Japan Earthquake Flashcards
Date location
Earthquake and tsunami. Friday march 11 2011
The earthquake was located off the coast of miyagi and the coastal town of Sendai
The epicentre was roughly 100km north east of the nuclear power plant Fukushima
The power plant was in the serverly affected zone placed around the earthquake boundaries
International airport serverly affected
Plate tectonics
Japan situated on the Eurasian plate, this is abducting the Pacific and Philippine plate. This means that Japan is a volcanically active area and experiences a regular earthquakes and tsunamis.
It was rated at a magnitude of 8.9 however some sources believe that this is an underestimation
Tsunami
The whole eastern coast experienced a tsunami of around 3 m. This was devastating along the coastline.
It was around 45 miles offshore
Some waves reached as far as 3 miles in land
Over 470,000,000 km² were covered in water
Southern burst of energy earthquake disrupted large body of water
Impacts
28,000 dead or missing
Economic - Tokyo is finance and trading capital - estimated damage cost of 150 billion dollars
Social - death by radiation and contamination due to the Fukushima power plant being damaged through the tsunami, releasing radioactive material
1.5 million homes without water, 4.4 million people without power
Villages wiped out
Environmental - earthquake dropped Japan’s elevation by 2 meters
Responses short term
Evacuation
Emergency shelters and hospitals
International support and monetary funds set up with other countries
An automatic warning was distributed but people in Sendai only received about 15 minutes of warning time before the disaster
Long term responses
Japan invest lots of its money into disaster mitigation and warning for example the four toes that standby the coast and act as a barrier from tsunamis
They have designated drills across the country
Forest have been planted and they are very strict building regulations in place for coastal development as well as very strong building regulations for earthquake proof buildings due to the high technological advancement
