Tohoku Japan Earthquake And Tsunami Of 2011

Sponsored by the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE. On March 11, 2011, at 2:46 p.m. local time, the Great East Japan Earthquake with moment magnitude 9.0 generated a tsunami of unprecedented height and spatial extent along the northeast coast of the main island of Honshu. The Japanese government estimated that more than 250,000 buildings either collapsed or partially collapsed predominantly from the tsunami. The tsunami spread destruction inland for several kilometers, inundating an area of 525 square kilometers, or 207 square miles. About a month after the tsunami, ASCE?s Structural Engineering Institute sent a Tsunami Reconnaissance Team to Tohoku, Japan, to investigate and document the performance of buildings and other structures affected by the tsunami. For more than two weeks, the team examined nearly every town and city that suffered significant tsunami damage, focusing on buildings, bridges, and coastal protective structures within the inundation zone along the northeast coast region of Honshu. This report presents the sequence of tsunami warning and evacuation, tsunami flow velocities, and debris loading. The authors describe the performance, types of failure, and scour effects for a variety of structures: buildings, including low-rise and residential structuresrailway and roadway bridgesseawalls and tsunami barriers breakwaterspiers, quays, and wharvesstorage tanks, towers, and cranes. Additional chapters analyze failure modes utilizing detailed field data collection and describe economic impacts and initial recovery efforts. Each chapter is plentifully illustrated with photographs and contains a summary of findings. For structural engineers, the observations and analysis in this report provide critical information for designing buildings, bridges, and other structures that can withstand the effects of tsunami inundation.

A unique interdisciplinary approach to disaster risk research, including global hazards and case-studies, for researchers, graduate students and professionals.

Sponsored by the Coasts, Oceans, Ports, and Rivers Institute of ASCE; Port and Airport Research Institute of Japan. On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake rumbled off the east coast of Japan, followed by a tsunami that generated waves more than 18 meters high. The earthquake and tsunami caused devastation throughout the Tohoku and Sendai regions of Japan, killing nearly 16,000 people and causing damage estimated at more than US$126 billion. For seven days in May 2011, an ASCE/COPRI Coastal Structures Team investigated the earthquake and tsunami effects specific to engineered coastal structures, coastal landforms, and coastal processes in northeast Japan. Joined by colleagues from Japan?s Port and Airport Research Institute, the survey team observed five categories of coastal protection structures: coastal dikes, tsunami seawalls, floodwater gates, breakwaters, and vegetated greenbelts. This report provides background to the field investigation, including an event summary, the tectonic and geologic setting, and the generation, propagation, and runup of the tsunami. It then describes 11 mechanisms causing damage or failure and includes photographs illustrating the effects each mechanism. Finally, the report presents lessons learned regarding what worked and what didn?t and how this knowledge can be used to engineer against future natural disasters. For coastal engineers, structural engineers, geotechnical engineers, and disaster risk managers, the observations and analysis in this report provide critical information for engineering infrastructure that withstands major earthquake and tsunami events.

On March 11, 2011, an underwater earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tohoku, Japan, triggered one of the most devastating tsunamis of a generation. The aftermath was overwhelming: communities were reduced to rubble, thousands of people were missing or dead, and relief organizations struggled to reach affected areas to provide aid for survivors and victims of radiation from compromised nuclear reactors. In Japan after 3/11, editors Pradyumna P. Karan and Unryu Suganuma assemble geographers, economists, humanists, and scientists to consider the complex economic, physical, and social impacts of this heartbreaking disaster. Historical geographers place the events of March 2011 in context, while other contributors assess the damage and recommend strategies for the long process of reclamation and rebuilding. The book also includes interviews with victims that explore the social implications of radioactive contamination and invite comparisons to the discrimination faced by survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Balancing the natural and social sciences, this timely volume offers not only a model of interdisciplinary research for scholars but also an invaluable guide to the planning and implementation of reconstruction.

