Paul Andrews - Japan - Hell on Earth: 2011

At approximately 2.46pm local time on the 11 th March 2011, Japan went about its normal business on a Friday afternoon.

Suddenly an earthquake hit the region of North East Japan with one of the biggest cities in the region, Sendai, being hit. The epicentre of the quake was believed to have been around six miles beneath the seabed, some 80 miles off the East coast of Japan.

Shake Map of Region

The earthquake originated in the Japan Trench, which is where the Pacific Plate is subducting underneath the Okhotsk Plate.

The quake initiated a tsunami alert around the whole of the Pacific rim. The tsunami created a large wall of water around 30 feet high which was travelling in the region of 500 miles an hour. This speed is the same speed at which a passenger jet flies. The wave was still around 10 foot in height when it reached the coastline of Hawaii which was approximately 3900 miles away from the epicentre.

The earthquake itself had been preceded by several large foreshocks which started with a large shock on the 9 th of March 2011, followed by three slightly smaller ones the same day.

The quake was detected around one minute before it hit by the Japan earthquake early warning system. This system has around 1000 seismometers monitoring the earth for quakes and they automatically sent out a warning on the TV system in Japan. This is believed to have saved many lives, just by having that few seconds of early warning to the population.

The earthquake was the fifth biggest since records began, and was much larger than one of the worst which Japan had previously had called the Great Kanto quake of 1923. That quake was of the magnitude of 7.9 and was a terrible disaster which killed more than 140,000 people in the region of Tokyo and the surrounding area.

This earth quake of 2011 is almost certainly the largest to ever hit Japan, and possibly the largest quake within the region of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates for over 1200 years.

It was, experts stated, in the region of 8000 times bigger than the earthquake which had hit New Zealand a few weeks early in February 2011, which in itself had caused widespread damage.

The main quake was followed by around 100 aftershocks which were themselves often huge, one of them having a magnitude of 6.7 itself.

Kanto Quake of 1923 Devastation

View of Sendai after the crisis

The capital, Tokyo - which was a full 240 miles from the epicentre of the quake - escaped the worst of the effects of the quake, but did have violent tremors rocking the buildings of the city for around two minutes. Terrified workers scrambled from their swaying offices into the streets as debris fell from some buildings, and many people were injured.

The effect of the 2011 Sendai earthquake on Tokyo

Three of Japans nuclear power plants were affected by the quake, with special safety measures supposedly cutting in and shutting down the reactors. Sadly at one of the plants this did not happen, bringing fears of a nuclear meltdown - something we will look at in more depth in a following chapter.

In the North-East province of Fukushima, a dam was damaged by the quake and collapsed, letting a wave of water loose from behind it. This wave swept away something in the region of 1800 homes.

Many people took to underground shelters, and power was lost to many buildings and businesses across the country. Tokyos two main airports (Narita and Haneda) were forced to close, and most international flights were cancelled for a period of time.

Cities and villages along the coastline stretching for around 1300 miles were all shook by violent tremors. Modern Japanese buildings are built to withstand earthquakes, but this was a severe test even for these.