Original subtitles

In this edition of Deadly Disasters,

we look at two of the most shocking

natural disasters of modern times.

When a powerful earthquake off the coast of Japan

unleashed a huge tsunami that surged six miles inland,

it destroyed everything in its path,

killing more than 15,000 people.

It also flooded the Fukushima Nuclear Plant,

causing a nuclear meltdown.

Perhaps most shockingly,

it actually shifted the earth’s axis by several centimeters,

making this a natural disaster on a global scale.

The second tsunami we investigate,

the South Asian tsunami,

occurred the day after Christmas.

Also known as "The Boxing Day Tsunami,"

it is one of Mother Nature’s most distressing disasters.

It wreaked death and destruction

on an unprecedented and wide-reaching scale.

The cause of the disaster

was an undersea mega-thrust earthquake

off the coast of Sumatra.

The cataclysmic tsunami that ensued

killed an estimated 280,000 people

in 14 countries

as it deluged coastal communities

under waves 30 meters high.

Tsunamis are unleashed

when a major disturbance under the water

creates a series of enormous waves.

This disturbance can be caused

by a landslide, volcanic eruption,

and possibly even a meteorite.

Scientists in the U.S.

have presented geochemical fingerprint evidence

to suggest that a gigantic tsunami

may have been caused by an asteroid

striking the Earth many thousands of years ago.

The proof may lie in a deep ocean crater

between Madagascar and Australia.

They point to curious features

such as the gigantic Fenambosy Chevron,

near the tip of Madagascar,

which is over 180 meters high

and nearly five kilometers from the ocean.

This giant tsunami may have surged around the globe,

possibly more than once,

and inundated every land mass,

apart from the highest mountains.

Such a disaster would have altered the coastline

of every continent and killed almost all life on land.

But 80 percent of tsunamis are caused by an earthquake.

A tsunami happens when a large earthquake,

typically of magnitude greater than 7,

is created by a fault that ruptures under the sea.

And this fault, when it moves,

it displaces the seabed, and all of the water above it,

generating a large wave.

A tsunami is a truly terrifying force of nature.

It can move at hundreds of kilometers per hour

and then smash into land

with waves as high as 30 meters,

sometimes more.

But how exactly do tsunami waves travel?

From the place where the underwater disturbance occurs,

waves move outwards,

like the ripples when a stone lands in a pool.

And unlike waves caused by wind,

which only affects the water near the surface,

the tsunami involves a rapid movement of water

all the way down to the ocean floor.

Out in the open sea,

it may only be the tip of the huge wave that is visible.

As it heads for land,

the tsunami wave might only be 30 centimeters high

and pass shipping unobserved.

It can travel as fast as a jet airliner,

over vast distances, and without losing its energy.

But when it approaches the coast,

the tsunami undergoes a dramatic transformation.

As it gets close to land,

the tsunami is slowed down in the shallower coastal water.

This drastically reduces its speed

from up to 900 kilometers per hour to around 30.

As the faster moving water behind

catches up with the slow water at the front,

it causes a bunching effect,

which leads to a vast increase in the height of the wave,

from just 30 centimeters, to as high as 30 meters.

The tsunami can strike the coast

with a colossal force of energy,

often in a series of waves lasting as long as an hour

and reaching as far as 16 kilometers inland.

Waves can come ashore for just a few minutes...

or over two hours apart.

The first tsunami wave is usually not the largest.

It is the following waves that can be the really big ones.

As the tsunami rushes over dry land,

it picks up an enormous amount of debris.

All this gives the tsunami added destructive power.

People are not only killed through drowning,

many die as a result of being hit by heavy objects

in the raging torrent.

A tsunami can subject a building to colossal forces.

Waves can generate

up to 3000 kg of pressure per square meter--

enough to blow out modern reinforced concrete walls.

That amount of pressure would even knock down a building

designed to withstand an earthquake.

The Japanese word "tsunami"

translates into English as "harbor wave."

Japan has long endured the horror of tsunamis...

and 80 percent of these devastating waves

occur in the Pacific Ocean.

