Tsunami

I was utterly transfixed with live televised images of the Tsunami that washed over small towns on the northern coast of Japan yesterday after the 8.9 magnitude earthquake hit Sendai (仙台市) the capital city of Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, at 2.56 pm. A overhead helicopter filming the event, revealed a frothy, white, ten metre high wall of water from the Pacific Ocean bed rushing headlong towards flatter, shallow water nearer to the land and then, as it gathered momentum, spilled headlong over and through everything in its path. The almost beautiful white wave wall transformed into black goo as it devoured neat rows of farmland and roads as far as the eye could see. Houses fences, cars, trucks, trees and other debris carried along in a muddy mess. Utterly surreal, it was as if a toy town had suddenly been demolished by benign and slow moving lava. It hardly looked like water, chocked as it was with so much rubble. Since we were witnessing an aerial view we were not privy to the sounds of the tsunami crashing along at 600 miles per hour - it must have been horrendous -  those still trapped inside their dwellings and animals outside, unaware of what was happening, terrified, confused and drowned.We who saw it unfold, could only wonder at the pervasive silence and utter devastation.