Return to Transcripts main page
In the Arena
Japan Hit by 8.9 Magnitude Quake
Aired March 11, 2011 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ELIOT SPITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, I'm Eliot Spitzer.
All day we've been bombarded by the terrible and dramatic picture of the earthquake in northern Japan. So I want to start tonight with video that just came in. It is much quieter than what we've seen before, but I found it even more frightening.
It's from NHK, the Japanese television network. It shows an aerial tour of a town in northern Japan. Watch and listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (Through Translator): This is Minamisoma City in Fukushima picture. Almost everything has been washed away. There are no houses to be seen.
Aren't there any people around? Do you see any people?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (Through Translator): From overhead we're looking very hard, but we have seen no one. We cannot see any people. And it is hard to tell where the boundaries of the town are.
The water has flooded everything, Professor (INAUDIBLE). So this is Minamisoma City, what can you tell us about what you see?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (Through Translator): I think ground subsidence has taken place. So it's flooding related to ground subsidence. And the tsunami waves -- yes, of course, the tsunami waves hit land and quite a bit of time has passed, and I know that more tsunami may come.
But I'm not sure if the flooding is due to the tsunami. If it's due to ground subsidence maybe the water will not -- water level will not get lower. I mean Minamisoma City is in the northeast, prefecture with a population about 70,000.
And from what we see, only the very sturdy, thorough concrete buildings are still standing in Minamisoma. The wooden houses have all been washed away, and traces or the remnants of the foundation are still here. The houses which were on the foundation have been washed away. We only see the foundation.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: Absolutely shocking video. An entire city, the city of Minamimosa (sic) mostly gone. It was a town of 71,000 people. No one is sure how many if anybody survived. This is what it looks like today. And this is what it looked like yesterday. Absolutely shocking.
And now those who are still alive are living with another terrible fear -- nuclear contamination. Minamisoma is just a few miles from the nuclear power plant. It has a problem with its reactor. The earthquake knocked out power at that facility, and when a backup generator failed, the cooling system was unable to provide power to cool the plant's number-one reactor.
Temperatures are rising inside, and so are radiation levels which are now 1,000 times higher than they should be.
The Japanese government has declared the first state of emergency, its first ever at a nuclear plant.
Regular Will Cain joins me tonight.
Will, you've been looking at the issue. What are we beginning to find out about it?
WILL CAIN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, we're going to be talking tonight, Eliot, to an expert in disaster management. Somebody who actually investigated the awful Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine in the 1980s. He's going to take us inside that nuclear reactor and tell us what the problem is.
And Eliot, we're learning right now that the problem could actually include multiple nuclear reactors. So hopefully he can tell us what the Japanese are doing to avoid a disaster.
SPITZER: All right. We'll come back to you in a couple of minutes. Scary stuff. And this could be the next phase of this ongoing rolling disaster that has captivated the world over the past number of hours.
And it appears that much of the death and devastation we're seeing was not a direct result of the earthquake but instead from the tsunami that it triggered. All day long we've been looking at different pictures of that tsunami. We wanted to show it to you in sequence from the moment it began to form and then swept across northern Japan.
Take a look at this video, what you're going to see, it's 3:00 in the afternoon local time in Japan. A 30-foot wave, 30 feet of water moving across the ocean, and it picks up speeds over the ocean 400 to 500 miles an hour, as fast as an airplane going across the ocean.
Thirty feet of water, 500 miles an hour, absolutely brutal force. And then the tsunami comes to shore, and this is what happens. It slows down a little bit. And it is just as devastating.
Look at that house just crumbles in front of that massive hit. We're going to show it to you a couple of times. That's a three-story house, solidly built. Ripped apart. This is what happens -- boats, cars being just dragged down the streets of this city as though they're little toys. The water just pours, torrential, destruction everywhere it goes. Continues across fields. This is not a horror movie from Hollywood. This is real. Look at that water going at warp speed, 30 miles an hour, 40 miles an hour, across acres of land. Boats, houses, mass destruction.
Everything in front of it just ripped apart. Absolutely shocking stuff and horrifying. We still don't know how much destruction it has left in its wake.
We go now CNN correspondent Kyung Lah who's in Japan trying to make her way to Sendai, the scene of the greatest devastation.
Can you hear us? Kyung, what's the latest over there?
KYUNG LAH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: -- to tell you is that what we're really starting to see now is massive traffic jams yet again. We saw a lot of traffic jams leaving Tokyo. We're seeing the jams both coming in and out of this region, as we get closer and closer.
We just had a rescue chopper fly right above us. It appeared and I -- you know, I didn't get anything other than a ground view of the bird in the sky, but it appeared to be a military transport helicopter heading directly to Sendai.
What is critical in these hours now is trying to get air transport in there, trying to pluck people out of buildings if they're trapped. Trying to get supplies to people. And helicopters right now, according to the authorities, is the best mode of transportation in order to do that.
So we're starting to hear those helicopters on the ground. We're starting to see more damage -- cracked roads, buildings that have cracks in them, roofs that have come in. We went by a cemetery and saw some of the headstones toppled over.
