The fiber Internet in his office was up, and his mobile card made a connection. Google Apps, Park's e-mail system, was also up, and there were no problems reaching and .

Amazon's newly opened Japan Web Services continued to operate, said Park. That was confirmed independently by another source who spoke on background.

In the U.S., the problem was much different.

The tsunami warnings gave Elysia Everett, deputy CIO of the international law firm DLA Piper, time to prepare. She received her first notification of a tsunami threat at 7:30 Eastern. This firm, with 3,500 attorneys, runs its primary data center in Baltimore and a secondary facility in San Diego.

Everett began waking up IT staff in San Diego (4:30 a.m. PST) to begin planning. At that point, all she knew was that there was a threat of a tsunami, and the San Diego data center was located downtown, not all that far from the bay.