Japanes reporters, crawling through the wreckage left behind by the March 11 tsunami, might have stumbled onto evidence of a failed tsunami warning system.

Reporters have written about finding bodies amid what’s left of residences, still wearing their natural disaster gear, like helmets.  The odd thing is it looks like they barricaded themselves in their homes, instead of running to higher ground.

A reporter for ‘Spa!’, in Japan, said there are two kinds of tsunami sirens, one for waves under three meters, and a more shrill siren for waves over three meters.

For the small waves people are told to stay inside, which is what most of the victims, found in the rubble of their homes, did.  Also, many of the residential areas were close enough to higher ground that the people should have been able to survive, if they knew a giant tsunami was coming.

The evidence suggests that for some reason the tsunami sirens indicated a small wave.  Or, as one reporter pointed out, when tsunami drills are carried out, they’re only for small waves, suggesting that if the siren for the giant wave sounded, most people didn’t know what else to do, based on their training.

People had been trained so often to react to small tsunami, that, even though they had been told “when you hear the big tsunami siren sound run to the hills”,  they automatically followed the small tsunami training.

Con artists are scoring big in Japan, using the March 11 disasters to milk people of their hard earned money.

A woman in Kure City, Hiroshima, was tricked into donating 120,000 yen to a non-existent family.

A man in the Hokuriku area reports: “Several days ago, two men in business suits came to my house and introduced themselves as workers from the city office. They requested a donation for quake relief, and trusting them, I gave 5,000 yen.” The men were con-artists.

Even legitimate businesses are ripping off consumers: A woman in the Koshinetsu region bought some King Crabs for 12,000 yen, a real bargain for how many she was getting. But she says when the order arrived the poor quality was so bad, she knew she had been ripped off.  The seller had told her it was a “Tohoku disaster” sale.

The National Consumer Affairs Center has received thousands of complaints.  The scams involve swindlers posing as government officials, charity officials, building inspectors and contractors offering to quake proof your home.  The scams also include internet swindles.

Most people who’ve been scammed say the same thing, they had a gut feeling that told them not to give their money, they should have obeyed that feeling.