Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami
By: Harry Kitey
The Great Tōhoku earthquake is one of the deadliest events of the century. The only other recorded earthquake that has been stronger was the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. This earthquake registered between 8.9-9.0 in magnitude on the Richter scale. It triggered a gigantic tsunami that took a great number of lives. Then the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant’s cooling systems failed, causing some reactors to explode. In the end, this event was the strongest earthquake to ever hit Japan. This paper discusses the lives lost, involvement of plate tectonics, the nuclear emergency, the horrible tsunami, and the devastating earthquake. “The combined total of confirmed deaths and missing is more than 22,000.” These were the horrific words read by millions by the time March 11, 2011 had passed. The devastation started with a 9.0 magnitude earthquake which not only killed and injured at least 500 people, it triggered a tsunami which swept across the coastal plains of Japan. These waves knocked the Fukushima Daiichi’s power out, causing the core to overheat and explode which let out harmful radiation into the air, “contaminating a wide area that still forces nearly 100,000 thousand residents to live as evacuees.” One of the main questions people ask is how did it happen? The answer lies with the plate tectonics. Tectonic plates are pieces of the crust that move slowly across the earth. They can move away from each other which is known
On March 14, 2011, Anne Applebaum created an account of the events that had occurred earlier that day in Japan. She recalled the shattering earthquake that followed a tsunami and destroyed towns such as Rikuzentakata, a town of 25,000 people (Applebaum 229). The earthquake also agitated Fukushima Daiichi, one of Japan’s nuclear power complexes. Unfortunately, all three reactors lost their ability to cool the steaming water and had to be flooded. The seawater effectively destroyed the plant before more explosions occurred. As a result, radioactive steam had to be released. Applebaum glorified the Japanese in their “technological brilliance” and their ability to cope in extreme circumstances (Applebaum 230). Although the regulations are strict
Martin Luther King Jr. best addresses the discrimination and oppression of Native Americans (NAs) in his book, Why We Can’t Wait (1964):
On March 11, 2011 an earthquake that measured 9.3 Richter scale occurred 43 miles of the coast of Northern Japan. This caused tremendous amounts of damage to the island of Tohouku. What happened is the quake initially destroyed buildings and property. However, a tsunami occurred, which devastated the region and the Fukushima nuclear power plant. ("Fukushima Accident")
When an 9.0 magnitude earthquake rocked Japan on March 11th, 2011, it was the first of a series of horrific events that Japan would be forced to endure. Many homes, families, properties, and belongings were lost on that day. And when the tsunami rolled over the island, many believed that it was over for them. Not only had people’s lives been put in disarray and desolation, but there had not even been simple necessities available. Food. Water. Communications. And electricity. When the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been hit by the earthquake and tsunami, the reactors were shut down and so was the electricity. Over the course of months the reactors suffered, extreme heat, fires, hydrogen explosions, and radiation exposures. At the time,
Plate tectonics is the scientific theory that attempts to explain the movements of the Earth's lithosphere that have formed the landscape features we see across the globe today” (Briney). Geology defines “plate” as a large slab of solid rock, and “tectonics” is part of the Greek root word for “to build.” Together the words define how the Earth’s surface is built up of moving plates. The theory of plate tectonics dictates that individual plates, broken down into large and small sections of rock, form Earth’s lithosphere. These fragmented bodies of rock move along each other atop the Earth’s liquid lower mantle to create the plate boundaries that have shaped Earth’s landscape. Plate tectonics originated from meteorologist Alfred Wegener’s theory, developed in the early 20th century. In 1912, he realized that the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa appeared to piece together like a jigsaw puzzle. He further examined the globe and deduced that all of Earth’s continents could somehow be assembled together and proposed the idea that the continents had once been linked in a single supercontinent called Pangaea. To explain today’s position of the continents, Wegener theorized that they began to drift apart approximately 300 million years ago. This theory
The Fukushima disaster was caused by an earthquake and its following tsunami which caused a failure in the backup systems (World Nuclear Association, 2016). The tsunami knocked out the generators that powered the cooldown processes for three of the Fukushima power plants which caused the radiation leaks and other complications. Consequentially, the disaster was initially classified as a level 5 on the INES scale. Further investigation after the disaster was under control changed it to a level 7 disaster, the highest level on the INES scale. The estimated radioactive releases were about one tenth of Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history.
Natural disasters are a huge challenge for the planet because of the adverse effects that are associated with them. One of the major earthquakes to have shaken the earth is the Great Sendai Earthquake or Great Tōhoku Earthquake that occurred in 2011. The event started when a powerful earthquake hit the northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, and resulted in a widespread damage on land. A series of massive tsunamis later devastated many parts of the coastal regions of the country with the worst affected being the Tohoku region. The tsunami further resulted in a major nuclear accident that damaged distant regions on a power station located along the coast. The economic effects of the tsunami qualify it as one of the major natural disasters because it affected Japan’s economic stability as the country ended up resorting to importing as an alternative to cover the loss.
