The Aftermath of the 2011 East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

The Aftermath of the 2011 East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami
Author: Shoichiro Takezawa
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2016-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1498542522

An insightful study in disaster anthropology, this book takes as its focus the fishing town of Otsuchi in Japan’s Iwate Prefecture, one of the worst damaged areas in the mammoth 2011 tsunami. Here, 1281 of the pre-tsunami population of 15000 were killed and 60% of houses destroyed. To make matters worse, the town’s administrative organs were completely obliterated, and fire ravaged the downtown area for three days, blocking external rescue attempts. Complete with vivid and detailed witness testimony collected by the author, the book traces the course of eighteen months from the day of the disaster, through the subsequent months of community life in the evacuation centers, onto the struggles between the citizens and local governments in formulating reconstruction plans. It particularly addresses community interactions within the post-disaster context, assessing the locals’ varying degrees of success in organizing emergency committees to deal with such tasks as clearing rubble, hunting down food and obtaining fuel, and inquiring into the sociological reasons for these differences. It also casts new light on administrative failings that significantly augmented the loss of human lives in the disaster, and are threatening to bring further damage through insistence on reconstruction centered on enormous sea walls, against local citizens’ wishes.

Tohoku, Japan, Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011

Tohoku, Japan, Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011
Author: Gary Chock
Publisher: ASCE Publications
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2013
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9780784412497

Sponsored by the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE. On March 11, 2011, at 2:46 p.m. local time, the Great East Japan Earthquake with moment magnitude 9.0 generated a tsunami of unprecedented height and spatial extent along the northeast coast of the main island of Honshu. The Japanese government estimated that more than 250,000 buildings either collapsed or partially collapsed predominantly from the tsunami. The tsunami spread destruction inland for several kilometers, inundating an area of 525 square kilometers, or 207 square miles. About a month after the tsunami, ASCE?s Structural Engineering Institute sent a Tsunami Reconnaissance Team to Tohoku, Japan, to investigate and document the performance of buildings and other structures affected by the tsunami. For more than two weeks, the team examined nearly every town and city that suffered significant tsunami damage, focusing on buildings, bridges, and coastal protective structures within the inundation zone along the northeast coast region of Honshu. This report presents the sequence of tsunami warning and evacuation, tsunami flow velocities, and debris loading. The authors describe the performance, types of failure, and scour effects for a variety of structures: buildings, including low-rise and residential structuresrailway and roadway bridgesseawalls and tsunami barriers breakwaterspiers, quays, and wharvesstorage tanks, towers, and cranes. Additional chapters analyze failure modes utilizing detailed field data collection and describe economic impacts and initial recovery efforts. Each chapter is plentifully illustrated with photographs and contains a summary of findings. For structural engineers, the observations and analysis in this report provide critical information for designing buildings, bridges, and other structures that can withstand the effects of tsunami inundation.

The Aftermath of the 2011 East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

The Aftermath of the 2011 East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami
Author: Shōichirō Takezawa
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Disaster relief
ISBN: 9781498542517

Based on witness testimony and eighteen months of fieldwork, this work of disaster ethnography examines the effects of East Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami on the fishing town of Otsuchi. It analyzes how local social systems developed to cope with the destruction and redevelopment and how residents behaved and narrated their own experiences.

Ghosts of the Tsunami

Ghosts of the Tsunami
Author: Richard Lloyd Parry
Publisher: MCD
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2017-10-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0374710937

Named one of the best books of 2017 by The Guardian, NPR, GQ, The Economist, Bookforum, and Lit Hub The definitive account of what happened, why, and above all how it felt, when catastrophe hit Japan—by the Japan correspondent of The Times (London) and author of People Who Eat Darkness On March 11, 2011, a powerful earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of northeast Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than eighteen thousand people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned. It was Japan’s greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways. Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo and spent six years reporting from the disaster zone. There he encountered stories of ghosts and hauntings, and met a priest who exorcised the spirits of the dead. And he found himself drawn back again and again to a village that had suffered the greatest loss of all, a community tormented by unbearable mysteries of its own. What really happened to the local children as they waited in the schoolyard in the moments before the tsunami? Why did their teachers not evacuate them to safety? And why was the unbearable truth being so stubbornly covered up? Ghosts of the Tsunami is a soon-to-be classic intimate account of an epic tragedy, told through the accounts of those who lived through it. It tells the story of how a nation faced a catastrophe, and the struggle to find consolation in the ruins.

Japan after 3/11

Japan after 3/11
Author: Pradyumna P. Karan
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2016-09-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0813167329

On March 11, 2011, an underwater earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tohoku, Japan, triggered one of the most devastating tsunamis of a generation. The aftermath was overwhelming: communities were reduced to rubble, thousands of people were missing or dead, and relief organizations struggled to reach affected areas to provide aid for survivors and victims of radiation from compromised nuclear reactors. In Japan after 3/11, editors Pradyumna P. Karan and Unryu Suganuma assemble geographers, economists, humanists, and scientists to consider the complex economic, physical, and social impacts of this heartbreaking disaster. Historical geographers place the events of March 2011 in context, while other contributors assess the damage and recommend strategies for the long process of reclamation and rebuilding. The book also includes interviews with victims that explore the social implications of radioactive contamination and invite comparisons to the discrimination faced by survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Balancing the natural and social sciences, this timely volume offers not only a model of interdisciplinary research for scholars but also an invaluable guide to the planning and implementation of reconstruction.