The word entered the popular consciousness

after the horrific events in South Asia,

which became known as, "The Boxing Day Tsunami."

Sunday, the 26th of December 2004, dawned clear and bright.

All over the Indian Ocean,

people went about their morning routines.

Western tourists on their Christmas holidays

flocked to the beaches of Thailand,

Sri Lanka, and Indonesia,

enjoying the warm tropical sun

and blue, crystal-clear sea.

They had no way of knowing that many miles away,

beneath the Indian Ocean,

a fault line in the Earth’s crust was about to give way

and unleash 200 years of stored energy.

The resulting megathrust earthquake

would unleash a tsunami

that created one of the deadliest natural disasters

in modern history.

It killed over 200,000 people

and devastated the lives of millions.

The epicenter of the earthquake was located

about 250 km southeast

of the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh.

The surface of the world is not one continuous solid sheet.

It is made up of various enormous tectonic plates

which slowly move and shift against each other.

The Asian earthquake

occurred at the eastern edge of the Indian Ocean,

where over millions of years,

the Indian tectonic plate

has been forced under the Burma plate.

Like a tightening vise,

tension had been building up within the subduction zone

for perhaps 200 years,

along a fault line of over 1000 kilometers.

When the stresses built up

along that fault line suddenly gave way,

it released a colossal amount of energy--

equivalent to the explosion

of 23,000 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs.

The India Plate literally shot under the Burma Plate

along the thousand-kilometer fault line,

creating a magnitude 9 megathrust earthquake.

It was the third most powerful earthquake ever recorded.

Astonishingly, it caused the entire planet to vibrate

as much as one centimeter.

Shaking lasted between eight and 10 minutes,

making it the longest earthquake in history.

At the earthquake’s epicenter,

the floor of the ocean was forced upwards

by a monumental 10 meters,

setting off the tsunami

that would destroy the lives of millions of people.

The powerful earthquake

occurred at around 8 a.m. local time.

Fifteen minutes later,

the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii

issued its first warning.

Geologists in the United States

initially rated the quake as a dangerous magnitude 8.1.

But tragically, the region of Indonesia

had no tsunami warning system in place

for the hundreds of thousands of people

living in the coastal areas.

The warning relies on countries very far away

like Hawaii, like Japan,

picking up on those earthquake signals

that can then trigger the tsunami alarm.

But it takes time to deliver that alarm to local people

who might be impacted by the tsunami.

They’re very useful for giving advanced warning

because they’re offshore.

However, they can only give information,

really, about the location of the earthquake

and the size of the earthquake.

It’s not possible

to actually give much information

about the tsunami that might arise.

And despite a delay of up to several hours,

from the time of the earthquake

to the impact of the deadly tsunami,

nearly all of the victims were caught unawares.

The coastal towns and villages on the tip of Sumatra,

just 250 miles from the epicenter,

felt the impact of the earthquake.

Perhaps if they had known about tsunamis,

they would have realized they only had a few minutes

to prepare for its deadly onslaught.

My first ever tsunami

was the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004.

And when I got there, I saw the level of devastation

that was happening, and the lack of understanding

of the basic physics of tsunamis.

The lack of understanding of how these waves propagate,

how they propagate onshore,

how they interact with buildings,

and how they damage structures.

And that got me very interested

in following this area for my research.

Tsunamis are quite uncommon in the Indian Ocean.

The first thing that people who had fled

from collapsing buildings noticed

was that the sea suddenly drew back from the shore.

This was a second warning of the horrors to come

because the undersea event

that disturbs the waters in the ocean

doesn’t only push water up into waves,

it can also pull it down into troughs.

When the trough reaches the shore,

it will first suck the sea back from the coastline,

sometimes for several hundred meters.

Along the coast of Sumatra, the sea withdrew,

and some curious people went down to the beach

to explore the newly exposed shore.

But just as quickly as the ocean had pulled out,

it came rushing back in,

this time in a series of gigantic waves.

The highest was 30 meters tall

when it smashed into towns and villages on the coast.

