Japanese Tohoku Earthquake Flashcards
1
Q
Causes
A
- 11th March 2011
- Meeting of 3 tectonic plates, Eurasian, Pacific and Philippines
- Destructive boundary
- Japan gets 30% of the world earthquakes annually
- 90mm of pacific plate under the Eurasian
- Tsunami= secondary consequence
2
Q
Magnitude
A
- 9.0
- epicentre 70km east of Tohoku,
- Focus 32km deep
3
Q
Frequency
A
- 7 foreshocks
- Including magnitude 7.2
- 1235 aftershocks
4
Q
Vulnerability
A
- Coastlines is vulnerable and has a high population density
- Upper 10m of soil vulnerable to liquefaction
- Fukushima nuclear power plant
5
Q
Capacity to cope
A
- 40% of coastline has sea walls 10m high
- Japanese Meteorological agency
- televised warnings
- 20 minutes to get to safety
- Mobile phone messages given warnings
- Building design
6
Q
Institutional capacity
A
- Emergency crews and army on site quickly
- Readily trained teams
- Earthquake practise day yearly in September
- Huge GDP
- 200 seismographs and 600 seismic intensity meters
- Earthquake phenomena Observation system in Tokyo
7
Q
Immediate response
A
- warnings helped save lives
- Tsunami alert wasn’t reacted to quickly enough
- 340,000 people displaced
- Shortages of flood, water, shelter, medicine and food
- Search and rescue teams worked with Red cross, NGO’s and aid agencies
8
Q
SEE impacts
A
- Tsunami caused most damage
- 40 metres high in some areas, travelling 10km inland
- Honshu island moved 2.4 m east
- Earth Tilted on axis by 10cm
- 130,000 buildings collapsed
- 700,000 buildings damaged
- Structural damage, heavy damages to road and railways
- Fires
- Dam collapse
- 4.4 million houses without electricity
- 1.5 million without water
- Economic loss $235 billion
9
Q
effects of Fukushima
A
3 nuclear meltdowns
- contamination of sea and land
- Residents within 20km exclusion zone had to evacuate
- 15,854 died, 26,992 injured, 3,155 missing
10
Q
Long Term impacts
A
- How Japan has recovered one year on
- 6 days after motorway was repaired
- Rapid recovery