The discussion on Kenyan fashion has a high prevalence of cultural layers that we can see will differ amongst the different social classes. African fashion in the modern world today is primarily used as a large example in discussing the manipulations of fashion because of the westernizing movement in cultural appropriation. Due to the fact that a large number of people in the western hemisphere are using cultural African apparel to suit their fashionista tastes, African women are therefore put in a position where they feel they must uphold the authenticity of such styles; as they feel pressurized in preserving their culture from appropriation. Fashion among middle class Kenyan women in urban areas and women living in other urban areas in Africa,
According to the records of earthquake intensity, this is the strongest earthquake occurred in Japan and one of the most powerful earthquakes in the world ( ). When the Pacific land crashed down and the North American land slide up, the resulting of landslide and outburst of the bottom turn to create earthquake in the Pacific Ocean, and it was the biggest impact in 1200 years. Furthermore, the earthquake occurred from 130 kilometer east of the city of Honshu, Japan on March 11, 2011, and the main shock lasted for 40 minutes. The earthquake created magnitude scale to 9.0 Mw, and 165-foot movement occurred to the seafloor during the earthquake ( ). Moreover, at that time, most city of Japanese affected by that earthquake, and a nuclear power industry is one of the victims which was crashed by the earthquake. Because of that, it release of radiation to large area not only in Japan but also get oversea to another country such as China, Viet
This generated one of the deadliest tsunamis known to mankind, killing over 230,000 people and leaving over two million people displaced. The epicenter of the earthquake was located in the Indian Ocean, right off the west coast of Sumatra. The tectonic plates beneath the ocean floor had been colliding and building up pressure for hundreds of years, until this day when subduction occurred between the Indian and the Burma plates. The process of subduction displaced billions of tons of water, creating waves that traveled towards the shorelines at hundreds of miles per hour and as high as sixty to one hundred feet. There was absolutely no warning for the people of Southeast Asia, as the tsunami progressed quite rapidly. (National Geographic,
As of April 10, 2015, earthquake and tsunami caused the death total of 15,891 people, ravaged large areas of the Japanese countryside, and continues to cause
As Western Europe, gripped by religious and cultural revolution, became an industrialized powerhouse region during the 19th century, China went in the opposite direction, withdrawing into itself and "de-industrializing." Known as the Great Divergence, the deviating nature of these two subsequently comparable nations (regarding advanced economies and thriving urban culture) is questionable. Why did China step away from modernization and enable the West to dominate the world technologically, economically and politically? In this research paper, I will show that culture and religion acted as barriers to China’s modernization.
In March of 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake hit Japan, releasing a dangerous tsunami. Japan was not expecting the magnitude of the earthquake and tsunami, and endured much hardship after the disaster. The effects of the tsunami can still be seen in Japan today through its residents, economy, and through actions that have been taken to further protect residents from future disasters. Though the Japan 2011 tsunami is one of the most destructive tsunamis ever recorded, dangerous tsunamis continue to take place across the globe. The Japan 2011 tsunami not only affected the inhabitants of Japan, but also affected people around the world. After disasters such as this, each area must endure the aftermath of the disaster and recover from the effects.
On March 11th, 2011, the northern section of Japan was hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, followed by a 15 meter tsunami, causing the death of over 15000 people. (Spacey) Even though the earthquake and the tsunami caused a tremendous amount of deaths in the northern region of Japan, the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear power plant caused a severe damage to northern Japan’s ecosystem that people still cannot go back to their homes; despite it is 4 years after the disaster. After the earthquake, the tsunami destroyed the power supply used by Fukushima’s three nuclear power stations, causing severe levels of meltdown to be occurred inside the reactors in the timespan of 3 days. It was not until 2 weeks after the tragedy, when the reactors were finally stabilized, and took several months to approach what is called a “cold shutdown condition”, in which the fission in the reactors are completely stopped.(Fukushima A)
The devastation that occurred on March 11, 2011. An earthquake destroyed northeastern Japan, unleashing a terrible tsunami. As of February 2017, there were still about 150,000 evacuees who lost their homes, 50,000 of them were still living in temporary housing. Honshu earthquake on March 11, 2011 was a surprise. This unexpected disaster was not the largest or the deadliest earthquake and tsunami to strike. More than 120,000 buildings were destroyed, 278,000. The total economic cost could reach up to $235 billion, the World Bank estimated, making it the costliest natural disaster in world history. That record goes to the 2004 Banda Aceh earthquake and tsunami in Sumatra, which killed more than 230,000 people. The March 11 earthquake started on a Friday at 2:46 p.m. local time. Japan's scientists had forecast a smaller earthquake would strike the northern region of Honshu, the country's main island. The direct financial damage from the disaster is estimated to be about $199 billion dollars. In Japan, residents are still recovering from the disaster. In a subduction zone, one plate slides beneath another into the mantle, the hotter layer beneath the crust. Less than an hour after the earthquake, the first of many tsunami waves hit Japan's coastline. In the decade before the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, a handful of Japanese geologists had begun to recognize that a large earthquake and tsunami had struck the northern Honshu region in 869. The country recently unveiled a newly