I'm not sure if we have any active users from Japan these days, but in any case I hope they were out of harms way.

Thank you for your continued prayers and encouragement. We are continuing to respond to the situation as we gain new information. First, here is some of the latest information about the scale of the disaster:

* Over 400,000 people are currently living in shelters
* Death tolls are unofficially over 10,000 people
* 1.5 million homes are without running water

The nuclear situation has not improved as concern is growing that the government may not be able to prevent some type of reactor failure. There has also been a significant amount of misinformation about what a worse case scenario may look like. Our best sources indicate a catastrophic failure would only effect a 30 km perimeter around the nuclear plant. While this would have implications for the immediate area, our staff and church are over 400 km away. That said, this situation is very concerning for those providing relief closer to the reactors and we must continue to monitor this closely.

As we mentioned in our previous email, we sent a scouting team to attempt to make it into the disaster zone. Our group traveled for over 12 hours, struggling to find gas and was then obstructed by snow and poor weather conditions. We eventually decided to abort their trip out of concern that they could be stranded without reaching the affected areas. As you can imagine, this was highly disappointing to our team. We are thankful for the valiant efforts of the scout team and are now exploring others ways of providing immediate and longer term relief.

We do have contacts on the ground who we are able to receive reliable information from. We will be working with these contacts in the next 24-48 hours to determine our specific response to the disaster.

[snip]

We will continue to update via Facebook and Twitter

Thank you all for your prayers, generosity and support.

Editor’s Note: Tatsuo Ito, president of National Geographic Japan, has been e-mailing updates about how he and his colleagues are coping with the aftermath of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami:

On Friday, Tatsuo reported that many of the NG partners who live close to the office or had relatives nearby left work after the quake struck at 2:46 p.m. But with the transportation system shut down, 10 staff members remained overnight in the office. They, too, returned to their homes on Saturday.

On Sunday, Tatsuo e-mailed, “So sad, so bad, so serious, and it still continues.”

He added that many NG Japan colleagues have relatives in the worst-hit areas, and they “are concentrating on ways to support them.”

Referring to the damaged nuclear power plants and the threat of a meltdown, he said, “We also are confronting a possible world tragedy. This is absolutely serious. What shall we do?"

Tatsuo said he was weighing how to approach the tragedy journalistically.

On Friday, when the quake hit, Tatsuo said he was not surprised by the quake itself, but he was surprised by the duration of the tremor. Tatsuo said that, in the weeks leading up to the huge quake, the area had experienced pre-quakes.

“When we felt the quake at 14:46, I imagined a relationship with this series of quakes. Usually, the quakes would stop after around 30 seconds or so,” he wrote. “But this one was different. It took 3 to 5 minutes."

“The gliding, rolling movement was dynamic,” Tatsuo continued. “Everyone felt that the power of the quake must be huge.”

Tatsuo said the walls cracked in some places and paint fell from the ceiling.

“We could see the dark smoke of fire in front of our office (outside),” he said.

Because Japan is earthquake-prone, Tatsuo has felt many tremors in his lifetime.

“This was absolutely the largest one in my life,” he said.

Meanwhile, Tatsuo said the government has announced rolling power blackouts nationwide for three hours at a time. As a result, many trains had been cancelled Monday morning. Despite the transportation problems, Tatsuo said many NG Japan staff would be at work.

Tatsuo Ito, president of National Geographic Japan, has been e-mailing updates about how he and his colleagues are coping with the aftermath of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami

I know that this is sooo wrong, but I just can't help but think of people running around the rubble of Japan screaming "Tatsuo! Kaneda! Tatsuo! Kaneda!"

I'm sitting right there next to you in the hand basket since I was laughing so hard when I read that.

xkcd is brilliant again

Interesting to see where on the scale "living in a stone or concrete building" comes, isn't it.

Trying to find the link to an excellent presentation I saw yesterday on radiation which shows the half lives of all the likely products. Very short in almost all cases:-)

It would be nice to work in the dosage you get from the TSA's Rapiscan x-ray scanners (with or without accounting for the objection of the UCSF x-ray xperts).

It would be nice to work in the dosage you get from the TSA's Rapiscan x-ray scanners (with or without accounting for the objection of the UCSF x-ray xperts).