Developing News: Tokyo, Monday 19:18 (PST, Monday 11:18 – GMT, Monday 10:19) It’s gone from bad to worse for Japan. The official death toll has now reached near 1,700, and there is news of 2,000 more dead bodies being found near the Miyagi Prefecture. The radiation threat is also becoming a scare among the people after the third explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, even though the authorities say that there has been no major radiation leak as of yet. The rescue operations continue, and by now more than 15,000 people have been rescued.

The 8.9 earthquake that rocked Japan is comparable to the one that shook Japan in 1933 and was the same magnitude that shook Colombia and Equador in 1906. North America borders along the Pacific Rim where plates converge causing the earth to move. On Good Friday March 27, 1964 the largest earthquake struck America at Prince William Sound near Anchorage, Alaska measuring 8.5 on the Richter scale. A survivor of that terrifying experience now lives in Oklahoma City. Some 153 years earlier, the largest inland quake to strike was at New Madrid, Missouri was between December 16, 1811 and April, 1812 that Scientist believe would register at 8.0 had the…