AFP - A powerful earthquake - a magnitude 8.9 - struck Friday northeastern Japan, a major triggering a tsunami several yards on the Pacific coast which has so far killed four people and a dozen missing.
Waves of 10 feet swept the coasts of the prefecture of Sendai, reported the media, which broadcast pictures of flooded houses and cars under water in coastal cities.
The provisional results, according to media reports, is four dead and many wounded and eight missing in a landslide.
But according to the images of television, the toll expected to rise and the Department of Defense has dispatched ships for relief.
A tsunami warning was also issued on almost all coasts of the Pacific by the U.S. Centers for tsunami evacuation order was triggered Mariana Islands.
The quake, measuring 8.9 according to the American Institute of Geophysics (USGS) who had previously estimated at 7.9 and 8.8, occurred at 24.4 km depth to 2:46 p.m. ( 5:46 GMT) and a hundred miles off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture.
"We have been shaken so violently that he had to cling to not fall," testified an official of the municipality of Kurihara, hardest hit in this prefecture.
"We could not get away from the building because the tremors did not stop to succeed," she told AFP by telephone.
Nuclear power plants in Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures were automatically adopted, said its operator, the company Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), which serves the capital.
The Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, has ensured that no radioactive leak was found.
Networks of fixed and mobile telecommunications were heavily disrupted, noted AFP.
In Tokyo, located some 380 km away, the skyscrapers built on special earthquake resistant structures, have pitched very long after the earthquake that lasted for more than two minutes.
A roof collapsed Friday on a building in central Tokyo where 600 students participated in a graduation ceremony, leaving many injured, according to firefighters and the media.
In offices and homes, objects fell from shelves, elevators have been stopped automatically, while millions of people rushed into the streets.
Ten fires were reported in the capital, and there were several casualties in the media.
In the Tokyo area, a refinery was on fire Iichihara, according to images broadcast on Japanese television.
Narita International Airport, located about fifty kilometers east of Tokyo, has suspended the traffic and decided to evacuate the buildings.
The rail and road transport were also disrupted in large parts of the archipelago.
Shinkansen express trains were stopped across the northeast and the motorways of the Tokyo area closed a few minutes after the earthquake.
According to Jiji Press, the parking lot of the Disney Resort, located on the eastern outskirts of the capital, was under the waters of the nearby ocean.
In Tokyo, four million homes were without power, according to media reports.
"I was in the office, on the tenth floor of my building. The walls began to tremble, then all the furniture. I never knew that here I was scared!" Said Horikane Saki, an employee Office of Ginza down with his colleagues a few minutes after the quake.
Thousands of residents and employees of this district of shops and business were still massed in the streets over an hour and a half after the earthquake, fearing aftershocks.