So you can see definitely that the quake that hit this area. But this is just a small sampling of the very strong devastation that's, you know, about 100 miles ahead of us. We're expecting to see, if we can get there shortly.
SPITZER: You know, I hear we've been tracking your progress slow as it has been over the course of the -- course of the last couple of hours. We know you're stuck in this horrific traffic jam. Everybody is trying to go somewhere. It's not possible to do it.
We also have not really heard estimates of death. What do you -- what is the government there saying about the total number of those dead and obviously the rescue operation with helicopters? Do they have enough resources? What are they asking of the United States at this point?
LAH: It's really difficult to tell exactly what the resource on the ground versus the need is because I'm simply not there. But you can see from the pictures that the need is certainly great. That's, you know, readily apparent if you're watching the news coverage.
What we can sense is that the government at this point is trying to be very conservative as far as the numbers that they're releasing. What they're trying to do is trying to track down the people who are missing and then trying to confirm that with the bodies that they have found.
We've heard some outrageous reports here, we simply can't confirm it. But what we are expecting, what the government has been forecasting is that the numbers that we're currently hearing which are in the hundreds are expected to climb.
SPITZER: Well, that is of course the tragedy. One of the other perhaps slightly affirmative pieces of news we've gotten is that because there was even five minutes of warning, fewer people may have lost their lives that could have -- would have been expected compared to some of the other tsunamis and earthquakes such as Haiti and what happened in Thailand years back.
All right, Kyung, thank you so much. We will get back to you over the course of the days ahead no doubt. Thank you so much.
And -- what we're going to be doing now is we're going to -- Kyung, all right. Thank you. We'll be back to you later now.
Let's go back to Fukushima. We're about to talk with an American who's living there teaching English. Ryan McDonald shot some amazing footage as the earthquake rocked Japan.
Let's take a look at that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RYAN MCDONALD, SURVIVED JAPANESE EARTHQUAKE: The biggest one to date. Oh, my god. That is the biggest earthquake to date. It is still going. Oh, my god. The building is going to fall.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: Absolutely amazing footage that Ryan McDonald took at the time of the earthquake obviously. And he joins us now via Skype from the devastated city of Fukushiyama.
Ryan, what can you tell us? What was going through your mind when you took that? Tell us the story.
MCDONALD: Well, I had come home early from school. We had a board of education meeting at 3:00, so I had arrived at about 2:40. I sat at my computer and felt a small earthquake. I thought it was a small earthquake. I ignored it. I actually -- on Facebook I typed, "oh, there was a little earthquake," and then it didn't stop. It kept going.
And so I stood up and went to the door to see if -- how bad it was outside. And it was considerably bad. And it just kept going. And I pulled out my iPod and started filming that. And I said, this is the biggest one to date. I've been in Japan nine years. I see small earthquakes about once, twice, maybe three times a month.
Nine years, this was the biggest one to date, and it just -- it didn't stop. I was just terrified.
SPITZER: Well, you were right, it certainly was the biggest one to date. It's perhaps one of the biggest ones in the history of Japan, certainly in many, many decades. And you -- but you say you have little ones several times a month.
I mean, if you just have to say on a scale of one to 10, we know this was an 8.9 on the Richter scale, did this feel 100 more times more severe in terms of length, duration as the terror that it created in you?
MCDONALD: Everything. My first earthquake was in 2002. I was -- I'm an English teacher. I was in a classroom, it shook the room. I stopped and said, earthquake, earthquake, and the kids -- the students just said, that happens all the time, it's no big deal.
So OK, so we just kept on teaching. And so all the earthquakes after that, they last about five to 10 seconds. If feels like you're on a bed and someone is just casually shaking the bed to wake you up. It's a little disturbing. But it's not terrifying.
This one started the same way. It continued, it didn't get better, it continued, it got worse. What you couldn't see from the video from the small lens is I could see the walls of my apartment physically almost like diagonal, slightly diagonal to a point. And that's when I said, oh, my god, the walls are going to -- the building is going to come down.
I've never seen anything like that before. It was terrifying.
SPITZER: Did the building in fact collapse? I mean describe the devastation around you when you finally made it outside. We heard the noise, we saw everything shaking. Describe what it looked like after it all ended.
MCDONALD: My building did not fall down. And that's because it's relatively new. And it's -- I would say five to 10 years old, and it was clearly built with earthquakes in mind. I have seen a sushi restaurant -- I uploaded pictures to my iReport account on CNN. Actually, we're getting an aftershock right now.
SPITZER: Right now as we speak?
MCDONALD: Right now.
SPITZER: How does it feel -- order of magnitude?
MCDONALD: Oh, this one's very small. And if -- if this happened two weeks ago, I would sleep right through it and ignore it. But now I don't know if it's a precursor to a big one again. It's gone. It's over. SPITZER: Have you gotten any warnings from the government about what might be coming in terms of aftershocks? We all know when you have something 8.9, the number of aftershocks is going to be pretty significant. What have they told you?