The water rushed inland,

obliterating everything in its path.

One of the few buildings in Banda Aceh to remain unscathed

was The Baiturrahman Grand Mosque.

Hundreds of survivors took refuge there.

Others were not so fortunate.

As the tsunami cut its terrible swathe across Indonesia,

an estimated 168,000 people were swept to their deaths.

"My house has been... It destroyed everything."

Destroyed? Yes.

Some coastal villages

lost 70 percent of their population.

That means that in certain parts of Indonesia,

only three out of every 10 people survived.

The hotels and beaches

on the west coast of Thailand and Phuket

were full of tourists enjoying some winter sun.

By the time they heard the roar of the tsunami,

and the screams of people telling them to run,

it would have been too late.

The first waves that hit were up to three meters tall,

followed by waves that were even higher.

They had such power

that large boats tied up at piers

were heaved more than 50 meters inland.

It destroyed everything in its path.

Tsunami waves swamped the coast,

and it was two and a half hours

before the sea level returned to normal.

By that time, more than 5000 people had lost their lives,

including over 2000 tourists from all over the world.

Many drowned in their hotel rooms,

while others were out enjoying the sea

when the wave first struck.

Having decimated Thailand,

the tsunami powered its way across the Indian Ocean,

hitting the Maldives,

where waves overran the low-lying islands

and killed 108 people.

Two hours after the initial earthquake,

the Andaman and Nicobar Islands

were rocked by a 7.3 magnitude aftershock.

At about the same time, the tsunami reached Sri Lanka.

Despite the vast distance from the original earthquake,

the waves that destroyed fishing villages

and coastal towns were still four meters high.

Survivors who lived 100 meters inland

heard people screaming that the sea was coming.

They thought it was a joke

until they saw a mass of black water

churning towards their homes.

So when we looked out over our balcony,

the height of the water... We got up high--

It was just-- It was incredible to think...

Because it wasn’t loads of big waves,

it was the same waves, but just... here.

As many as 31,000 people lost their lives

on the east of Sri Lanka.

The Tsunami raced on

to the southeast coast of India,

where nearly 10,000 people were killed around Chennai.

In Sri Lanka and India,

most of the victims were women and children.

Many men survived because they were out fishing

and hardly noticed the tsunami waves,

which seemed insignificant out in the open sea.

Meanwhile, their wives were waiting on beaches

for them to return with their catches,

or at home with their children, when the tsunami struck.

When the fishermen returned to their towns and villages,

they were horrified to find them utterly destroyed.

Even then, the tsunami was not finished.

This is an event that only happens every 500 to 1000 years,

so people don’t have a living history of tsunamis in the area.

And they were not prepared for such a large event.

Not only that, but locally, in Banda Aceh,

they had a natural warning, which is the ground shaking,

but further away, like in the Maldives or in Sri Lanka,

they wouldn’t have felt the ground shaking.

So the arrival of the tsunami was very much a surprise.

Over seven hours after the earthquake,

the waves had traveled some 7000 kilometers

across the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean

and now reached the east coast of Africa.

Globally, five million people

were directly affected by the disaster.

One-point-seven million were made homeless,

half a million injured,

and more than 230,000 were killed.

One-point-five million children

were wounded, displaced or orphaned.

As well as the human cost,

many irreplaceable World Heritage Sites

were destroyed or damaged,

including the Old Town of Galle in Sri Lanka,

the Tropical Rainforest of Sumatra in Indonesia,

and the Sun Temples of Konark in India.

Many fishermen survived but lost everything to the tsunami.

They were left with nothing with which to earn a living

or feed their families.

As time wore on,

the lack of food, clean water and medical treatment

only increased the list of civilian casualties.

There were concerns about post-tsunami health risks,

most notably around cholera and malaria.

Now, fresh water, bottled water,

got on the location fairly quickly.

And so cholera didn’t become an epidemic.

And actually, the mosquitoes that would have caused malaria,

their breeding grounds were affected by the saltwater

from the tsunami inundation,

so in fact, malaria wasn’t an issue.

