Twitter prays for Japan

Japan’s tweet-o-meter is at critical level with 1 200 tweets per minute. Now trending on Twitter, the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that hit northern Japan on Friday. The quake triggered a tsunami which sent a massive body of water filled with debris, including boats and houses toward highways. The quake garnered the attention of the world with four topics trending world-wide simultaneously on the popular microblogging site.

Shortly after the quake the country’s phone systems and a sizable amount of its power supply were knocked out.

Tweets coming from all around the world under hash tags “Pray for Japan“, “Tsunami“, “Miyagi” and “Tokyo Disneyland“. Japan is prone to daily quakes with three continental shelves, but has not seen a quake of this devastating magnitude since the Hanshin-Awaji quake 1995.

Some of the tweets include famous American comic Dave Chappelle:

Tweeting from India, @Hussy26, said: “Miyagi is centre of earthquake..all nuclear centers has been closed,visuals are stunningly dangerous… tsunami everywhere.”

@MeritMarquee tweeted a Tokyo’s Disneyland image to a Disney staff memeber, @boy33, tweeted with this image:

Images like this one were tweeted of people taking refuge at the Disneyland Tokyo’s car park before its obliteration. Deaths have been reported following the earthquake, which caused large fires at sites including an oil refinery in nearby Iichihara.

The destruction of Miyagi, the epicentre of the quake, was shown in a tweet by ted_kho.

The quake has grabbed the world’s attention. Major news channels all around world are live streaming the devastating events, and no doubt there will be more and more tragic images and videos being released as time goes on.

Google has also posted to link to Japanese person finder just as they did during the Haiti quake, for loved ones to find each other.

Here is a video of some of the destruction.