MCDONALD: They haven't told us much about that. They've -- I've watched some stuff on TV. I don't want to listen to the Japanese reports because it's all in Japanese, and it's just way too fast.
They have set up several evacuation centers. I went to one, they were very quick about providing water. They provided this five-liter bag of water. They have evacuation stations. Currently my gas is out. My water service is out. My phones are out. For some reason, I have Internet and power. But all the other necessities are out.
SPITZER: You know one of the amazing things, Ryan, is the state of preparedness in Japan seems to be so good, which is why we're going to -- we've been hearing about this all day, which is why given the five- minute heads up the people got, there actually seems to have been less loss of life than there might otherwise have been.
And you had gotten to the point where you could almost sleep through it. I guess this is going to change all that now, that you're going to terrified by this every time you feel it.
MCDONALD: Right. Right. And that's the thing. This happened -- I don't know how many hours ago. Over 12, I can't do the math right now. And the worst part about it for me was from the initial earthquake until right now, every five, 10, maybe 15 minutes there's some tremor. Initially -- there's another one. Right now. You might be able to see --
SPITZER: Yes.
MCDONALD: No. No. So there's a tremor so I can't relax because of that. Every five to 10 minutes there's been a small tremor. At first they were big tremors. Now they're just small tremors. But it's -- that's the thing that's really bothering me. I can't relax. I haven't slept in over 30 hours because whenever I lie down, another tremor hits and I immediately jump back up.
SPITZER: Are you in the residence where you lived, where you were when you were shooting the footage that we just looked at?
MCDONALD: I am. I am sitting in the residence now. I mean I have --
SPITZER: At what level -- it's kind of amazing that building seems to have survived intact.
MCDONALD: Definitely. I do have some photos that I've uploaded of, like I said, a sushi restaurant that was just leveled. And several other buildings with damage in the area. But again, I am 65 miles away from the epicenter. Away from Sendai.
SPITZER: Right. MCDONALD: So I received far less than what they did. I hope your other reporter in Tokyo can make it up there but -- by helicopter. It might be the only way.
SPITZER: Right. Your sense is that the infrastructure you're describing, electricity, gas, power, all those things seem to be just totally knocked out at this point?
MCDONALD: Right. There was -- there's no transportation. There's no taxis, there's no buses. Definitely the Shinkansen. There was total silence which was very scary because there was no -- there were no buses running, there were no cars on the street.
Then there were a lot of sirens and a lot of choppers flying over. It felt like I was in a movie. Some kind of disaster movie. That was surreal. And then all of the -- the other thing is all the 7-Elevens, all the convenience stores, all the grocery stores, anything that sells food is closed.
We have no way of buying food. This was my dinner six hours ago. A little cup of noodles.
SPITZER: Right.
MCDONALD: With an orange juice. That's all I had --
(CROSSTALK)
SPITZER: This is -- this is the next crisis that arises, getting resources, food, water, sanitation to the millions of people who are in the zone that's been affected by this historic and devastating earthquake.
So Ryan, thank you for that unbelievable footage and telling us even just now as you said going through these tremors. We'll be back to you over the next days no doubt. And stay safe. Find a place to stay that is going withstand any aftershocks that come.
MCDONALD: I will. Thank you.
SPITZER: Thank you, Ryan.
We'll be back with more earthquake coverage in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: Now let's go to CNN's own meteorologist Chad Myers in Atlanta in our weather center in Atlanta.
Welcome, Chad.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Eliot, you know, I want to kind of go through how all this happened. It's a thrust-fault earthquake. Let's see, there's Japan. There's the Japan trench. Go look at the Atlas, you can find it. There is a Pacific plate that goes under the country of Japan, and right there at that thrust fault, it's going to -- for many years get pushed down slowly, and then all of a sudden yesterday, it pops up. It's because this plate moves in one direction. The other plate stays in the same spot.
All of a sudden, it can't hold back any longer, and it thrusts up, and with that thrust it pushes the water above it up into the sky. And it makes a bubble. It makes a giant splash. The splash spreads out, becomes a tsunami.
So originally they felt the shaking, that was the shaking of the ground. But then literally five to 10 minutes later, the bubble of water crashed on shore and did much more damage than the earthquake itself -- Eliot.
SPITZER: Well, Chad, this is absolutely amazing to me. It brings back memories. I remember studying this in science as I guess we all did in high school at some point. You don't think it's ever really going to happen. How far did that -- you know, when those two plates are bumping up against each other, how far did it move to create this unbelievable tsunami and earthquake?
MYERS: There's no way to know. When they went back and looked at the Banda Ache quake, which was six years ago, they think that some of the sea floor may have moved 60 feet. And that could be the cause of this 30-foot wall of water. So at least the 30-foot thrust of this as it pops up in some spots. And that bubble of water gets pushed up and then it wants to just level itself out again.
And it spreads out all across the Pacific Ocean. It hit the west coast. An eight-foot wave in Crescent City. And a little bit less than this across a lot of the rest of California. And now it's still -- that wave is still going in some spots down toward central and southern America.