Instead, many survivors were afflicted

with a new type of pneumonia

which hadn’t been observed before.

This became known as, "Tsunami Lung."

Essentially, people who’d been caught up in the tsunami

had inhaled seawater with entrained mud and bacteria.

This had led to a pneumonia-like condition,

which would normally have been treated

in the early stages by antibiotics.

But because of the damage to the health infrastructure,

that wasn’t possible.

And those diseases escalated

into more serious effects

such as paralysis and abscesses.

Relief workers also faced the difficult task

of trying to get supplies into remote areas

where roads had been destroyed.

To make matters worse,

the two places most affected by the disaster,

Sri Lanka and the Aceh area of Indonesia,

were both in the middle of bitter civil conflicts,

which meant that aid work was fraught with complications.

Nevertheless, the foreign aid response

to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami

raised 6.25 billion U.S. dollars,

more than any other natural disaster to date.

The pledges of aid from around the world,

particularly from the public,

made this the most generous

and quickly funded humanitarian response in history.

The quickest is the money that we can remit immediately.

Next is the surgical equipment and medicines,

which we can airlift.

Later on, we want to have clothing

and food stuffs that we can send by ship,

which we have already arranged.

In the UK, the Disasters Emergency Committee

raised £10 million in just one day.

The money went through a central UN relief fund,

the majority to provide food, shelter, and health provisions

to the 14 countries most severely affected

by the tsunami.

Indonesia was its greatest beneficiary,

receiving a billion dollars’ worth of aid.

Sri Lanka received 650 million,

while India was granted 150 million.

The World Food Programme delivered 110,000 tons of food

to the disaster zone within five months of the emergency--

enough food for over two million people.

More than U.S. $187 million of the appeal funding

was spent on emergency supplies

and to build long-term shelter for survivors.

After a large disaster,

there is often a scare

that there might be some rather large epidemics

causing more casualties and deaths.

And in the case of the Indian Ocean Tsunami,

this wasn’t the case, it didn’t materialize.

And this was largely thanks to people like

the World Health Organization, international NGOs,

local governments and health authorities,

really working together to monitor epidemics,

monitor diseases, as they started

and so, to stop the spread of epidemics.

Following the disaster,

13,700 homes were built in Aceh alone.

The sheer scale of the disaster,

and the emergency operation it produced,

enabled aid agencies to learn valuable lessons

in how to conduct disaster relief.

Experts realized

that rather than providing survivors with new homes,

it was often cheaper and quicker

to give them training and materials

so that they could build them on their own.

But why did this tsunami cause so much death and destruction?

For one thing, the waves struck coastal areas

that were densely populated.

Many people in these areas

had also never experienced a tsunami before

and were largely unaware of what to look out for,

or how to respond.

This is why advanced warnings can sometimes be useless.

If you are unable to get the proper information

out to the people in immediate danger,

how are you supposed to protect them?

Luckily, the majority of the 27 countries

with coastlines on the Indian Ocean

have since created programs for issuing tsunami alerts

to their citizens.

Although it is not possible to protect entire coastlines

from the dangers of tsunamis,

it is possible to educate people in tsunami-prone areas

about what to look out for

and how to act if a tsunami is about to strike.

The success of tsunami education was illustrated

by the extraordinary case of Tilly Smith.

By an amazing coincidence,

she had studied tsunamis in a geography lesson

just two weeks before she and her family set out

on a beach holiday to Thailand.

When she saw the sea frothing with bubbles and receding,

she recognized these danger signs.

Together with her parents,

she warned the other holiday makers on the beach

who evacuated to safety.

It was one of the few beaches in the area

with no reported casualties.

Many were not so fortunate.

Ten years after these terrible events,

the dead were paid ceremonial tributes by the living.

In Ban Nam Khem,

a fishing village in southern Thailand

destroyed by the tsunami,

hundreds of lanterns were lit

to symbolize the spirits of its victims.

Much of the money that was raised

to help survivors of the South Asian Tsunami came from Japan.

