Portland: A massive floating dock cast adrift by Japan’s killer tsunami has washed up Oregon beach 8,000 kilometers away on an Oregon beach in the northwest U.S. Pacific region.
Oregon beach believed to be the biggest pieces of flotsam to make landfall on the U.S. West Coast so far.
A nearly 20-metre-long dock that floated ashore on an Oregon beach was torn loose from a fishing port in northern Japan by last year's tsunami and drifted across thousands of kilometres of Pacific Ocean, a Japanese consulate official said.
The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department (OPRD) contacted Japanese diplomats, who confirmed that it was from the March 11, 2011 tsunami, and had drifted 5,500 miles (8,850 kilometres) across the Pacific over the last 15 months.
A radiation check of the dock came up negative, which was to be expected if the dock broke loose before the nuclear power plant accident triggered by the waves, said Chris Havel, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation, which is overseeing removal of the dock.