Top 10 Most Dramatic Tohoku Tsunami Videos

The following ten videos are my picks as the most dramatic to come out of the recent Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami event in Japan. I list them in order of prominence from top to bottom. One or two that would have made the list are not here because I could not acquire any embed codes for them.



This is the most dramatic film clip of this disaster I've seen yet. It is shot entirely from a second floor of an apartment in a neighborhood being destroyed before your very eyes. Part-way through the video one sees a man trapped in the current holding on for his life to cables he has managed to grab as he was being swept away. From that point onwards a rescue attempt is being attempted but the video ends before we know how the story is resolved.



This video features the tsunami coming into a town situated along a river a bit inland from the coast itself. The tsunami is seen quickly over-topping the seawall and running into the town itself. This video features rapidly rising water, wailing tsunami sirens and evacuation commands being spoken over a loudspeaker, a floating warehouse that disintegrates when smashed against a larger one, floating fuel tanks drifting up a river, survivors huddling on a nearby roof, and virtually an entire town being smashed up and swept away.



This film clip features a harbor area being inundated by successively higher tsunami bores that come in surprisingly rapid sequence... so rapid that there is not time for any backwash from the previous waves. The videographer is forced to move at least twice to a safer position. At the end of this video the main seawall is finally over-topped in a major way.



This film clip features the tsunami coming into a town, at first fairly small but then rather rapidly it escalates to the point it is taking first autos and then ultimately buildings away. Also featured in this video are wailing tsunami sirens and loudspeakers blasting emergency evacuation commands and some rather explicit views and sounds of buildings being crushed and destroyed.



This film clip is not raw footage as I prefer but is well-edited nonetheless and the narration is rather well-done. What it shows is a remarkable aerial sequence of the tsunami rushing over a coastal plain. It features flaming wreckage floating atop the tsunami as it moves inland as well as a schooner moving across agricultural fields atop the tsunami as autos try to get out of the way. Following the clip is a montage of shorter but nonetheless remarkable clips of tsunami footage.



I just found this footage clip just now and this one definitely belongs on this list. It features the most footage of ships getting knocked around and into each other and into buildings of any I have seen.... and a lot of buildings get nailed in this one, too.... lots of metallic sounds of crashing and crunching.



This is one of the older video clips but remains one of the best showing the tsunami crashing right into the high-rise downtown district right behind the waterfront with its more industrial buildings with lots of destruction and sounds of people reacting in horror to what they were seeing.



This video clip is new to me and actually contains two video segments, both of which are rather remarkable, but particularly the first one which shows a neighborhood being swept away and up towards fleeing residents, some of whom appear not to make it.



This video clip is short but incredibly intense and one I had not seen until just now. It features plenty of loud metallic banging noises and the roar of the water and rampaging tsunami surges under multiple parking structures.



This was one of the first video clips to appear on the internet and it remains one of the most fascinating footage segements captured and certainly generated the single most remarkable image of all, to wit, the strangely smooth and black tsunami bore over-topping of the seawall and taking out boats and cars alike.Check out these additional postings showing more tsunami videos:
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