SPITZER: This wave went thousands of miles across to California and down to South America.
MYERS: Yes.
SPITZER: Of course, Japan was so much closer. How much warning did Japan have?
MYERS: Five minutes.
SPITZER: Now I've heard you -- I've had the -- you know, the opportunity to listen to you over the course of the day, not all our viewers have had that opportunity. You've made the point, so fascinating and important, that Japan, because it has this unbelievable preparedness, even with only five minutes, people were able to get ready for this incoming tsunami.
Tell us about that.
MYERS: Well, Japan has spent decades building trenches, building levees, building buildings that are able to withstands this type of event. First the earthquake, but the levees, and all along the coastal communities, there was -- they don't find them very attractive either.
And then the Japanese people will tell you that, that these levees -- you know, you can't see the ocean from there. Well, the ocean literally was stopped by some of the levees, or at least slowed down and so in the preparedness that Japan has had just over the years and years and years, they were able to survive this.
And I know that that's a number and the death toll is going to go up. But you have to understand that the Banda Ache quake in 2004 was a 9.0 -- 8.9, 9.0, whatever. What's the difference? It killed 230,000 people. This will be 1/100 of that and probably even less than that because of the way people are -- they are born with this awareness. They know where to go when the earth shakes. They know what to do.
SPITZER: You know, you're right. Obviously every loss of life is a tragedy. But the numbers are really smaller than might have been predicted. So the preparedness you're talking about is really how you build the buildings, how you build the trenches more than what you do in the five minutes after this alarm goes off.
MYERS: Well, certainly, too, all those people in the buildings that were in the factories, the airports, they knew water was coming. When you've had a shake like that and this was a violent shake, we -- we showed the pictures of the shaking in Tokyo.
But the shaking in Sendai was significantly worse. Twice as close to the epicenter, which was in the water. But twice as close as Tokyo. So at least twice the shaking if not more. We don't really get that feel because all we're seeing from Sendai are the water pictures.
Maybe we'll get some shake pictures later. But as soon as that happened, everyone that was on the ground literally got up. They went up two, three, four floors high, and then those buildings withstood that water, at least most of them did, not the stick buildings.
But the cement and the steel buildings where the water went under, a lot like a storm surge in a hurricane. Why you build a home on stilts along the coast of the U.S. to allow the water to go under. Buildings are built like that there. So the water went under, people were above the water as it went under and they survived.
SPITZER: You know, Chad, you are so right. We just had an interview -- I don't know if you can see it in Atlanta -- with Ryan McDonald who had footage of his building that was almost sideways. And now it's gone back to the way it's supposed to look. So it is unbelievable what preparedness can do.
All right, Chad. Thank you so much for this fascinating conversation all day. I've enjoyed listening to you. Thanks so much.
MYERS: Thank you.
SPITZER: All right. We're going to take a break. We'll be right back with more coverage of this devastating earthquake and tsunami.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: Now let's review exactly where the quake happened. It was the strongest hit Japan in recorded history and one of the strongest earthquakes ever. The quake at 2:46 this afternoon local time shortly after midnight in New York.
The epicenter was located about 230 miles northeast of Tokyo. The city of Sendai was hardest hit by today's quake and by the tsunami that followed. The city was closest to the epicenter which hit about 100 miles to the west.
Shortly after the quake, Sendai was inundated by waves estimated to reach 35 feet. More than 200 bodies have been discovered in the area so far.
Just south of Sendai, the Japanese government has declared an atomic power emergency in a nuclear power plant in Fukushima as the cooling system in one of the plants' reactors has failed.
Also in Fukushima, a dam broke washing away hundreds of homes. More than 30 aftershocks have been recorded throughout the day.
As the extent of the devastation in Japan emerges, search and relief efforts are kicking into high gear. Take a look again at this helicopter rescue this morning, in the Miyagi prefecture. It's one of the first images of a survivor being lifted to safety we've seen in this catastrophe. And hopefully one that will be a familiar sight in days to come.
With hundreds missing, at least 1,000 feared dead and tens of thousands now homeless, Japan's prime minister has deployed 8,000 troops as part of the country's emergency task force. And he's asked the U.S. for help, as well.
Five U.S. Navy warships loaded with humanitarian supplies are speeding toward Japan to join three already in the area. Meanwhile, survivors battle fire, flooding, toxic sludge, collapsed buildings, a nuclear emergency, and dozens of aftershocks that continue to traumatize an already-terrified nation.
Joe Allbaugh is the former director of FEMA, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. He joins us now from Key West, Florida.
Mr. Allbaugh, welcome. And tell us what do you do when this sort of magnitude of devastation hits?
Joe, can you hear me?
JOE ALLBAUGH, PRES. AND CEO, ALLBAUGH INTERNATIONAL GROUP: Thank you, Eliot. Before I respond I'd like to say that our hearts and prayers are with everyone.
Eliot, can you hear me?
SPITZER: I can indeed. I asked you, Joe --
ALLBAUGH: Eliot?
