Tsunami strikes: Large waves pound concrete breakwaters at a port in Ichinomiya city, Chiba province
Residents sleep in the streets for fear of aftershocks following a major earthquake in Santiago
More than 150,000 households in Japanese coastal areas were urged to evacuate due to tsunami warnings after a powerful 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck the coast of Chile
A huge magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck Chile early on Saturday, knocking down homes and hospitals
Motorists pass under a footbridge that has collapsed over the Panamerican Highway after a major earthquake in Curico
Jake Fender and Jason Heun sit atop their van on Round Top Drive on February 27, 2010 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Residents stocked up on food and emergency supplies in preparation for a potentially damaging tsunami
A policeman talks with a girl on the beach at Misson Bay on the east coast of Auckland as he patrols to clear the water of swimmers after a tsunami alert
Seawater makes its way towards the city center at a port in Kesennuma, northern Japan
How the tsunami swept across the Pacific Ocean
Tsunami alert: This image obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows a model of the forecast of the tsunami triggered by the earthquake in Chile
Hundreds of thousands of residents in Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines and Russia's Kamchatka were told to evacuate after Saturday's Chile quake, one of the world's most powerful in a century, but there were no immediate reports of damage.
In Japan, a 5ft tsunami hit the fishing port of Otsuchi on the north Pacific coast, Kyodo news agency said.
Smaller waves hit a swathe of the country from the small island of Minamitori 1,200 miles south of Tokyo to Hokkaido island in the north, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
Japanese officials have ordered or advised some 540,000 households along the country's Pacific coast to evacuate and said later waves could be much bigger.
'The full-fledged tsunami waves are starting to arrive,' University of Tokyo professor Yoshinobu Tsuji told NHK public TV.
'This is not the last one,' he said.
It was Japan's first major tsunami warning in 17 years and only the fourth since 1952, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
'Carelessness could be the biggest enemy. In the past, even if the waves were not so big, there has been great damage with 2-metre high tsunami,' Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama told reporters.
Train services were halted in many areas along the Pacific coast and some highways were closed.
Police cars and fire trucks patrolled coastal roads and fishing boats, seeking to avoid any tsunami, headed out to sea under gray skies, with snow flurries in some areas.
The area that could be hit hardest, where around 140 people died in a previous tsunami 50 years ago, has many small harbours that could concentrate the force of a tsunami.
'The waves could climb up the land, so for real safety you should evacuate to a place several times higher than the predicted height of the waves,' JMA official Yasuo Sekita told a news conference.
The agency said the first wave might not be the biggest and that the warning could remain in effect for a long time.
TV footage showed elderly women with cloth-wrapped bundles on their backs gathering at evacuation centres as cars pulled up and other women unloaded shopping bags filled with belongings.
The tsunami warning covered the eastern seaboard of Japan, although for Tokyo Bay and many other areas the warnings were for waves of only around one metre (3 ft).
The area is no stranger to tsunamis.
In 1896, a magnitude 8.5 earthquake and tsunami left more than 22,000 dead in northeastern Japan. Another of magnitude 8.1 hit the same region in 1933, killing 3,064.
In May 1960, a tsunami struck the coasts of Hokkaido and other northern Pacific coastal areas after an earthquake in Chile, killing around 140 people.
Since then, many harbours have had sea gates installed to try to protect from tsunami and storms.
'Coastal barriers have been built since the 1960 tsunami so we can't simply compare the situation with that time but it is still crucial that people evacuate,' said Masaaki Kubo of the Kamaishi Eastern Fishery Union in Iwate, in northern Honshu.
The first waves to hit New Zealand were reported at the remote Chatham Islands, around 800 kilometres (500 miles) east of New Zealand, with surges of up to 1.5 metres measured, the Civil Defence Ministry said.
A resident on one of the smaller islands in the group, Pitt, said the surges were continuing and getting bigger.
'The bay empties right out. It takes about a minute and a half and then it surges back in, in about the same amount of time,' Bernadette Malinson told Radio New Zealand. 'The surges have been getting bigger -- at least 2 metres at present.'
Authorities in Russia's far eastern Kamchatka region lifted a tsunami alert after a series of small waves appeared to cause no damage, a spokeswoman for the Emergencies Ministry said.
A tsunami hit beaches in eastern Australian but there were not initial reports of damage.
Australia issued a tsunami alert for most of its east coast and eastern parts of the island state of Tasmania, but authorities said there were no concerns about major innundation.
Hawaii dodged serious damage on Saturday when a tsunami merely lapped ashore, although residents were warned to stay away from coastal areas because the ocean could remain unsettled for several more hours.