In fact, Japan was the most generous donor

to the tsunami relief effort,

committing over U.S. $500 million,

as well as sending over more than 100 emergency workers.

In a tragic irony,

Japan required its own relief aid just seven years later.

The country that had donated so much

now needed help from others.

On the 11th of March 2011,

a magnitude 9 earthquake shook northeastern Japan,

unleashing a savage tsunami.

The effects of the huge earthquake

reverberated around the world,

from the fjords of Norway,

where the tsunami created one-and-a-half-meter waves,

to Antarctica in the south, where satellite photos

revealed the creation of huge icebergs

caused by tsunami waves smashing into the ice shelf.

Even years later, debris from the tsunami

has continued to wash up on North American beaches.

Despite experiencing more tsunamis

than any other place in the world,

Japan was still devastated

because of the failure to plan for the aftermath

of such a powerful earthquake.

The March 11th earthquake

struck on a Friday at 2:46 in the afternoon, local time.

The epicenter was shallow,

just 24 km beneath the surface of the sea floor,

and 72 kilometers from Tohoku on the east coast.

It was the most powerful earthquake

ever recorded in Japan,

and the fourth most powerful in the world

since records were first recorded.

The shaking lasted about six minutes.

It moved Honshu, the main island of Japan,

2.4 meters closer to North America.

It even shifted the Earth’s axis by several centimeters.

The earthquake that generated the Japanese Tsunami

occurred along the Japanese Trench,

in the north part of the Honshu Island.

It was a massive earthquake

that no one would have thought could have happened.

And indeed, the Japanese were not prepared for this.

The Japanese Trench is thought to be divided into six parts,

and it was only ever thought

that two of these parts could rupture,

a magnitude earthquake of up to 8.2.

But in the case of the 2011 event,

essentially all six of these parts

of the fault ruptured in one go,

causing a massive magnitude 9.0 earthquake,

and ensuing tsunami.

Residents of Tokyo

received a minute’s warning

before the city began to shake.

Thanks to the country’s strict earthquake building codes,

many deaths were prevented.

The early warning systems

also caused high-speed trains to stop,

as well as factory assembly lines.

Citizens in Japan

also received text alerts on their mobile phones

warning of both the earthquake and the tsunami.

But the shaking was only a prelude to the disaster

that was to engulf the country

Still shaking, you know... The earthquake happening.

Almost, I feel like, maybe every hour or so.

The earthquake caused the sea floor

to thrust upwards by 10 meters

over an area of 14,000 square kilometers--

the size of the whole state of Connecticut in the U.S.

A vast volume of sea water was disturbed,

and just like the aftermath of the Sumatra earthquake,

it caused a colossal tsunami.

Nine minutes after the earthquake struck,

a regional tsunami alert was issued.

In the closest area to the quake,

residents had little more than 15 minutes of warning

before the first of the ferocious tsunami waves

pounded the coastline.

Shockingly, the earthquake had caused

a 400-kilometer stretch of shoreline to drop

by more than half a meter.

This allowed the tsunami that quickly followed

to travel further and faster inland, as far as 10 km.

Thousands of lives were lost,

and entire towns were wiped off the map,

as waves of up to 38 meters high

struck the north of Japan’s eastern Pacific coastline.

They easily overwhelmed the sea walls

that were not high enough to resist the giant tsunami.

People tried desperately to find some area of safety--

higher ground, or structures tall enough

to raise them above the seething mass of water,

trees, rocks, and cars.

For every 10 frustrations,

you will possibly get one good one.

So we just have to keep plugging away...

Whatever comes up, we’ll just have to deal with it.

I think they knew a tsunami was coming,

but I didn’t think it was going to be this,

you know... big.

It’s getting more difficult to believe that they are okay.

Buildings as high as three stories,

where people had imagined they would be safe,

were easily destroyed.

Structures that caught fire

when ruptured gas mains set them alight were swept away,

with smoke and flames pouring off them.

It was like a scene from hell.

At its peak, the water was 40 meters high.

Half a million people were forced out of their homes.