SPITZER: What do you do when you see devastation of this magnitude --
ALLBAUGH: We don't have any --
SPITZER: You have no infrastructure. Tell us how do you begin to put together a search and rescue operation? How do you begin to rebuild a civilization in the midst of this tragedy?
ALLBAUGH: Well, our hearts go out to every family who's lost a loved one tonight. And we won't know for days, maybe even weeks how -- what the total will be. Luckily here in America we had advance warning through NOAA. And I congratulate them on their excellent early warning system. So we only have lost a few people on the western shore.
The first thing you have to do and it sounds like the new prime minister has done it right, pulled all of his civilian and military sources together, make an assessment of all of his assets, and then figure out the priorities. That's what you have to do. And you have to do it quickly, and you have to have decision-makers in the room and tough decisions will be made.
ELIOT SPITZER, HOST: Give us an example of those sorts of tough decisions. Do you make a decision immediately to evacuate everybody who is there within a 50-mile radius both because you've got this pending nuclear issue and who knows which direction that goes, and then you also have no water, you have no electricity. So is it better to try to evacuate this enormous area and find a place for people to live?
ALLBAUGH: Exactly. I would evacuate a big radius as I possibly could around that nuclear reactor right now. I think the radius is something like six kilometers and -- or 10 kilometers I should say. That's 6.2 miles. And they probably need to broaden that since they don't have a handle on the coolant system yet. Then they need start working on places to distribute food and water. People are going to need that. They can't survive without water. They can go days and days and days without food, but water is a necessity of life.
Their military has already been activated, as you heard in your last segment. We, the United States, thankfully through FEMA and USAID that has the lead, has already activated two of our urban search and rescue teams that are on the way to Japan right now. If more are needed, more will be activated.
They need heavy lift equipment. You've already talked about eight ships, eight of our warships in the neighborhood helping with humanitarian needs right now. What they need will be helicopters, off the carriers. They will need American personnel. Fortunately, all of those ships are self-sustainable. And we'll be there to do everything that we possibly can. But it is a tough decision to get your -- it's a tough chore to get your arms around the magnitude of this. And there are a lot of things they don't even know about yet. It's just shortly after, I believe -- or approaching 10:30 in the morning in Tokyo. So they've only had about two or three hours to make their assessments.
Tomorrow in the U.S., along the western coast, Eliot, the preliminary damage assessments will be made. So a lot has to be had in a very short period of time.
SPITZER: All right, Joe, thank you for that wisdom. And let's hope it all get done and safely, and fewest lives possible to be lost in the days ahead. Thank you so much.
We're going to take a break. We'll be right back with more coverage of this devastation from the earthquake and the tsunami.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: We turn again to that controversy looming in Japan tonight. The potential for a massive radioactive leak from one of the world's largest nuclear reactor facilities. Will Cain, tell us what you learned?
WILL CAIN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Eliot, officials have declared a state of emergency at the plant. It's just 160 miles from Tokyo but it's much closer to the epicenter of the quake. Only about 60 miles.
Take a look at this video of the plant shaking during the earthquake. The Japanese prime minister has just announced that the evacuation of thousands of people six miles around the facility. Radiation levels are reportedly 1,000 times higher than usual, and here's what's happening inside the plant right now.
The coolant system isn't working in one or more of the plant's reactors. That's causing a dangerous build-up of pressure inside the reactor's core. Radioactive steam is being released into the air to help relieve the pressure and avoid a meltdown.
I'm joined now by Cham Dallas, professor of disaster management at the University of Georgia.
Cham, welcome.
CHAM DALLAS, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA: Thank you, Will.
CAIN: Professor, we know that the problem lies inside the cooling system and at least a couple of the reactors. What are officials doing right now to avoid disaster?
DALLAS: Well, right now, the -- they have backup systems, and some of the backup systems haven't gone the way they wanted. The thing to remember is that they've already stopped the reactor. They got the control rods done into the reactor so that there's no more fission going on. However, they haven't been able to dissipate the heat. It's like a stove, where you turn the heat off, it's going to be warm for a while. And it's the same way with a reactor. So you have to get that heat out of there. Well, unfortunately, some of the cooling systems have not gone the way they wanted so that heat has to go somewhere. What they're doing now apparently is releasing it in the form of steam. Here in the United States, we used to do that frequently. And there was a lot of radioactivity released in the atmosphere. We've tried to curtail that, you know, that procedure here in the United States. But if you have nowhere to go, that's what you're going to do.
CAIN: Let me ask you about those backup systems. We understand that electrical power was lost to the power plant and, therefore, the coolant systems are not able to run. What are the backup systems to run those -- that coolant system?
DALLAS: Well, it's a real dangerous thing to lose power to these reactors. Of course, they had -- the backup systems are battery, basically related systems. And when you go back down to that, you're really on a thin margin.
CAIN: Right.
DALLAS: Fortunately, the good news is like I said earlier, they did get the rods down into the reactors so the odds of a meltdown are just about zero. However, if they can't get that steam bled off, they could have other problems there and more radioactivity released in the atmosphere.
