“Watching coverage of earthquake on TV. Worried about my family in Sendai city,” a tweet from Ruchira Surya, a restaurant manager in Tokyo. Her brother tweeted back within minutes: “We are safe. Sendai airport inundated with cars, trucks, buses and thick mud deposited over its runways.”
“The tsunami roars over embankments in Sendai city, washing away cars and houses to sea,” was his second tweet. On Friday, the world’s first televised earthquake and tsunami was truly a technological spectacle for millions that made the world come a lot closer in its hour of crisis.
‘PrayforJapan’, ‘tsunami’, ‘earthquake’, ‘Sendai’ and related terms made it to the trending topics list as the twitterati expressed their shock and condolences. With phone lines snapping, within seconds Twitter and social networking site Facebook were swamped with tweets and updates about Japan. People stranded were relying on the networking websites not only to post condolences but to also seek help and reach out to the disaster management authorities with their whereabouts.
Real-time updates about cities and areas affected in Japan quickly multiplied on Twitter. Ajoy Kumar communicated to his friends back in India over a tweet, saying, “Thank you for worrying. In Osaka, there is no quake damage. The damage of Tokyo, Sendai, Kanto, and Tohoku is larger.” While some like Dhiman Kumar, an engineer working in a Japanese refinery, tweeted, “30 minutes after main quake, tall buildings still swaying in Tokyo and mobile phone networks not working. Internet is up.” “DisneySea is flooding and the parking lots are over flowing with water,” came a tweet from a stranded tourist from Disney’s amusement park.
“Don’t think Disneyland Tokyo is as bad as they are saying, hear people have already been evacuated,” said another tweet.
Even those who were most affected by earthquake found their way to update friends over Twitter. “My house is trashed. I’m ok. It was spooky...the biggest one yet,” tweeted Nirmaan Singh, a resident in Odaiba district of Tokyo. Minutes later, he updated, “The city is complete blacked out. Can’t see anything except car lights.”
As hundreds of people were evacuated from Shinjuku train station in Tokyo to a nearby park — its effect was quickly reflected in the number of Facebook status updates on user profiles. Nishant Shetty, who was vacationing in Hawaii with his wife, informed his friends and family over a Facebook status message — “Packing again as Hawaii is scrambling to evacuate locals and tourists from the coastline after the massive earthquake off Japan triggered a tsunami alert here.” Back in India, UB Group Chairman Vijay Mallya tweeted: “The power of the ocean is frightening. Boats, cars, buildings being swept away in a sludge of tsunami fury, following the Japan quake.”