northeastern Japan, washing away vehicles and even houses.
The video, shot by TV Asahi, shows water rolling into an area of Kesennuma City, in Miyagi prefecture, one of the worst hit by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and the tsunami that followed.
The footage captured how the waves quickly increased in volume and speed, sweeping away houses and other structures.
A tsunami is not a single wave, but a series of waves. They can travel across the ocean at speeds of up to 1,000 km (620 miles) an hour, the speed of a jet aircraft.
The destructive force of a tsunami comes not from the height of the wave, but from the volume of water moving. It is as if the ocean floods the coast, smashing everything in its path, and then just as quickly recedes. Many people who survive the initial wave impact are washed out to sea as the tsunami recedes.
One day after the giant wave, much of the area in Kesennuma remained inundated and rubble covered the area.
But Japan on Saturday (March 12) scaled back its tsunami warning for much of the country, save for a stretch of Pacific coastline closest to the quake’s epicentre.
The unfolding natural disaster, which includes a nuclear crisis caused by damage to two nuclear reactors due to the tremour, has prompted offers of search and rescue from nearly 50 countries.
Domestic media said the death toll was at least 1,300, most of whom appeared to have drowned in churning waters. Even in a nation accustomed to earthquakes, the devastation was shocking.
The earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world in the past century. It surpassed the Great Kanto quake of Sept. 1, 1923, which had a magnitude of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo area.
The 1995 Kobe quake killed 6,434 people and caused $100 billion in damage – the most expensive natural disaster in history. Economic damage from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was estimated at about $10 billion. It killed 226,000 people, mostly in Indonesia.