CAIN: Yes, you're talking about some of the steam being let out to let the pressure out of what is going on inside the core. That steam that's coming out has radioactive material in it. How big a deal is that? Does that carry health risks for the locals in the area?
DALLAS: My estimate would be without measurements directly in front of me is that it would not, OK. I spent 10 years at Chernobyl, at the reactor in 1986 that blew up and spit 100 times as much radioactivity as Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined in the atmosphere. That was a problem. OK. We're not going to see that here. My estimate would be is that the radiation levels released into the atmosphere if they release them more than they have will not be dangerous. That would be my estimate at this time. However, you cannot overestimate the fear factor that would be released here. Any time radioactivity is released people are very afraid. That's why the Japanese have increasing -- they've increased their evacuation zones steadily through the day. And it's largely due to fear. Radioactivity is a terrible fear-relating factor. But I believe that it's not likely that they're going to see health hazard creating levels of radioactivity, not with what we know right now.
CAIN: Let me see if I understand completely what you've described as going on. When the earthquake happened, the nuclear reactor shut down and the nuclear rods dropped into a core and fission stopped. But heat continued to radiated inside the containment area, is that right?
DALLAS: Yes, that's a good description.
CAIN: And the problem is that electricity is not running the coolant system and reducing that heat inside the containment area. Am I correct?
DALLAS: That's correct. There's a lot of heat in there. You can't shut this down heat-wise very quickly. They did prevent a meltdown by dropping the rods down into the reactor. That's what went wrong at Chernobyl. The rods didn't go in.
CAIN: OK.
DALLAS: So there was a meltdown.
CAIN: So now there's heat radiating inside the containment area. We've heard terms like the pressure is soaring. Is this why we begin to see steam, this radiated steam let out of the containment center?
DALLAS: Yes, that is what they would do. Of course, I'm not there. I'm not watching their control panels. But that would be the procedure they would use. Once it built up inside the containment dome, they've got to let it out somewhere. And the reality is that the levels that they let out now, even though it sounds like a lot, 1,000 times is one report, I'm not sure if that's accurate, but even if it was 1,000 times background, it still wouldn't reach health- related levels. However, they've got do something. They really haven't got another choice.
CAIN: Professor, we want to avoid oversimplistic comparisons. But you were involved in the investigation at Chernobyl. And the ones that stick in our mind, this nuclear incidents that stick in our mind are Chernobyl and, of course, Three Mile Island. Does this have the potential to reach those kind of -- those kind of disasters?
DALLAS: I would say this will not reach the level of Chernobyl. Chernobyl, there was a lot of radioactivity. Like I said, 100 times Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
Now, Three Mile Island, that might be more in the realm of where this could go if the safety systems fail. If they lose power to those -- to that reactor or to any other reactors past a few hours from now, you might reach a Three Mile Island situation. I don't think it will even go that far. However, any release of radioactivity into the atmosphere creates a lot of fear, and that will affect the Japanese economically, socially. It will affect them for some time.
CAIN: Hopefully, the Japanese will be able to contain the situation. Thank you, Professor Cham Dallas, for joining us.
DALLAS: Yes, thank you for having me.
CAIN: All right. Coming up, we'll have more coverage. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: Now with a closer look at just how powerful that tsunami that devastated Japan was, we turn to Dr. Klaus Jacob, an earthquake expert at Columbia University.
Dr. Jacob, thank you for coming. KLAUS JACOB, PROFESSOR, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: Thank you for having me.
SPITZER: So here's the question I have for you -- the numbers are just hard to comprehend. And let's put up that video that we showed earlier in the program of the tsunami moving across the ocean. How quickly does that tsunami move, and what is the force behind it?
JACOB: It is a speed of about 400 to 500 miles per hour, just like a jet would take, about nine to 12 hours from Japan to here. That's the time of the flight.
SPITZER: Right.
JACOB: So that gives you an idea. But it is a function of depth of the ocean. So that speed is only at the deep ocean. But it approaches the shallower coastline, then it slows down. But the energy keeps pushing. So it is slower, but becomes higher. And so when a tsunami runs ashore, it gains height as it approaches the shore, and that's what makes the devastation.
SPITZER: Let's put up that second video and the sequence that we had earlier in the show. And you can just see as it just crushes the houses in front of it. That's exactly what you're describing.
JACOB: Yes.
SPITZER: But here's what I'm mystified by. How does it maintain that energy over thousands of miles? Now this footage didn't go as far from the epicenter to the Japanese coast, which was not such a great distance. But from the epicenter to the U.S. coastline, it covered thousands of miles. Why doesn't that energy dissipate?
JACOB: It's like a domino effect. You push the first stone and it pushes the next, and it goes on. And as long as there's water, it keeps running.
SPITZER: Does it gain power? Does it lose power?
JACOB: No. It spreads out the power from a more focused area like in Japan itself to the entire Pacific basin. And so it loses somewhat in energy, and that's why you didn't have so high a tsunami run-up in Hawaii or in Oregon and California.
SPITZER: So if we had a 30-foot wave when it went off ashore in Japan, which is what we were seeing in that devastating video, by the time it got to California it was down to about three to four feet.