When the floodwaters retreated back to the sea,

they swept out vast amounts of debris,

as well as thousands of victims

that had been caught in the flood.

Near Oarai,

the tsunami generated a huge offshore whirlpool.

Sendai Airport had already been badly damaged

by the earthquake.

As the warnings of the impending tsunami sounded,

people on the ground

fled onto the roofs of the terminal buildings

and into the control tower.

The floods completely submerged the tarmac,

taxiways and runway,

and even reached parts

of the second level of the passenger terminal.

Thirteen hundred people were stranded

within the terminal for two days.

By then, the Japanese had begun to coordinate

their disaster response.

Fifty thousand Japan Defense Forces personnel,

190 aircraft, and 25 ships were urgently deployed

to help with rescue efforts.

The tsunami waves triggered by the earthquake

traveled right across the Pacific.

They were still powerful enough to reach 3.6 meters high

when they hit the Hawaiian Islands.

Several hours later,

the coasts of California and Oregon in North America

were struck by tsunami waves that were 2.7 meters high.

Even Chile, some 17,000 km away,

was struck by tsunami waves which were two meters high

when they reached the shore.

Eighteen hours after the quake,

waves reached the coast of Antarctica

and caused 125 square kilometers

of the Sulzberger Ice Shelf to crack off its outer edge.

The tsunami was alarming in its global reach.

But even more alarming

were fears of a forthcoming disaster

that were beginning to emerge

from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant,

located on the coast, 65 km south of Sendai.

First commissioned in 1971,

the plant consisted of six boiling water reactors

and 4.7 gigawatts of electrical energy,

making Fukushima one of the largest nuclear power stations

in the world.

By chance, three of the six reactors

were already offline for maintenance work

when the earthquake struck.

As soon as the earthquake was detected,

early warning systems kicked in

and automatically shut down power

to the remaining three reactors.

At this point, the only thing cooling the plant

was the reactor’s emergency diesel generators

and DC batteries.

These were located in the basements

of the reactor turbine buildings.

This obviously made them vulnerable to flooding,

a concern that had been raised at the time of construction.

In order to protect the low-lying generator

from the risks of flooding,

a 5.8-meter sea wall was constructed.

The Fukushima designers assumed

that this would provide adequate protection

for the maximum wave height of any tsunami.

But they were gravely mistaken.

An hour after the automated shutdown,

a 14-meter tsunami wave hit the nuclear facility.

It quickly burst over the 5.8-meter seawall

and flooded the plant,

disabling all but one of the underground generators.

Most of the emergency systems which were supposed to cool

the generator’s nuclear cores failed.

Only one portion remained in operation--

a team and battery system which hadn’t been used,

or even tested, in 40 years.

They seem to have lost their outside power connections.

And worse still, the emergency diesel generators that start up,

snap into action, to keep the reactor cool,

they failed as well.

At 9 p.m., on the day of the tsunami,

the Japanese government declared a nuclear emergency.

Sixty to 70 thousand people

living within three kilometers of the plant

were ordered to evacuate.

The situation in Fukushima is evolving every day,

and we do accept that there are a number of issues

that we have to tackle.

On the 12th of March, the day after the tsunami,

the emergency backup battery for reactor three ran out,

leaving the radioactive fuel rods dangerously exposed.

The evacuation zone was expanded to 20 km.

On the 13th of March,

the situation was declared a level 4

on the internationally recognized scale

of nuclear events,

meaning that this was now a nuclear accident

posing a danger to all life in the local environment.

The lack of power resulted in intermittent blackouts

for parts of Tokyo and eight nearby prefectures.

Up to 45 million people

would be subject to life without electricity

for up to a month.

On the 14th of March,

a major explosion occurred in one of the reactors

raising the threat level to 6 and designating it

as a serious nuclear accident.

Two days later,

Emperor Akihito gave a rare public address.

He urged the nation not to give up hope,

stating that they needed to understand

and help each other.

A televised address by a sitting emperor

is an extraordinarily rare event,

happening only in times of war or extreme crisis.

