NOVA on megaquake, quake animation

[mooncliff]

Should be watchable online in the US.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/j...ler-quake.html

We had a quake near Tokyo today at 16:55. I think this means stress has been shifted to faults near Tokyo. I would not be surprised if we have one or several very strong quakes in the next few days and weeks. The frequency of such a quake will be much higher because the quake will be closer, so the effects will be very different from those of the quake of March 11.
http://www.newscientist.com/embedded/japan-quake

13. Human, structural and financial consequences of a large Tokyo earthquake
The Cabinet Office of the Japanese government recently issued a risk assessment for large Tokyo earthquakes (Central Disaster Management Council 2005). They considered an MZ7.3 earthquake beneath Tokyo, similar to the 1855 Ansei-Edo shock. The 240 000–840 000 destroyed buildings in their estimate depend strongly on wind speed and time of day, because high winds spread fire and rush hour exposes people to falling objects. If an MZ7.3 earthquake struck at 18.00 in 15 m sK1 (33 miles hK1) winds, the Cabinet Office estimates 11 000 deaths, 210000 wounded and 96 million tons of wreckage. About 57% of the deaths and 77% of the housing collapses are attributable to fire, and 28% of deaths and 18% of the collapses are due to shaking. The projected cost of an MZ7.3 earthquake beneath Tokyo are $1.0 trillion (USD), which is 130% of the Japanese annual budget (Central Disaster Management Council 2005). Only about 5% of this loss is thought to be insured, and so the cost would be borne principally by home and business owners and the government. The total comprised $587 million direct losses associated with recovery and rebuilding, and $395 million in indirect losses due to production declines within and outside of Tokyo.

https://profile.usgs.gov/myscience/u...t_al_Tokyo.pdf

And if you want to see what a REAL megatsunami is, well, short of an asteroid strike...

At risk the entire Atlantic coast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4XR7...eature=related

And Honolulu, not to mention the rest of the Pacific.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw3Dj...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtIJETdGDQQ

[metalman]

Re: NOVA on megaquake, quake animation

from http://www.nextearthquake.com/earthq...s.htm#longterm

Japan 2. New zone Honshu - Northern Region within ≈500 km of the M8.9 epicenter at Lat 38.322 Lon 142.369	M5.4-M7.4 expected about Mar 28+/-3 days (posted 0455 hours 13th March)	M6.6	97%	22nd March 2011 Lat 37.249 Lon 143.956 292 km ESE of Sendai, Near East Coast of Honshu, Japan (USGS source) forecast 9 days ahead
Japan 3. Honshu - Southern Region within ≈500 km of center ≈248 km SSE of Nagoya at Lat 33.144 Lon 138.040	M4.2-M6.2 expected about Mar 22+/-3 days (posted 0200 hours 9th March)	M6.1	85%	22nd March 2011 Lat 35.786 Lon 141.572 165 km E of TOKYO, Near East Coast of Honshu, Japan (USGS source) forecast 13 days ahead

Japan 1. Hokkaido Region within ≈500 km from Yubetsu, Hokkaido Lat 44.2 Lon 143.62	M4.0-M6.0 expected about Mar 22+/-3 days (posted 0200 hours 9th March)	M5.0	100%	29th March 2011 Lat 45.566 Lon 146.262 323 km NNE of Kushiro, Hokkaido, in Kuril Islands Region (USGS source) forecast 20 days ahead
Japan 2. New zone Honshu - Northern Region within ≈500 km of the M8.9 epicenter at Lat 38.322 Lon 142.369	M5.4-M7.4 expected about Mar 28+/-3 days (posted 0455 hours 13th March)	M6.6	97%	22nd March 2011 Lat 37.249 Lon 143.956 292 km ESE of Sendai, Near East Coast of Honshu, Japan (USGS source) forecast 9 days ahead
Japan 3. Honshu - Southern Region within ≈500 km of center ≈248 km SSE of Nagoya at Lat 33.144 Lon 138.040	M4.2-M6.2 expected about Mar 22+/-3 days (posted 0200 hours 9th March)	M6.1	85%	22nd March 2011 Lat 35.786 Lon 141.572 165 km E of TOKYO, Near East Coast of Honshu, Japan (USGS source) forecast 13 days ahead

[don]

Re: NOVA on megaquake, quake animation

Earthquakes' first cousin, tsunamis, can apparently overwhelm any coastal defense.