JACOB: That's right.
SPITZER: So over the thousands of miles it did diminish that much?
JACOB: Yes, but if there would be one canal going from Japan to California, it would be almost as high in California. It's the spreading out over the entire shorelines of the entire Pacific.
SPITZER: OK. Now, predictability, this is what I think terrifies people. Now they've seen this footage, they have -- we've lived through this. We hope folks -- some have lost their lives, of course. What do we know about the likelihood there will be aftershocks that will affect Japan or something along many of the fault lines near California that triggers something similar to this?
JACOB: Well, California is lucky because it's a strike slip fault that doesn't make so much tsunamis, except if such an earthquake sets off a submarine landslide, that could even in California --
SPITZER: OK. OK, you're talking with language I don't understand. What does that mean?
JACOB: That means the ground shakes, and there are loose soils on the bottom of the coast in California. And they can send of like an avalanche but in the water. And that can offset a tsunami.
SPITZER: I see. So it's sort of like shock absorbers is what you're saying?
JACOB: No, no, no, no. It's more --
SPITZER: That's why I became a lawyer, not a scientist.
JACOB: Think of an avalanche that comes down a mountain.
SPITZER: Right.
JACOB: Snow. But this time it's soil, but under water. It's an avalanche in the water. And that can set of a huge tsunami.
SPITZER: Magnitude 8.9. This was huge. I mean, this is just right up there at the top of the list. The fact that this happened, does that give you a clue? We've been studying this. We have buoys everywhere whether we put a lot of money as we should into trying to figure out when and whether these disasters occur. What do we know about the likelihood of a recurrence?
JACOB: Well, you have to distinguish between once the earthquake occurs, then we have predictability of what the tsunami will be.
SPITZER: Right.
JACOB: But when the earthquake will occur, that's earthquake prediction, and that still doesn't work.
SPITZER: It doesn't work?
JACOB: No.
SPITZER: That is what -- now that is what people want because in California we do have major fault lines. You're saying we can't track the way these tectonic plates are moving. The way the pressure is built. Can we measure the pressure between the two plates to see what it builds?
JACOB: We know how the plates move. We know how much stress has built up. But when it goes, when it breaks is still associated with very high uncertainty. So we can make long-term forecasts that have been made, for instance, for California faults like the San Andreas fault.
SPITZER: Right.
JACOB: Then there's such and such a probability over the next 30 years. But that's not a prediction, that's a channel forecast so you can put more money, for instance, to fixing up bridges or certain things. And that part that has a higher probability than compared to one that has a lower probability.
SPITZER: All right. Dr. Klaus Jacob, thanks so much for your insight. Thanks for coming in.
Up next, chances are you're watching us now in a TV made in Japan. Your car may have been built there, too. How will the quake devastate the global economy? When we return.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: There's though question Japan's massive economy was hit by the earthquake that ravaged the country. But how devastating is the damage to Japan and the rest of the world? Joining us to answer that question, Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, Chrystia Freeland, global editor-at-large for Reuters.
Welcome to you both.
CHRYSTIA FREELAND, REUTERS GLOBAL EDITOR-AT-LARGE: Thank you.
SPITZER: How do you begin to assess this? I mean, we know that the region of the economy -- that the region in Japan that was hit is only a small percentage of the GDP --
FREELAND: 1.7?
SPITZER: 1.7. Small number, but does it make it -- have a much bigger impact than that despite being a small number?
IAN BREMMER, PRESIDENT, EURASIA GROUP: Probably not in the sense that Japan holds its own debt so it has a massive fiscal problem but you're not going to see the same sort of knock-on effects as if suddenly there was a run and a belief that this was the thing that was going to turn the euro zone apart. Right?
I mean, you know, it's safe to never say anything positive about Israel, Palestine and Japan. At the same time, you know, given the fact that this is sort of in the northeast, it's not a massive port, they're incredibly resilient. I kind of think if you had to have a nine-point earthquake someplace in the world, Japan's frankly the place you probably want it.
SPITZER: Chrystia, you buy this?
FREELAND: Yes, I do. I mean, and I think markets obviously got really, really scared at the beginning of the day, but they were starting to calm down quite a lot. The Japanese yen actually rose by the end of the day.
SPITZER: Explain that.
FREELAND: Well, a couple of reasons. One is that actually, you know, Japan is not so great at managing its money right now. But it is really, really great at responding to earthquakes. And this region of Japan where it happened is relatively sparsely populated and doesn't have that much industry there. I mean, yet, there is also a flight to quality so people flow into bonds at a time of stress like this.
SPITZER: Explain the 1.7 percent figure. What does that mean? 1.7 percent of Japan's gross domestic product comes out of this little prefecture.
FREELAND: Right.
BREMMER: So if you just shut it down completely, then you'd be losing sort of less than two percent of the economy.
FREELAND: Whereas to give you a comparison, the Tokyo region is 40 percent of the economy.
