The magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake on March 11, 2011 occurred near the northeast coast of Honshu, Japan, which resulted from thrust faulting on/near the subduction zone plate boundary between the oceanic Pacific Plate and continental North America plate. The fault moved upwards of 30 to 40 metres and slipped over an area approximately 300 km long (along-strike) by 150 km wide (in the down-dip direction). The quake had caused several major landslides on the seabed in the affected area. Soil liquefaction was evident in areas of reclaimed land around Tokyo.
According to the Japanese government, around 300,000 people are still homeless, living in residential camps
The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves that reached heights of up to 40.5 metres (133 ft) in Miyako in Tohoku which, in turn, caused nuclear accidents, primarily at three reactors where level 5 meltdowns occured in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex. The evacuation zones were also destroyed, killing or seriously affecting hundreds of thousands of residents.
On 12 September 2012, a Japanese National Police Agency report confirmed 15,883 deaths, 6,149 injured, and 2,652 people missing across twenty prefectures, as well as 129,225 buildings totally collapsed, with a further 254,204 buildings 'half collapsed'. Also, around 4.4 million households in northeastern Japan were left without electricity and 1.5 million without water.
If the dissipated surface energy from the earthquake was harnessed, it would power a city the size of Los Angeles for an entire year.
The tohoku quake helped conclude a dying concept: that faults produce the same size earthquake every time, and that they are regular, repeatable and predictable. "We now realize that things are much more variable in space and time than we would like to believe," said Seth Stein, a seismologist at Northwestern University.
According to the Japanese government, around 300,000 people are still homeless, living in residential camps
The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves that reached heights of up to 40.5 metres (133 ft) in Miyako in Tohoku which, in turn, caused nuclear accidents, primarily at three reactors where level 5 meltdowns occured in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex. The evacuation zones were also destroyed, killing or seriously affecting hundreds of thousands of residents.
On 12 September 2012, a Japanese National Police Agency report confirmed 15,883 deaths, 6,149 injured, and 2,652 people missing across twenty prefectures, as well as 129,225 buildings totally collapsed, with a further 254,204 buildings 'half collapsed'. Also, around 4.4 million households in northeastern Japan were left without electricity and 1.5 million without water.
If the dissipated surface energy from the earthquake was harnessed, it would power a city the size of Los Angeles for an entire year.
The tohoku quake helped conclude a dying concept: that faults produce the same size earthquake every time, and that they are regular, repeatable and predictable. "We now realize that things are much more variable in space and time than we would like to believe," said Seth Stein, a seismologist at Northwestern University.
Tsunami flooding on the Sendai Aiport runway . Soil liquefaction in Koto, Tokyo. Damage in Sendai region. ( Nippon Oil refinery)