In Japan, Seawall Offered a False Sense of Security



A ship that was swept ashore in the tsunami of March 11, damaging part of a breakwater, seen Wednesday in Kamaishi, Japan, 50 miles south of Taro.

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

TARO, Japan — So unshakable was this town’s faith in its sea wall and its ability to save residents from any tsunami that some rushed toward it after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of northeast Japan on the afternoon of March 11.

After all, the sea wall was one of Japan’s tallest and longest, called the nation’s “Great Wall of China” by the government and news media. Its inner wall was reinforced by an outer one, and they stretched 1.5 miles across the bay here. The surface was so wide that high school students jogged on it, townspeople strolled on it, and some rode their bicycles on it. A local junior high school song even urged students: “Look up at our sea wall. The challenges of tsunamis are endless.”

But within a few minutes on March 11, the tsunami’s waves tore through the outer wall before easily surging over the 34-foot-high inner one, sweeping away those who had climbed on its top, and quickly taking away most of the town of Taro.

“For us, the sea wall was a source of pride, an asset, something that we believed in,” said Eiko Araya, 58, the principal of Taro No. 3 Elementary School. Like several other survivors, Ms. Araya was walking atop the inner wall late Wednesday afternoon, peering down at the ruins of Taro. “We felt protected, I believe. That’s why our feeling of loss is even greater now.”

Tsunamis are an integral part of the history of Japan’s Sanriku region, which includes this fishing town of about 4,400. People speak of tsunamis as if they were enemies that “take away” the inhabitants here. Perhaps because the loss of life over the decades has been so great, a local teaching, called tendenko, unsentimentally exhorts people to head for higher ground immediately after an earthquake, without stopping to worry about anybody else.

Sanriku is also home to some of the world’s most elaborate anti-tsunami infrastructure, including concrete sea walls that transform seaside communities into garrisonlike towns with limited views of the ocean. About 50 miles south of here, in the city of Kamaishi, the world’s deepest breakwater was completed two years ago after three decades of construction, at a cost of $1.5 billion.

The recent tsunami damaged, perhaps irreparably, Kamaishi’s breakwater, as well as countless sea walls and other facilities designed to shield communities against tsunamis. Researchers are starting to assess whether the sea walls and breakwaters minimized the force of the tsunami even as some experts are already calling for a stop to more coastline engineering, saying money should be spent instead on education and evacuation drills.

As Japan undertakes the monumental task of rebuilding areas of its northeast, it will also face the hard choice of whether to resurrect the expensive anti-tsunami infrastructure — much of which was built during Japan’s economic ascendancy.

Osamu Shimozawa, a city official in Kamaishi, said a decision not to rebuild would be tantamount to “abandoning rural Japan.”

“We have to provide a permanent feeling of security so that people will live here,” Mr. Shimozawa said.

Kamaishi’s 207-foot deep breakwater — sections of which now lie broken in the harbor — blunted the force of the tsunami, according to preliminary investigations by independent civil engineers. In Kamaishi, 648 deaths have been confirmed, while 630 people are still listed as missing.

“The damage was limited, compared to other places,” said Shoichi Sasaki, an official at the Ministry of Land’s office in Kamaishi.

It was an opinion shared by most people interviewed in Kamaishi, many of whom had witnessed construction crews erecting the breakwater from 1978 to 2009.
Toru Yaura and his wife, Junko, both 60, were clearing the debris from the first floor of their home, several blocks from the water.

