I saw a disturbing news flash on Yahoo, that 9,500 people of the town of Minami Sanriku are missing. I hope that they got out of the village in time, and it’s not that the sea took the whole town out at once . . .
Great Tohoku Earthquake update
Published
Hoofin 
The town in question has (had) a population of about 17,000 people. A bit of 7000 have been accounted for at various evacuation centres. 10,000 or so remain unaccounted for.
There were various videos of the town being swallowed by the see taken from a high vantage point. The water has receded but there is basically nothing left of the town but building foundations and building timber. They aren’t coming out and saying what everyone suspects about the missing.
A nuclear plant is having a lot of problems as well. Tokyo Power is trying to decide if they are going to need to do planned power outages. Not sure if or where those are going to take place.
This is not a particular fun time to e in Japan.
I have been telling people I have a way of always missing the excitement. Although there I think it’s a major inconvenience outside of Tohoku, and Tohoku bearing the bearing the brunt of the disaster. During the morning of 911, I was asleep on vacation.
I feel awful for that village, because the initial facts suggest, as you imply, that the people were taken out to sea with the wave.