Earthquake 2011 Japan
Lorrine Hatala
An estimated 20,000 people were dead or missing and close to 500,000 people were forced to evacuate. In addition, a nuclear power plant meltdown triggered a nuclear emergency. The direct economic loss from the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster is estimated at $360 billion.
However, the failure of the nuclear power station in Fukushima has had long-ranging effects and has made recovery difficult in the Fukushima prefecture. High levels of radiation persist at the destroyed power plants. TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which manages the affected power plants, expects full decommissioning of the plants to take 30 to 40 more years.
Tsunamis are waves caused by disruptions such as earthquakes, landslides, or volcanic eruptions under the sea that displace water. They are not moved about by winds, but are instead huge volumes of water moving from their full depth. In deep oceans, they may move as fast as a jet plane. As the waves travel inland, they pile up higher and higher walls of water. The tallest tsunami waves caused by the Japan earthquake were estimated to be as high as a 12-story building.
The biggest difference in the two tsunamis is not in their size, but in the level of preparation and warning available to people in their paths. With virtually no warning in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, 167,000 people died during the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.
The location made a difference too. Both waves were felt around the world, but the Indian Ocean tsunami caused deaths and significant damage not only in Indonesia, but in India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, too.
Magnitude 6.5 and higher earthquakes occur almost every year in Japan, sometimes several times. The distinction for the March 2011 Tōhoku earthquake was not only its size but also the size of the tsunami it triggered and its location near vulnerable coastal communities.
In the 1960s, World Vision supported Japanese children in orphanages. But since 1987, World Vision Japan has funded child-focused programs in developing countries. World Vision was, therefore, well-positioned to provide aid after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Within 48 hours of the disaster, World Vision sent its disaster assessment team to the most affected areas of Miyagi and Iwate prefectures. We assisted more than 300,000 people over three years, in coordination with government-managed recovery efforts.
The agency said there was no danger of tsunami from the two earthquakes. There were no reports of damage or injuries. Most public transportation services were operating normally, according to West Japan Railway Co.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority said no abnormalities were found at two nearby nuclear power plants. One of them, the Shika plant on the Noto Peninsula, had minor damage, though officials said that did not affect cooling functions of the two reactors. Hokuriku Electric Power Co. said there were no power outages.
This push-enabled app pushes alerts about earthquake early warnings, tsunami warnings, and other weather warnings within Japan in English, Japanese, Hangul, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish, Portuguese, Thai, Indonesian, Tagalog, Nepali, Khmer, Burmese, and Mongolian. The app provides various functions useful for both foreign tourists and residents in Japan, such as an evacuation flowchart showing actions to be taken in the light of surrounding circumstances, helpful phrases for obtaining information from the people around, and website links that contain helpful information in the event of a disaster.
An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.0 hit the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, central Japan on Monday, the same area that was severely damaged by a powerful quake on New Year's Day, with no tsunami warning issued, Japan's weather agency said.
The 6:31 a.m. quake occurred at a depth of around 10 kilometers and registered an upper 5 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7 in the cities of Wajima and Suzu, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The magnitude was revised to 6.0 from 5.9.
Five houses collapsed in Wajima, one of the worst-affected cities in the wake of the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck the area on the first day of the year, according to the Ishikawa prefectural government. The Jan. 1 temblor killed 260 people, with more than 3,000 still living in evacuation shelters.
A woman in her 60s in the Ishikawa town of Tsubata fell from her bed after she was startled by an earthquake alert, breaking her right leg, while a man in his 20s in the city of Namerikawa in neighboring Toyama Prefecture fell while trying to evacuate to safety, sustaining injuries to his head and hips, according to local government and firefighters.
Hokuriku Electric Power Co. and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. said no abnormalities were detected at the Shika nuclear power plant in Ishikawa nor were any problems reported at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in nearby Niigata Prefecture.
Another anecdote: I previously worked as a systems engineer for a large computer consultancy, primarily in making back office systems for Japanese universities. One such system is called a portal: it lets students check on, e.g., their class schedule from their cell phones.