“Without the breakwater, the impact would probably have been greater,” Mr. Yaura said, explaining that the water rose up to his waist on the second floor of his two-story house.

The Yauras, who are staying at a shelter, were initially trapped inside their home, alone without electricity, the night after the tsunami — which also happened to be Mr. Yaura’s 60th birthday.

“It was a romantic birthday, with candles,” he said. “We laughed, the two of us.”
Here in Taro, the number of dead was expected to rise above 100.

Instead of protecting the townspeople, the sea wall may have lulled them with a false sense of security, said Isamu Hashiba, 66, who had driven here from a nearby district to attend a friend’s cremation.

His wife, Etsuko, 55, said, “There were people who were looking at the tsunami from the sea wall because they felt safe.”

The town began building the inner wall after a tsunami decimated Taro’s population in 1933. The wall was reinforced and expanded in the 1960s.

In the 1933 tsunami, said Ms. Araya, the school principal, her mother lost all her relatives, except one uncle, at the age of 11. Her mother, now 89, survived the most recent tsunami because she happened to be at a day care center for the elderly.

“People say that those who live in Taro will encounter a tsunami twice in their lives,” Ms. Araya said. “That’s the fate of people born in Taro.”

Perhaps because it was their fate, because they were used to rising from tsunamis every few generations, some of those walking on the sea wall were already thinking about the future.

Ryuju Yamamoto, 66, peered down, trying to spot his house below, but was more interested in talking about the woman he was wooing. A tatami-mat maker, he pointed below to a spot where he had found his dresser and tatami mat, as well as a doll he had received as a wedding gift three decades ago. His father had forced him into an arranged marriage, he said, that lasted 40 days.

“I learned that she already had this,” he said, pointing to his thumb, signifying a boyfriend. “And she refused to break it off.”

Unexpectedly, at a year-end party for dog owners last December, Mr. Yamamoto said he saw a woman he had met while walking his dog. The woman lived with her mother, who, Mr. Yamamoto learned, teaches taishogoto, a Japanese musical instrument. So Mr. Yamamoto was now taking lessons from the mother, regularly visiting their home, which was unaffected by the tsunami.

“That’s my strategy,” Mr. Yamamoto said, adding that he was making progress. After learning that he was now living in a shelter, he said, the mother had invited him to take a bath in their home.

“I’m going tomorrow,” he said.

Eiko Araya, 58, a school principal, atop the inner sea wall in Taro, Japan, on Wednesday, holding a portrait of a former neighbor, now dead, which she found in floodwaters in her home.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/02/wo....html?_r=1&hpw

[cmalbatros]

Re: NOVA on megaquake, quake animation

Almost the same show that was broadcast in UK as Horizon which I watched last week.

[Chris Coles]

Re: NOVA on megaquake, quake animation

Some of you might like to bear a thought about the fact that the Tar Pits in LA seep up through a 300 foot deep layer of marine sand......

[don]

Re: NOVA on megaquake, quake animation

Another terrifyingly impressive home movie of the tsunami:

[Chris Coles]

Re: NOVA on megaquake, quake animation

Almost beyond imagination to stand and watch everything you own, every particle of your previous life, within a happy community.

Totally destroyed; swept away. The voices in the background bring the whole event into stark relief. My heart goes out to them.

[don]

Re: NOVA on megaquake, quake animation

Had me gripping the armrests, especially the people in the foreground at the base of the hill trying to outrun and walk the water and debris.

[sishya]

Re: NOVA on megaquake, quake animation

Looking at the video, I can see how complacent people are when looking out for disasters. Modern man, I think is more complacent and not spontaneous in reaction compared to our fore fathers, who would have always been alert (like a rooster always looking up for any predator even when searching for food). Why did people build a city near the coast where there is history of tsunami ?

[don]

Re: NOVA on megaquake, quake animation

More than 6,000 men, women and children lost their lives during the Galveston Great Storm of 1900.

Back in those days there was little advanced warning . . . .