Japanese Dock Reaches Oregon; Tsunami Debris Arriving Sooner Than Expected

"A massive dock" that was washed away from a city on Japan's northeast coast by the devastating March 2011 tsunami landed this week on an Oregon beach. It's a warning sign that dangerous chunks of debris from that disaster are reaching the Pacific coast of the mainland U.S. much sooner than predicted, The Oregonian reports .

"This stuff is coming a lot faster than we thought it was," Tom Towslee, a spokesman for Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden told the newspaper. "It's starting and at least nine months ahead of schedule as far as I can tell."

As we've previously reported, experts had thought it might be March 2013 before major pieces of debris hit the coasts of North America.

According to the Oregonian, the dock that washed up on Agate Beach this week is "66 feet long by 19 feet wide by 7 feet tall." It came from the northern Japanese city of Misawa, according to Hirofumi Murabayahsi, deputy consul general at the Japanese Consulate in Portland. He tells the newspaper that there are three more like that dock possibly floating toward the U.S.



Agate Beach is about 55 miles west of Corvallis, Ore. It's about a 90-mile drive from both Salem and Eugene.

Commercial fishermen, as Oregon Public Broadcasting has reported , are very worried about the danger that such debris presents to their ships.

In April, the U.S. Coast Guard fired on and sank a Japanese "Ghost Ship" that hd been set adrift by the tsunami and was floating in shipping lanes off Alaska's southeast coast.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...-tsunami-debris-arriving-sooner-than-expected

 

I saw this on the news last week too.

CBS had a video about debris on the shore of Alaska the end of May.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57443283/toxic-japanese-debris-piles-up-on-alaskas-shore/

 

Wow. 1.5 Million Tons of wreckage could reach the U.S. West Coast. We will be sharing in Japan's tragedy in a hands on way.

 

Wonder what happens when all that radioactive water gets here?

 

Stuff has been washing up in BC for quite some time now. Though not quite that large!
Some locals had taken to collecting the stuff and then putting it up on a website for Japanese to reclaim it. Like photo-albums and such. There's been some really touching stories about the BC debris.

 

There can be radioactive debris from medical equipment, dentists cabinets, hospitals (xray), universities, research labs (hopefully no dangerous germs), debris from the destroyed Fukushima plant, industry, military,...

 

Yes the matter is quite bad

 

That really sucks. Idk why they would estimate it to take so much more time for the debris to get here. That happened almost a year ago.

 

They judge this by the speed of the normal currents and how well the objects float.