Tsunami Japan 2011

15,000 dead, 230,000 still without homes in 2013 living in temporary housing. The magnitude-9 earthquake caused a tsunami after the subduction earthquake. The tsunami hit the nuclear power plant, causing a level 7 nuclear meltdown.

The total damage has totaled to $300 billion dollars.

Minutes before the shakes the citizens in Japan were alerted. An hour after the shakes the first tsunami waves hit. Most of the people died from drowning. The waves covered 217 square miles-much more than expected. The tsunami caused a cooling system failure because the power and back up power couldn’t handle the damaged cooling system and radioactive water continue to leak from Fukushima.

Radioactive chemicals have been detected in North America in 2014 and 2015. Cesium-134 has been detected as far south as Eureka, Ca, 100 miles off shore.

 

The World Health Organization (WHO) measures the nuclear levels and reports the levels to be safe. Unfortunately 42 species fish in Japan are still reported to have unsafe levels of radioactive isotopes and the levels haven’t been dropping like expected. Many fisheries are closed. The long term effects of the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima are still unknown and the concerns of cancers developing are still to come.

 

Amazing facts

Here are some of the amazing facts about the Japan earthquake and tsunami.

• The earthquake shifted Earth on its axis of rotation by redistributing mass, like putting a dent in a spinning top. The temblor also shortened the length of a day by about a microsecond.
• More than 5,000 aftershocks hit Japan in the year after the earthquake, the largest a magnitude 7.9.
• About 250 miles (400 km) of Japan’s northern Honshu coastline dropped by 2 feet (0.6 meters), according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
• The jolt moved Japan’s main island of Honshu eastward by 8 feet (2.4 meters).
• The Pacific Plate slid westward near the epicenter by 79 feet (24 m).
• In Antarctica, the seismic waves from the earthquake sped up the Whillans Ice Stream, jolting it by about 1.5 feet (0.5 meters).
• The tsunami broke icebergs off the Sulzberger Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
• As the tsunami crossed the Pacific Ocean, a 5-foot high (1.5 m) high wave killed more than 110,000 nesting seabirds at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.
• In Norway, water in fjords pointing toward Japan sloshed back and forth as seismic waves from the earthquake raced through.
• The earthquake produced a low-frequency rumble called infrasound, which traveled into space and was detected by the Goce satellite.
• Buildings destroyed by the tsunami released thousands of tons of ozone-destroying chemicals and greenhouse gases into the air.

 

 

http://www.livescience.com/39110-japan-2011-earthquake-tsunami-facts.html