Ecological Impacts of Tsunamis on Coastal Ecosystems

Ecological Impacts of Tsunamis on Coastal Ecosystems
Author: Jotaro Urabe
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2016-10-28
Genre: Science
ISBN: 4431564489

This book focuses on the ecological impacts of the Great East Japan Earthquake and resulting tsunamis, a rare and extremely large disturbance event, on various coastal ecosystems in Japan’s Tohoku area, including sub-tidal and tidal animal communities, sand dune plant communities and coastal forests. The studies presented here describe not only how species and populations in these ecosystems were disturbed by the earthquake and tsunamis, but also how the communities have responded to the event and what types of anthropogenic activities will hamper their recovery processes. In the ecological sciences, it is often argued that large disturbances are critical to shaping community structures and biodiversity in local and regional habitats. However, our understanding of these roles remains limited, simply because there have been few opportunities to examine and address the ecological impacts of large disturbance events. The scale of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake makes it one of the largest hazards in the past 1000 years. Thus, this book provides a unique opportunity to advance our understanding of the ecological impacts of large and rare disturbances and the implications of these events in the conservation and management of coastal ecosystems. Following an outline of the Great East Japan Earthquake, the book’s content is divided into two major parts. Part I reports on studies examining the ecological impacts of the tsunamis on sub-tidal and tidal animal communities, while Part II focuses on terrestrial plant communities in Japan’s coastal Tohoku area. This book will benefit all scientists interested in the ecological impacts of large disturbances on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in general, and especially those who are interested in the ecological management of coastal ecosystems and Ecosystem based Disaster Risk Reduction (EcoDRR).

The Fukushima and Tohoku Disaster

The Fukushima and Tohoku Disaster
Author: School of Societal Safety Sciences
Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2017-10-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0128129654

The Fukushima and Tohoku Disaster: A Review of the Five-Year Reconstruction Efforts covers the outcome of the response, five years later, to the disasters associated with the Great East Japan earthquake on March 11, 2011. The 3.11 disaster, as it is referred to in Japan, was a complex accident, the likes of which humans had never faced before. This book evaluates the actions taken during and after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident, for which the Japanese government and people were not prepared. The book also provides recommendations for preparing and responding to disasters for those working and living in disaster-prone areas, making it a vital resource for disaster managers and government agencies. Includes guidelines for governments, communities and businesses in areas where similar complex disasters are likely to occur Provides information, propositions, suggestions and advice from the people that were involved in making suggestions to the Japanese government Features case studies (both pre- and post-disaster) of three simultaneous disasters: the Great East Japan earthquake, the resulting tsunami, and the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster

3.11

3.11
Author: Richard J. Samuels
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2013-04-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0801468027

On March 11, 2011, Japan was struck by the shockwaves of a 9.0 magnitude undersea earthquake originating less than 50 miles off its eastern coastline. The most powerful earthquake to have hit Japan in recorded history, it produced a devastating tsunami with waves reaching heights of over 130 feet that in turn caused an unprecedented multireactor meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. This triple catastrophe claimed almost 20,000 lives, destroyed whole towns, and will ultimately cost hundreds of billions of dollars for reconstruction.In 3.11, Richard Samuels offers the first broad scholarly assessment of the disaster's impact on Japan's government and society. The events of March 2011 occurred after two decades of social and economic malaise—as well as considerable political and administrative dysfunction at both the national and local levels—and resulted in national soul-searching. Political reformers saw in the tragedy cause for hope: an opportunity for Japan to remake itself. Samuels explores Japan's post-earthquake actions in three key sectors: national security, energy policy, and local governance. For some reformers, 3.11 was a warning for Japan to overhaul its priorities and political processes. For others, it was a once-in-a-millennium event; they cautioned that while national policy could be improved, dramatic changes would be counterproductive. Still others declared that the catastrophe demonstrated the need to return to an idealized past and rebuild what has been lost to modernity and globalization.Samuels chronicles the battles among these perspectives and analyzes various attempts to mobilize popular support by political entrepreneurs who repeatedly invoked three powerfully affective themes: leadership, community, and vulnerability. Assessing reformers’ successes and failures as they used the catastrophe to push their particular agendas—and by examining the earthquake and its aftermath alongside prior disasters in Japan, China, and the United States—Samuels outlines Japan’s rhetoric of crisis and shows how it has come to define post-3.11 politics and public policy.

Aftermath

Aftermath
Author: Yutaka Tsujinaka
Publisher: Apollo Books
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2018
Genre: Disaster relief
ISBN: 9781925608960

"Aftermath: Fukushima and the 3.11 Earthquake" is a comprehensive analysis of recovery and reconstruction following the triple disaster in Japan on March 11, 2011. This collection addresses the question of why, despite the relative success of network governance in brokering a response to the disaster and to reconstruction, politics failed either to prepare for the disaster or to respond adequately to it. In examining Japan's political system leading up to 3/11, Aftermath looks at the system of network governance that operated between various organizations and levels of government. The book scrutinizes the political influence network that united politicians and the bureaucracy with the major corporations and created a system to promote nuclear power. Through political, policy, economic and social analysis, Aftermath aims to contribute to the development of mechanisms and structures to minimize the impact of disasters. (Series: Japanese Society Series) [Subject: Politics, Governance, Japanese Studies, Nuclear Studies]