SPITZER: Right. And you know the companies there, automotive companies, production of television, Sony, et cetera, can that production -- and just so it's clear, we're not talking about this as though it's some antiseptic, you know, crisis that doesn't affect human beings. The death and devastation is what we care about. But understanding the ripple effects to the economy is part of what you've got to think about.
BREMMER: Pardon the pun, but, I mean, if you think about what the size of infrastructure cost and rebuilding here as the general assessments are something between $100 billion and half a trillion, that's a big number. But that's a number the Japanese can handle. And actually, one of the reasons the yen's up right now, Prime Minister Kan had a really bad week. He had to get rid of his foreign minister because of a local scandal. He's had a flap with the United States over Okinawa. He's not been -- he's in a real gridlock in government. This is frankly going to take heat off of him. It's going to allow him to move the budget through much more quickly because they have to have stimulus to get this stuff going. And he's going to be a can do bureaucrat actually implementing and executing on the ground as opposed to the charisma he doesn't have.
FREELAND: A difficulty is going to be -- you know, the one place where Japan is very poorly positioned is its ability to stimulate the economy. You know, America is worried about its national debt. Japan's debt is much, much greater. It's twice the GDP of the country.
SPITZER: So can they afford the investment they need, the infrastructure and investment to rebuild? I mean, the pictures we're seeing, water is gone. Transportation is gone. Electricity is gone. You're going to have to rebuild apparently from scratch an entire region of the country. Can they afford it?
FREELAND: That is the one place where the government does face some constraints because it is hard for this government to spend even more money and then typically what happens with natural disasters of this sort is a government lowers the interest rates.
BREMMER: But they can --
FREELAND: Well, you can't do that with Japanese --
BREMMER: They can afford it. They can afford it because the Japanese taxpayers will take the pain. This is not -- you've had zero percent growth effectively in Japan for decades. And yet, you don't have massive social instability. The community is going to rally to ensure that these folks can be taken care of. And if that means the taxpayers take a hit in Japan, the taxpayers will take a hit. That's not like they're looking --
FREELAND: Right. And also they have no alternative.
BREMMER: That's right. It's not like they're looking at China to actually fund their debt. The debt is on the hands and on the shoulders of the Japanese taxpayer. They're going to take the hit.
SPITZER: But you began by saying that the Japanese currency in fact went up today in value. That seems completely counterintuitive. They're going to have to float this debt. Their economy is on the skids. They've just been hit by an earthquake. It is counterintuitive that the yen would have increased in value rather than dropped.
FREELAND: Well, yes, but you know, Eliot, it's like -- it's that flight to safety instinct that you have into actually Japanese government bonds as opposed to --
SPITZER: Who's doing the buying? Who's doing the buying? I mean, it doesn't mean I'm just -- why would the Japanese yen at this point be the flight to safety as opposed to the dollar or the German mark or the euro, whatever --
BREMMER: If those are the choices, then you would be more on the dollar right now. If the choice is between Japanese equities and the Japanese yen, then there are a lot of people who'll say, you know what, I know that the bank of Japan is actually going to backstop.
SPITZER: Got it.
FREELAND: And then the only other economic impact I would say for the whole world economy that we should be thinking of goes back to your segment on the nuclear power plants. I mean, I think that that could actually be the single biggest impact, you know, if it turns out that there was some sort of a leak. We've seen this shift of public opinion around the world back to nuclear power. And if Japan, you know, the perfect Japan, their reactors aren't safe, then I think you're going to see people pulling back very quickly. SPITZER: Chrystia, you may have just said the thing that is the most important in terms of pure economics here. Because you're right, there had been over the last, I'd say, five, 10 years, a growing understanding of nuclear power as an important part of our energy portfolio. If we're going to move away from carbon dioxide emissions, global warming, et cetera, now this could be like Three Mile Island here domestically in terms of putting a damp or that.
Ian, 15 seconds -- do you think that the nuclear industry right now is saying oh, my goodness, all this goodwill is dissipated and gone?
BREMMER: No, no. I think it's too early for that. And I think if we show that the Japanese -- look, they were able to actually --
FREELAND: They're --
BREMMER: They were able to close down a lot of the Japanese nuclear industry in the area because of these early warning triggers they had. If this had hit any other major country with nuclear power, we'd be saying something very different right now.
SPITZER: All right. Chrystia, Ian, fascinating stuff. We're going to keep watching all these fascinating economic trends and the nuclear industry.
FREELAND: And the devastating human story.
SPITZER: And the devastating human story. Absolutely.
All right. We go to Will now, who's going to give us an update on the nuclear situation in Japan.
CAIN: Yes. Unfortunately to their point, Eliot, the reactors at two Japanese nuclear power plants now can no longer cool the radioactive substances inside. An atomic material may have leaked out. This is certainly emerging as one of the greatest dangers to that country right now.
SPITZER: And so Three Mile Island -- let's hope not Chernobyl, but Three Mile Island is beginning to look like the metaphor and that's going to have political impact.
All right. Thank you, Will, so much for that insight. Thanks so much to you for joining us IN THE ARENA tonight.
Good night from New York. "PIERS MORGAN TONIGHT" starts right now.
