[UPDATED] Japan Quake Hits Home, Getting News in the Aftermath

UPDATED, 12:40 p.m.: Google has created a person finder to help locate individuals who may be missing after Japan's 8.9 quake Thursday at 9:46 p.m. Pacific Time. Google has also provided a list of organizations likely to respond.

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At 9:46 p.m. Thursday, local time, Manami Kushizaki was glued to her television and computer screen in Diamond Bar.

It was 2:46 p.m. in Japan and an 8.9 magnitude earthquake had rocked the island nation's Pacific coast.

Just five to ten minutes after the quake, Kushizaki received a call from her sister Naomi in Tokyo — her sister, brother-in-law, and father were fine.

That was each of them. Tokyo was 240 miles from the epicenter of Friday's earthquake and physical damage there was not extensive, according to Los Angeles Times reports, but not without impact.

Kushizaki said TV reports showed images of a Tokyo CostCo market where a bridge had collapsed, killing one and injuring others.

Elsewhere, the reported damage is much more extensive and Japan's chief Cabinet secretary Yukio Edano told the official Kyodo news agency that "an extremely large number of people" had been killed in the disaster.

But the brief call from Kushizaki's sister was an anomaly. While physical damage in Tokyo was not severe, communication lines were down throughout the city of nearly 13 million residents.

"My sister said that she can't reach anyone close to the Tokyo area because they are without phone lines and cell phones are dead," Kushizaki said. "But somehow international calls were able to go through."

Kushizaki said she has been keeping informed about the fallout of damage through a network of television broadcasts, emails, internet broadcasts, and Twitter.

"I have four other friends in Tokyo and I sent out a bunch of emails to my friends and finally they are responding," Kushizaki said. "Email is much easier to communicate with right now. People are using websites a lot right now to get information — and email."

Coverage from Japan:

Kushizaki said that Japan TV's coverage is now available for free to stateside viewers — according to an email from TV Japan she received at 9:40 a.m. Friday, local time — at all major cable and satellite companies (channels may vary by region):

Time Warner, Los Angeles — Channel 607
FiOS, Los Angeles — Channel 1770
Comcast, CA — Channel 330
Comcast, Seattle — Channel 245
Cox, San Diego — Channel 400
Dish Network — Channel 640

Kushizaki also said there is a number of resources online to watch coverage from the ground in Japan and that reports on Twitter about the earthquake have said that internet coverage is better:

-NHK Live on ustream.tv (Japanese)
-TBS TV on ustream.tv (Japanese)
-Yokoso News (English)