2011 Tohoku Earthquake

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The Tohoku Earthquake was a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Japan which struck at 14:46 local time on 11th March 2011. The earthquake’s epicentre was 130km east from Sendai, the capital of Miyagi Prefecture. The earthquake lasted 8 minutes and a tsunami was triggered from the earthquake. The earthquake was caused by the Pacific Plate subducting under the Eurasian Plate. Before the actual earthquake, there were several foreshocks. The actual earthquake caused more than 600 aftershocks bigger than magnitude 4.5 with the biggest aftershock of 7.7, 30 minutes after the first quake. The earthquake triggered a tsunami which travelled up to 10 km inland in the Sendai area, which caused loss of life, destruction of infrastructure and also a number of nuclear accidents, which included the Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown. The short term impacts of the Tohoku Earthquake is: loss of life, destruction of infrastructure causing transportation and delivery issues, radiation scare to the population , radiated food supply source, money spent to rebuild buildings, clean up, stocks fell. The long term impacts include: distrust of other nuclear facilities, loss of confidence in TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company), distrust to the government to keep the population safe, Tohoku's agriculture and fishing industry being restored, destructions of farmland, traumatisation. There were a total of 14,036 deaths 4,711 injured, 14,921 people missing and over 300,000 people were displaced. The predicted total recovery costs could reach ¥10 trillion ($122 billion). Japan is a country which is normally prepared for earthquakes, and it handled this one quite well, however the event that Japan wasn’t prepare for was the tsunami which was caused by the earthquake. Tsunami warnings were issued 3 minutes after the earthquake and the damage caused by the tsunami was far more
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