On a colder than normal Friday afternoon, on the 11th of
March 2011, while light snow showers fell in some areas, almost all of northern Japan experienced a major earthquake centered 80 miles east of the coastal city of Sendai out on the ocean shelf.
The earthquake went on for six full minutes. The area
affected by intense shaking was huge, reaching almost to the northern tip of Honshu, (the main island of Japan) down past Tokyo and beyond. The Japan Meteorological Agency wasted no time measuring or calculating the intensity, but instead immediately issued a major tsunami warning of the most severe level for expected waves of more than 3 meters (~10 feet) along the northeastern coast. Most of the people in the coastal areas heard the warning sirens.
The tsunami that followed the earthquake was much
larger than expected in many areas. It drove water and wreckage miles inland up rivers and streams, across coastal plains and into inlets, with average peak wave heights of 44 feet nearer to the epicenter, to 27 feet wave heights hundreds of miles away. The highest recorded wave height was over 120 feet (forty meters) eight miles south of Miyako city.
Footage of the disaster filmed by many survivors shows
people walking, running, driving and being overtaken by the onrushing flood waters. Of the 250,000 people who lived in the areas affected by the waters, 20,000 were found dead or remain missing.
Japan was the most prepared nation on earth for tsunami
danger, yet still, so many thousands died. We must ask why so many perished, after so much time and effort had been spent in preparation. Official numbers seem to be adjusted to make the overall percentages lower, such as including all people in a city or province when calculating the percentages, rather than just using the number of people in the actual affected areas of the province or city. The number of fatalities was a major embarrassment to the officials who had not accepted warnings from the geologists and seismologists who foresaw the danger based on historical evidence.
The reasons for the number of deaths are multi-faceted.
Although everyone had felt the earthquake, and most heard the warning sirens, the people were used to earthquakes and sirens. Even a major earthquake like this one didnt cause all of the people to be alarmed enough to get to safety. It was a cold day, and the amount of time that it took to get to a shelter, and then wait to see if anything would actually happen, dissauded some people who were sure that they would be safe behind their tall seawalls, some being as tall as 10 meters (30 feet).
The scale used by the Japan Metrological Society had a
top rating of 3 meters plus. Some people misunderstood the scale, thinking that 3 meters was the maximum waveheight. When waves of over 12 meters flooded into the cities and overtopped the seawalls and barriers, many were shocked. The height of the seawalls also kept people from seeing the water rise until it was too late and it was actually rushing into the cities and towns at speeds faster than an athelete can run.
There was also a general sense of complacency.
Earthquakes are commonplace in Japan. The last tsunami catastrophe had been in 1933, before the lifetime of most of the people affected. The last tsunami with major waves had been 1960. The normalcy bias, thinking that things will continue as they always have, lulled some people into dangerous behavior. Another major contributing factor was age and accompanying weakness and lack of mobility. Over half of the people who died were over 65 years old.
For years there has been consistent training by the
government and school system, teaching the people tsunami- tendenko: which means each person immediately must go on foot to safety alone rather that trying to get to your family and thus slowing all of the family down and causing more deaths. Despite this training, 40 percent of the people in affected areas delayed for various reasons, including driving to meet up with family. More than half of the people evacuated in vehicles and over one third of those were caught in heavy traffic jams. The powerful film Witness Tendenko: Surviving the Tsunami, which can be seen on You-Tube, is a message of the effectiveness of preparedness training. It is a film worth watching in order to see the scale and magnitude of major disasters and as a reminder of how disasters can upend normal life in ways people dont normally consider.
Other more tragic unpreventable deaths were those who
followed procedures properly, but were in locations that were insufficient to protect from such extreme flooding. This tsunami brought the first ever recorded incident of a concrete four story building being toppled from a tsunami wave, due to ground scouring from the flood waters undercutting the building. Many three story buildings that had been considered safe were overtopped by the relentless rising waters, including the emergency management building in one city, where all but two of the emergency management personnel were swept away to their deaths. Cars were carried up on top of three and four story buildings in areas, showing the results of intense flooding.
Years later the northern Japan coastal cities and towns
are still battered and scarred, trying to recover from the most monetarily expensive natural disaster in human history. It is a testament to the training that was done, that so few actually died. Had the affected people remained in place, it is estimated 95 percent would have died.
The expected earthquake and tsunami in the cascadia
subduction zone of the Pacific Northwest will almost certainly dwarf the casualty numbers of the Japan tsunami, because of the lack of warnings, training and preparedness. If the cascadia fault gives completely during tourist season a hundred thousand or more will most likely die along the beaches and coastlines of California, Oregon and Washington.
The Japan tsunami is a moving visual example of, and
also a metaphor for, extreme disaster situations where critical, even life and death, decisions have to be made with confusing, conflicting and incomplete or missing information. It serves as a stark reminder that those who do not watch for warning signs, have a plan in place, and follow the plan they set, are likely to become victims in extreme disasters.