In its magnitude, yesterday’s earthquake was massive, one of the largest since the 9.1 quake that caused the tsunami in Sumatra in 2004. It was classified as ‘great’, with the potential to cause ‘tremendous damage’ by the U.S. Geological Survey and triggered tsunami warnings as far away as Hawaii.
But it was not a significant surprise to scientists because Chile is located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, a 24,800-mile stretch of nearly continuous oceanic trenches and volcanoes where, historically, about 80 per cent of the world’s largest earthquakes have occurred.
In 1960 Chile was hit by a 9.9-magnitude quake, the biggest since records have been kept. It killed 1,655 people and created a destructive tsunami which battered Easter Island and travelled to Japan and Hawaii, where there were hundreds of other casualties.
The epicentre of the latest earthquake was in a seismic gap 75 miles off the coast where two plates of the Earth’s crust – the South American and Nazca plates – press against each other under the ocean in the ‘subduction zone’.
The Nazca plate has been moving east at three inches per year and sliding under the South American plate. In places the two plates adhered to each other and stress gradually built up until one area where they were stuck cracked, which is what triggered the latest earthquake.
The quake that devastated Port-au-Prince was caused by a different type of plate boundary. Haiti sits on a fault line between two huge tectonic plates, like Chile, but instead of diving under each other, the great slabs of crust slide past one another. Strain built up along faults at the plate boundaries until its release in the earthquake.
There is a saying: ‘Earthquakes don’t kill people. Buildings collapse because of earthquakes and that kills people.’ That was the case in Haiti. That quake measured seven and there were huge casualties because most of their buildings were not designed to withstand shock.
Any large earthquake also generates aftershocks and that is one concern in Chile – but the greater concern is that it occurred under the ocean and caused a tsunami travelling away from the epicentre which could reach as many as 53 countries that border on the Pacific.
Tsunami waves in the deep ocean travel at about the same speed as a jet and experts estimated this one was travelling at hundreds of miles per hour.
Scientists believe it is total coincidence that there have been several major earthquakes in the past few weeks. But there is a debate about whether an earthquake on the kind of scale we have seen in Chile may eventually – way down the years – influence other fault lines and perhaps trigger an earthquake somewhat earlier than would have been expected or cause an active volcano to go dormant or a dormant volcano to start up.
What we know is that large earthquakes send out waves not detectable by people but picked up thousands of miles away on seismometers. If there is any link between one earthquake and another, it is likely to be very minor. But the lesson is that people in earthquake zones always need to be educated and prepared.
Tsunamis from the deadly 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile rippled across the Japanese coast Sunday as anxious residents remained glued to round-the-clock television coverage.
No injuries were reported, authorities said, but they urged the tens of thousands of evacuees from coastal areas to stay away because waves could gain strength. Citizens and elderly people in wheelchairs flocked into shelters.
"We can never take the optimistic view that just because the first wave has arrived, we are safe," Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said. "Tsunami isn't just the first (wave)."
The first tsunami -- a 4-inch wave -- hit the Pacific island of Minami Torishima, according to the Japanese
A few waves later, the tallest one yet at about 4 feet hit the Kuji Port in Iwate, the meteorological agency said. The northern part of the main island could be hit by a tsunami at least 9 feet high.
Sunday's alert was Japan's first major tsunami warning in more than 15 years, the agency reported. In 1960, a tsunami spawned by Chile's 1960 earthquake killed 140 people in Japan.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center canceled warnings that initially covered the entire Pacific region, leaving only Japan under a widespread tsunami warning.
In the U.S. state of Hawaii, the cancellation occurred nearly two hours after the first waves came ashore. Coast Guard crews said they had found no significant damage to ports or waterways as a result of the tsunami.
But the tsunami center said some coastal areas may see small sea-level changes or unusual currents for the next few hours.
The cancellation "does not mean it is now safe to resume normal activities or re-enter evacuated shoreline areas," the tsunami center said. It said that county civil defense agencies and local police departments would make those determinations.
"There was no assessment of any damage in any county, which is quite remarkable," said Gov. Linda Lingle. "It's just a wonderful day that nothing happened and no one was hurt or injured."
The warning was issued early Saturday after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Chile, killing more than 300 people. Government officials are expected to announce an updated death toll Sunday at 12 p.m. local time (10 a.m. ET).
In Chile, tsunami waves came ashore along the coast shortly after the earthquake, U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Victor Sardina said.
The largest was 9 feet near the quake's epicenter, Sardina said.
On the island of Juan Fernandez -- 400 miles (643 km) off Chile's coast -- a large wave killed six people, Provincial Governor Ivan De La Maza said. At least 11 people are missing.
Navigational buoys in Ventura County, California, got minor damage as a result of a 2-foot surge and waves, according to the Alaska Tsunami Warning Center.
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