Japanese Tohoku Earthquake Flashcards Preview

Geography Tectonics > Japanese Tohoku Earthquake > Flashcards

Flashcards in Japanese Tohoku Earthquake Deck (10)
Loading flashcards...
1
Q

Causes

A
  • 11th March 2011
  • Meeting of 3 tectonic plates, Eurasian, Pacific and Philippines
  • Destructive boundary
  • Japan gets 30% of the world earthquakes annually
  • 90mm of pacific plate under the Eurasian
  • Tsunami= secondary consequence
2
Q

Magnitude

A
  • 9.0
  • epicentre 70km east of Tohoku,
  • Focus 32km deep
3
Q

Frequency

A
  • 7 foreshocks
  • Including magnitude 7.2
  • 1235 aftershocks
4
Q

Vulnerability

A
  • Coastlines is vulnerable and has a high population density
  • Upper 10m of soil vulnerable to liquefaction
  • Fukushima nuclear power plant
5
Q

Capacity to cope

A
  • 40% of coastline has sea walls 10m high
  • Japanese Meteorological agency
  • televised warnings
  • 20 minutes to get to safety
  • Mobile phone messages given warnings
  • Building design
6
Q

Institutional capacity

A
  • Emergency crews and army on site quickly
  • Readily trained teams
  • Earthquake practise day yearly in September
  • Huge GDP
  • 200 seismographs and 600 seismic intensity meters
  • Earthquake phenomena Observation system in Tokyo
7
Q

Immediate response

A
  • warnings helped save lives
  • Tsunami alert wasn’t reacted to quickly enough
  • 340,000 people displaced
  • Shortages of flood, water, shelter, medicine and food
  • Search and rescue teams worked with Red cross, NGO’s and aid agencies
8
Q

SEE impacts

A
  • Tsunami caused most damage
  • 40 metres high in some areas, travelling 10km inland
  • Honshu island moved 2.4 m east
  • Earth Tilted on axis by 10cm
  • 130,000 buildings collapsed
  • 700,000 buildings damaged
  • Structural damage, heavy damages to road and railways
  • Fires
  • Dam collapse
  • 4.4 million houses without electricity
  • 1.5 million without water
  • Economic loss $235 billion
9
Q

effects of Fukushima

A

3 nuclear meltdowns

  • contamination of sea and land
  • Residents within 20km exclusion zone had to evacuate
  • 15,854 died, 26,992 injured, 3,155 missing
10
Q

Long Term impacts

A
  • How Japan has recovered one year on
  • 6 days after motorway was repaired
  • Rapid recovery