Tohoku earthquake
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.031173
On this day five years ago, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Sendai, Japan. “Shear sliding on the fault where the Pacific Plate thrusts below Japan lasted for 150 anxiety-filled seconds, shifted the coast of Japan up to 5 m eastward, and lifted the sea floor by as much as 5 m over 15 000 sq km, an area comparable to the state of Connecticut,” seismologists Thorne Lay and Hiroo Kanamori wrote in the December 2011 Physics Today. The resulting tsunami devastated coastal communities and led to meltdowns in three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. The US Navy photo accompanying this post shows the extensive damage in Sendai on March 12, 2011.
Date in History: 11 March 2012
