NOVA on the Japan quake

After giving a heads-up here about the show being on, I did watch it. Twice, in fact. It was called "Japan's Killer Quake" and it was fascinating. I don't know how they gathered so much information in that short a time -- it was the kind of thing you hope to see many months after a disaster. Yet it was only a couple of weeks after the quake when they made this show. Amazing.

There was quite a bit of new footage of the tsunami striking towns and farms. The power of this tsunami was unimaginable. As one observer said, it's not even water by the time it hits you. It's a moving debris field, carrying houses and cars and boats and entire villages. It's not water you're facing; it's more like a bulldozer coming at you. You can't survive.

For me, there were two highlights in the show. One was the tourist's video of the liquifaction that was occurring all around him. The ground was literally liquifying, and this steady amateur videographer recorded it all, including the ground opening up fissures, and then closing, and opening, etc. I think the guy deserves a reward for being a stalwart person. His camera didn't even shake.

Another highlight was Chris Goldfinger, a marine geologist from Oregon State University, who lived through the quake at a Japanese airport and reported ever so calmly about what it is like to live through five full minutes of the ground shaking. That's a very long quake. This one just wouldn't stop.

They revealed new scientific data on the show, including the surprising fact that the ground literally dropped as much as three feet onshore because of the quake, making the oncoming tidal wave taller in comparison and enabling its passage over the many, towering sea walls Japan had built for just this eventuality. This lowering of the ground paved the way for the enormous destruction that followed.

It was an amazing show and I hope you saw it. Please free to add your own comments. What did you think?