It confirmed to Japan,

and the rest of the watching world,

just how grave the situation had become.

About twice as many people will require evacuation

under a MOX fuel reactor accident.

About one and a half times more will die in the interim.

And about two to three times more

will actually die in the longer term.

So it has a very significant radiological impact

on the aftermath of an accident.

Over the following days,

there were more explosions and a fire.

Radiation was now leaking from the plant.

The authorities brought in helicopters

to drop water on the exposed fuel rods

and sent fire engines from Tokyo

to spray water on the damaged reactors.

The spent fuel rods are stored in ponds

located close to the reactors.

And one in particular, the pond in reactor 4,

is the cause of very considerable concern.

Basically, what has happened

is that this has been damaged by explosions in that pond

and is leaking very far.

The situation grew worse

as white, billowing smoke became visible

from two of the reactors.

Three days later, technicians monitoring the reactors

suspected a breach in one of the containment vessels.

This meant that radioactive water

could now be leaking from the power plant.

The US Navy went to the aid of the beleaguered nuclear plant,

as a barge with 8.3 million liters of fresh water

arrived at the scene.

The evacuation zone was extended

to a radius of 30 kilometers around the plant,

forcing 100,000 people to leave the area.

An aerial video was taken,

showing the first detailed images

of the extent of the damage to the nuclear plant.

TEPCO, the company who owned Fukushima,

seemed unable to properly resolve the situation

and avoid a probable disaster.

What was happening at Fukushima

was now causing major concern all over the world.

U.S. authorities in the state of Washington

admitted to finding traces of radioactive iodine in milk.

On the 3rd of April,

the bodies of two missing workers were found on the site.

They had died from injuries caused by the tsunami.

Next, the plant was rocked by an aftershock measuring 7.1,

causing workers to evacuate

the plant as quickly as possible.

The incident at Fukushima

was raised again to level 7--

the highest possible classification.

Not since the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl,

in the former Soviet Union,

had the world faced a nuclear disaster on this scale.

In the case of Chernobyl, apart from the devastation

in the immediate neighborhood of the reactor,

there was a huge fire,

which carried the radioactivity very high into the stratosphere

and eventually, around the globe.

After Chernobyl, or maybe worse than Chernobyl,

probably the most serious nuclear accident

that is likely to ever occur,

because we have the possibility

of four nuclear reactors melting down, exploding,

and releasing hundreds of tons of nuclear fuel

into the environment.

There was now the risk

of a major release of radioactive material

with widespread danger to health and the environment.

The site was so dangerous

that two robots were sent into the plant

to assess the situation.

Their findings confirmed that radiation levels

were now the highest yet recorded.

Ten weeks after the crisis first began,

the president of TEPCO was forced into resignation

as Japan’s Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters

reported that three of the reactors

had gone into complete meltdown.

Levels of plutonium

and other radioactive particles

were found outside the 30 km evacuation zone

around the stricken plant.

While efforts continued to remove contaminated water

from beneath the power plant,

it was not until nine months after the tsunami

that authorities announced a timetable

for decommissioning the reactors.

They admitted that it will take 30 to 40 years

to fully resolve this terrifying disaster.

An interim report into the incident

concluded that both the Japanese government

and employees in charge of the nuclear facility

contributed to the severity of the catastrophe.

Two years after the earthquake

and ensuing tsunami,

thousands marched onto the streets

of Japan’s capital Tokyo,

urging the government to turn its back on nuclear power.

The battle to control the radioactive water

which is pooled under the Fukushima plant

remains ongoing.

In June 2014,

work began to install the equipment

needed to create an ice wall.

At a cost of U.S. $324 million in public funds,

1500 tubes filled with sea water

were sunk 30 meters deep in a ring

which stretched 1.5 kilometers around the plant.

The plan was to cool the sea water

to minus 30 degrees Celsius.

That would freeze the soil into a solid wall,

and block groundwater flowing under the plant,

and adding to the vast pool of contaminated water.

By December 2015,

all the necessary equipment was in place.

And three months later,

it began to create the wall of frozen soil.