Devastating damage in the Tohoku region of Japan occurred during and after the earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tohoku earthquake on March 11, 2011. The AIJ (Architectural Institute of Japan) dispatched reconnaissance teams into the field to obtain basic facts on the damage to buildings due to the massive ground motions and resultant tsunami. Their mission included collecting information on the characteristics of the earthquake itself and the observed major ground motions and tsunamis throughout the area. For the structural damage investigation, buildings are classified by their type of construction, namely, steel buildings, reinforced concrete buildings, wooden houses, etc. along with descriptions of special features for each category of building type. The report summarizes damage associated with ground failures including landslide and liquefaction as well as non-structural damages such as to equipment and facilities, partitioning walls and ceilings, and functional failures in skyscrapers. Also brief description of the Japanese Seismic Design Code will be provided in the Appendix. A proposed scheme of anti-tsunami design for buildings is also included.

This book focuses on the ecological impacts of the Great East Japan Earthquake and resulting tsunamis, a rare and extremely large disturbance event, on various coastal ecosystems in Japan’s Tohoku area, including sub-tidal and tidal animal communities, sand dune plant communities and coastal forests. The studies presented here describe not only how species and populations in these ecosystems were disturbed by the earthquake and tsunamis, but also how the communities have responded to the event and what types of anthropogenic activities will hamper their recovery processes. In the ecological sciences, it is often argued that large disturbances are critical to shaping community structures and biodiversity in local and regional habitats. However, our understanding of these roles remains limited, simply because there have been few opportunities to examine and address the ecological impacts of large disturbance events. The scale of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake makes it one of the largest hazards in the past 1000 years. Thus, this book provides a unique opportunity to advance our understanding of the ecological impacts of large and rare disturbances and the implications of these events in the conservation and management of coastal ecosystems. Following an outline of the Great East Japan Earthquake, the book’s content is divided into two major parts. Part I reports on studies examining the ecological impacts of the tsunamis on sub-tidal and tidal animal communities, while Part II focuses on terrestrial plant communities in Japan’s coastal Tohoku area. This book will benefit all scientists interested in the ecological impacts of large disturbances on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in general, and especially those who are interested in the ecological management of coastal ecosystems and Ecosystem based Disaster Risk Reduction (EcoDRR).

On the 11th of March 2011, an earthquake registering 9.0 on the Richter scale (the most powerful to ever strike Japan) hit the Tohoku region in northern Japan. The earthquake produced a devastating tsunami that wiped out coastal cities and towns, leaving 18,561 people dead or registered as missing. Due to the disaster, the capability of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), was compromised, causing nuclear meltdown. The hydrogen blast destroyed the facilities, resulting in a spread of radioactive materials, and, subsequently, serious nuclear contamination. This combined event – earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown – became known as the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster. This book examines the response of the Japanese government to the disaster, and its attempts to answer the legal questions posed by the combination of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. Japanese law, policy, and infrastructure were insufficiently prepared for these disasters, and the country’s weaknesses were brutally exposed. This book analyses these failings, and discusses what Japan, and other countries, can learn from these events.

Named one of the best books of 2017 by The Guardian, NPR, GQ, The Economist, Bookforum, Amazon, and Lit Hub The definitive account of what happened, why, and above all how it felt, when catastrophe hit Japan—by the Japan correspondent of The Times (London) and author of People Who Eat Darkness On March 11, 2011, a powerful earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of northeast Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than eighteen thousand people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned. It was Japan’s greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways. Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo and spent six years reporting from the disaster zone. There he encountered stories of ghosts and hauntings, and met a priest who exorcised the spirits of the dead. And he found himself drawn back again and again to a village that had suffered the greatest loss of all, a community tormented by unbearable mysteries of its own. What really happened to the local children as they waited in the schoolyard in the moments before the tsunami? Why did their teachers not evacuate them to safety? And why was the unbearable truth being so stubbornly covered up? Ghosts of the Tsunami is a soon-to-be classic intimate account of an epic tragedy, told through the accounts of those who lived through it. It tells the story of how a nation faced a catastrophe, and the struggle to find consolation in the ruins.