Japan Quake and Tsunami: before and after satellite photos, from Google

A collection of Google Earth satellite imagery of the areas in Japan worst hit by Friday's earthquake and tsunami.

• [Anonymous]

  The Australian news service, also called ABC, has some cool before/after draggable satellite photos here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm
  Hopefully it can be viewed outside of Aus – my apologies if not.

• [Anonymous]

  WOW.

• [Anonymous]

  I’d recommend to anyone that hasn’t, especially those that have trouble grasping the magnitude of destruction chronicalled here, to watch the slide show in full screen mode.

  It’s like G-d took his eraser to the scene and started blotting stuff out, sections of 80-800 homes at a time…

• [Anonymous]

  WOW!!!!!!!! REALLY VERY AMAZING PHOTOS…………..

• [Anonymous]

  Could the entity or entities that are playing Populous with the world please stop?

• [planettom]

  So I was wondering, and reading articles on the web doesn’t enlighten me — not in these pictures, but in other pictures —- Sendai airport, with the tsunami surging around it, the terminals are obviously built for large passenger jets. But there aren’t any there. Lucky happenstance, or, did they know the tsunami was coming and hurriedly flew the planes out?

• [awjtawjt]

  It looks like the second set of pictures has indeed been moved back about 8 feet.

• [Ugly Canuck]

  All these things jumping around, must be the year of the rabbit.

• [Ugly Canuck]

  These look too too much like the images after the Christmas tsunami of 2004.

  I fear a terrific loss of life has occurred.

• [Ugly Canuck]

  Holy snaps, things moved more than i had expected:

  “So powerful was the quake—off the coast of Japan and 24km under water—that Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said the Earth’s axis shifted 25 centimeters as a result, and the US Geological Survey said the main island of Japan had shifted 2.4 meters.”

  From:

  http://www.economist.com/blogs/asiaview/2011/03/japans_earthquake_0

  Things change too fast sometimes.

• [endymion]

  I don’t fully understand what I’m seeing.

  Why are the after images brown? Is it mud dragged in by the wave?

  Or is the brown caused by the before and after not being taken at similar times of day and year?

  • [adamnvillani]

    Yes, the brown is mud and debris. When the wave comes in, it’s not just water, it’s water along with everything in its path that it kicked up.

  • [Anonymous]

    I had a similar thought. Not quite sure what I’m supposed to be seeing and I have good eyes… hmmm… Many of the diffs appear to be diffs in lighting and shading.

  • [Anonymous]

    Yes, those pictures are brown because of all the debris that was dragged inland from the tsunami

• [chaschas]

  Can’t seem to submit this on the form, but there is some more high definition, very detailed footage of the damage in NE Japan from the earthquake/tsunami. Horrific. Boats on top of buildings.
  http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1738971192643&oid=157466287640348&comments

• [Anonymous]

  It seems that people veiwing this have difficulty graspng the HUGE implications of this tsunami , perhaps you should all take a look at this link and get a better picture as to the devastation, this is no parlour trick, no angled shots , lightng or different time of day at play here- just destruction!
  http://www.nytimes.com/…/satellite-photos-japan-before-and-after-tsunami.html