On top of the building costs,

maintaining the ice wall

consumes roughly 44 million kilowatt hours

of electricity every year.

That’s enough energy

to power around 15,000 typical Japanese homes.

Still in operation,

it has not proved to be as successful as hoped.

In March 2018, a government-commissioned panel

said it was only partially effective.

As water continues to seep under the plant,

it becomes radioactive,

resulting in vast amounts of toxic water.

This first needs to be pumped out,

then decontaminated,

and finally stored in vast tanks at Fukushima.

To date, there are now 1000 tanks

holding a staggering 1 million tons of wastewater.

If things continue as they are,

they will simply run out of space by early 2021.

One of the most heartrending stories

to emerge from the disaster was what happened

to the children of Okawa Elementary School,

located in Ishinomaki,

322 kilometers north of Tokyo in the Miyagi Prefecture.

The tragedy that unfolded

revealed emergency planning problems

that led to terrible losses of life.

Though the teachers knew exactly what to do

in the case of an earthquake,

they had no clear evacuation plan

in the case of a tsunami.

They even ignored repeated warnings

from some concerned pupils

suggesting they should make for higher ground.

At 3:30 p.m., following an earthquake,

it became clear that something terrible was about to happen.

There was no time to escape.

The school, the teachers, the parents and their children

were all engulfed by a 20-meter wall of water

and hurling debris.

Of the 78 children who were at school,

all but four perished instantly.

Only one of the eleven teachers survived.

The scale of the human tragedy at Okawa Elementary School

is almost impossible to comprehend.

An investigation into what had happened

said that not only the school,

but also the board of education,

as well as the city government,

had made no plans

for such an unprecedented natural disaster.

A map which showed those areas vulnerable to tsunamis

did not include the school.

And the school’s disaster manual

didn’t consider the dangers of a tsunami,

meaning that prior to the tsunami,

no evacuation drills were ever conducted.

Parents of 23 of the children who had lost their lives

sued the city authorities for negligence.

On the 26th of October 2016,

the courts announced their verdict.

The Okawa parents won their case

and were awarded 1.4 billion yen.

The earthquake and resulting tsunami

destroyed roughly 28,000 homes in Ishinomaki.

The city lost more than 3000 of its residents,

with almost as many reported missing.

In 2015, they were visited by Prince William,

the Duke of Cambridge,

who insisted that he not travel to Japan

without meeting face-to-face with victims of the tsunami.

He was told by the former head of the city’s daily newspaper

that for most of Ishinomaki’s citizens,

the tsunami loomed larger than the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Cities all over the Miyagi Prefecture

were caught in the onslaught.

In the city of Kesennuma,

a fleet of massive tuna ships was swept far inland

and dumped along the highway.

One of them remained there for several years.

For some, it was seen as an accidental monument,

a standing testament to their miraculous survival.

For others, it was a stark reminder

of their terrible loss.

In an assessment

of the country’s response to the disaster,

some disturbing facts emerged.

Japan’s Meteorological Agency

was found to have issued a tsunami warning,

which severely underestimated the actual size of the wave.

This could be one of the reasons why,

despite feeling the earthquake,

only 58 percent of people

in areas such as Fukushima and Miyagi

made for the safety of higher ground.

Many people didn’t take the risk

to their personal safety seriously enough.

They had lived through tsunamis before

and assumed that this one would be no different.

When you land in these areas

and you see just the extent of devastation,

all the housing washed away, there’s nothing there,

and people’s possessions are littered everywhere,

it really, it really brings to the fore

how devastating something like this is...

not only to the built environment,

but to actual people.

There is a hope, I think, amongst engineers,

that we can learn from mistakes of the past

and design, build better,

maybe avoid putting people in harm’s way.

The effects of the tsunami will be with us for years to come,

not only in the ongoing efforts

to contain the nuclear disaster at Fukushima,

but with the debris

that continues to float around our oceans.

It shows us all too clearly

that it doesn’t matter where on the planet you live,

we all suffer the consequences

of Mother Nature’s deadly disasters.