The earthquake and resulting tsunami which hit north east Japan last Friday, described by Prime Minister Naoto Kan as, “the worst disaster Japan has faced since the Second World War,” proved how the media offers an information lifeline to the world at a time of crisis.
As the waves smashed into the Japanese coastline following the 8.9-magnitude earthquake, 8000 times more powerful than the one that hit Christchurch, a deluge of images was soon hitting TV and computer screens around the world. In scenes worthy of a Hollywood disaster movie, helicopters from state broadcaster NHK (the company has a fleet of 12 on standby for filming news events) monitored the massive tidal wave rolling in from the sea as it crashed into towns along the coast.
Aircraft, cars and trucks were shown scattered among the shattered debris of buildings like children’s toys. Nearly five million people tuned in to video-sharing site YouTube to watch one unedited video of the wave battering at Japan’s coastline. Closed circuit TV (CCTV) coverage of Sendai Airport was transmitted around the world as the waves trickled over the runway and then ripped into the terminal buildings. By the following Monday the footage had already attracted over 8m hits on YouTube.
CNN.com had generated 120 million page views globally as of 5 p.m. EST on Friday, the site’s sixth biggest traffic day since 2007.
Hundreds of people commented on the footage across the web, and shared information on social network giants Facebook and Twitter as well as local Japanese-language websites.
Australian regional tabloid The Daily Telegraph launched its own Japan earthquake Facebook page which already has over 13,000 fans, dwarfing the popularity of its disaster rivals.
Some of the most dramatic images of the disaster came from still photographs which were splashed across countless pages of newsprint around the world. Flickr launched its own archive of deeply moving images. Google Earth provided satellite images of before and after views of the coastline which depicted the devastating destruction.
Relief workers and a global television audience are marveling at Japan’s stoicism. Twitter users retold stories of where the stranded and homeless shared rice balls. Travelers heading north reported 10-hour car rides — with no honking.
According to the Washington Post, at a convenience store in one battered coastal prefecture, a store manager turned to a private electrical generator. When the generator stopped working and the cash register could no longer open, customers who had been waiting in line quietly returned their items to the shelves.
The internet functioned as a virtual crisis centre as sites such as Google’s people-finder service helped locate friends and family, and offered help to survivors.
As the floodwaters subsided, worried friends and relatives jumped onto their computers to get information about people who had not been heard from since the wave crashed ashore. Google’s person-finder service had notched up more than 81,000 records of people leaving messages seeking information on friends and family by yesterday.
The site was updating, in English and Japanese, by the hundreds every few minutes. A random search of the common Japanese surname “Watanabe” returned hundreds of results, many for people living in Sendai, the city that faced the brunt of the massive wave.
A service was being shared on Twitter allowing people to donate to the Red Cross via text message, with the donation added to phone bills. Tweets were posted by celebrities such as Lady Gaga, who launched a “We pray for Japan” bracelet to support the relief effort.
With a projected death toll of over 10,000 the media has provided a comfort to many people with relatives and friends in Japan. For others, it provides clear and startling evidence of the fragility of our planet when natural disaster strikes.
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