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The Great Japan Tsunami

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.