Japan was struck by an earthquake of an 8.9-magnitude barely two hours ago – and followed by a tsunami shortly after.
I got in a few minutes ago and innocently logged on to check my yahoo! email. At the top of the screen, in a flashing yellow bar, distracting from articles on Charlie Sheen’s latest adventures, were the words: “BREAKING NEWS: 8.9 EARTHQUAKE SHAKES JAPAN”.
It’s astonishing that a two minute email-check has brought me BREAKING NEWS from thousands of miles away. Literally two hours ago this occured, and here I sit watching 2 different video clips (in addition to live online coverage), reading seven different articles, twelve different facebook statuses, and thousands of tweets about it already…..
A tsunami warning has been issued to Russia, Marcus Island and the Northern Marianas, by The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.
A tsunami watch has been issued for Guam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and the U.S. state of Hawaii.
Already eight out of the ten current twitter trends relate to this event, that happened aroun midnight our time. One of the remaining trends (out of the ten) is a promotion.
#prayforjapan, #tsunami, #watchingCNN, Sendai, Hurricane Katrina, Tokyo Disneylany, Guam, and Hawaii. In the time it took to type that list, 60 new tweets popped up on my feed, and the last trending topic became about Japan (#California …. which according to the LA Times, is safe from tsunami warnings)
Now if only Alec Baldwin were tweeting, the telethon would already be half organized….
kaytoney 