Overwhelmed: The tsunami engulfs a residential area in Natori, Miyagi(News Today) - Four Indonesian sailors are reported to have been missing after a 8.9-magnitude earthquake followed by a tsunami hit Japan last Friday, a minister said.
"We recently received news that the fate of the four Indonesian fishermen reportedly working on Kunimaru 3 ship are still unknown," Foreign Affairs Minister Marty Natalegawa said here on Sunday.
The minister said the four identified with their initials S (27), TS (30), RH (30) and AS (29) had their ship anchored in Shiogama city, Miyagi prefecture, when the earthquake and tsunami struck.
"The ship was found around 2.5 kilometers from the shore but the fishermen are missing," said the minister adding that Indonesian Embassy in Tokyo was still trying to find the missing Indonesians while the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s staff in Jakarta would soon contact the families of the poor fishermen.
Earlier, Japanese Police Chief Naoto Takeuchi stated Sunday the death toll from Japan`s devastating earthquake and tsunami was likely to exceed 10,000 in Miyagi prefecture alone.
Takeuchi, quoted by state broadcaster NHK, said he had "no doubt" of that number of fatalities in his prefecture -- the region hardest hit by Friday`s devastating natural disaster. The police said the death toll as of early Sunday had reached 688, with 642 missing and 1,570 injured.
But this figure excluded 400-500 bodies found in two locations in northeast Japan, where the wall of water swept ashore. There are also reports that thousands of people were still unaccounted for. In the small port town of Minamisanriku, which was practically swept away, some 10,000 people were missing, NHK reported earlier.
Meanwhile, the US Geological Survey stated Japan`s recent massive earthquake, one of the strongest and largest ever recorded, appears to have moved the island by about eight feet (2.4 meters). The quake and its tectonic shift resulted from "thrust faulting" along the boundary of the Pacific and North America plates, according to the USGS.
The Pacific plate pushes under a far western wedge of the North America plate at a rate of about 3.3 inches (83 millimeters) per year, but a colossal earthquake can provide force to drastically move the plates, with catastrophic consequences.
"With an earthquake this large, you can get huge ground shifts," Earle said. "On the actual fault you can get 20 meters (65 feet) movement on the two sides of the fault."
Source : kompas
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