The overwhelming response of Japanese engineering to the challenge posed by an earthquake larger than any in the last century was to function exactly as designed. Millions of people are alive right now because the system worked and the system worked and the system worked.
The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.
On March 11, 2011, a magnitude (Mw) 9.1 earthquake struck off the northeast coast of Honshu on the Japan Trench. A tsunami that was generated by the earthquake arrived at the coast within 30 minutes, overtopping seawalls and disabling three nuclear reactors within days. The 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami event, often referred to as the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami, resulted in over 18,000 dead, including several thousand victims who were never recovered.
This region has a high rate of seismic activity, with the potential to generate tsunamis. Past earthquakes that generated tsunamis in the region have included the deadly events of 1611, 1896, and 1933.
Following the earthquake, a tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors, causing a significant nuclear accident. All three nuclear cores largely melted in the first three days.
In Japan, the event resulted in the total destruction of more than 123,000 houses and damage to almost a million more. Ninety-eight percent of the damage was attributed to the tsunami. The costs resulting from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan alone were estimated at $220 billion USD. The damage makes the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami the most expensive natural disaster in history.
The tsunami caused $31 million USD damage in Hawaii and $100 million USD in damages and recovery to marine facilities in California. Additionally, damage was reported in French Polynesia, Galapagos Islands, Peru, and Chile.
Fortunately, the loss of life outside of Japan was minimal (one death in Indonesia and one death in California) due to the Pacific Tsunami Warning System and its connections to national-level warning and evacuation systems.
To learn from the tragedy in Japan, researchers collected extensive data on tsunami wave forces and building performance. This facilitated improvement in tsunami mitigation strategies, such as building codes. Over 6,200 tsunami wave measurements were collected in Japan and the Pacific region.
Several thousands of lives across the world were lost to large, far-afield tsunamis prior to the establishment of the Pacific Tsunami Warning System in 1965. The Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami demonstrated that despite the severity of the natural hazard the investment in the warning system has been a success.
Japan is often considered the country most prepared for tsunamis but still lost numerous lives in this event. Nonetheless, experts believe many lives were saved in Japan and elsewhere due to the existing warning and mitigation systems.
An effective tsunami warning system relies on the free and open exchange and long-term management of global data and science products to mitigate, model, and forecast tsunamis. NCEI is the global data and information service for tsunamis. Global historical tsunami data, including more information about the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami, are available via interactive maps and a variety of web services.
It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth most powerful earthquake recorded in the world since modern seismography began in 1900.[34][35][36] The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves that may have reached heights of up to 40.5 meters (133 ft) in Miyako in Tōhoku's Iwate Prefecture,[37][38] and which, in the Sendai area, traveled at 700 km/h (435 mph)[39] and up to 10 km (6 mi) inland.[40] Residents of Sendai had only eight to ten minutes of warning, and more than a hundred evacuation sites were washed away.[39] The snowfall which accompanied the tsunami[41] and the freezing temperature hindered rescue works greatly;[42] for instance, Ishinomaki, the city with the most deaths,[43] was 0 C (32 F) as the tsunami hit.[44] The official figures released in 2021 reported 19,759 deaths,[45] 6,242 injured,[46] and 2,553 people missing,[47] and a report from 2015 indicated 228,863 people were still living away from their home in either temporary housing or due to permanent relocation.[48]
The tsunami caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, primarily the meltdowns of three of its reactors, the discharge of radioactive water in Fukushima and the associated evacuation zones affecting hundreds of thousands of residents.[49][50] Many electrical generators ran out of fuel. The loss of electrical power halted cooling systems, causing heat to build up. The heat build-up caused the generation of hydrogen gas. Without ventilation, gas accumulated within the upper refueling hall and eventually exploded causing the refueling hall's blast panels to be forcefully ejected from the structure. Residents within a 20 km (12 mi) radius of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and a 10 km (6.2 mi) radius of the Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plant were evacuated.
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