At 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011, the land along the northeastern coast of the Japanese island of Honshu began to shake violently—and continued to shake for six minutes. These tremors were caused when a large section of the seafloor along a fault line 125 km (77 mi) offshore suddenly lurched, releasing huge amounts of energy through the crust and generating an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 on the Richter scale (a scale used to measure the strength of earthquakes). The Tohoku earthquake, as it was later named, was not the first major earthquake to strike Japan. The city of Kobe experienced substantial damage from a quake in 1995 that claimed more than 5500 lives. And in 1923, an earthquake devastated the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, resulting in more than 142,000 deaths.

 

Losses of life and property from the Tohoku quake were far less extensive than the losses from these earlier events, thanks to new stringent building codes that enable buildings to resist crumbling and toppling over during earthquakes. But even when the earth stopped shaking, the residents of northeastern Japan knew that further danger might still await them—from a tsunami. A tsunami (“harbor wave” in English) is a powerful surge of seawater generated when an offshore earthquake displaces large volumes of rocks and sediment on the ocean bottom, suddenly pushing the overlying ocean water upward. This upward movement of water creates waves that speed outward from the earthquake site in all directions. These waves are hardly noticeable at sea, but can rear up to staggering heights when they enter the shallow waters near shore and can sweep inland with great force.

 

The Japanese had built seawalls to protect against tsunamis, but the Tohoku quake caused the island of Honshu to sink perceptively, thereby lowering the height of the seawalls by up to 2 m (6.5 ft) in some locations. Waves reaching up to 15 m (49 ft) in height then overwhelmed these defenses. The raging water swept up to 9.6 km (6 mi) inland; scoured buildings from their foundations; and inundated towns, villages, and productive agricultural land. As the water’s energy faded, the water receded, carrying structural debris, vehicles, livestock, and human bodies out to sea.

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