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Earthquakes

Japan tsunami touches New Zealand
By Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent, BBC News

Tsunami waves triggered by Japan's Magnitude 9.0 quake touched all of New Zealand's coasts, scientists report.
A 86cm wave was recorded in the port of Lyttelton, the NZ township closest to the epicentre of the country's own catastrophic 6.3 tremor in February.

And a gauge at Scott Base, in Antarctica, even registered a 10cm wave, says the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA).

NZ is some 8,000km from Japan. The first waves arrived in about 12 hours.
The biggest were seen in Whitianga, in North Island, and Kaingaroa, on the Chatham Islands east of the NZ mainland, where heights (from crest to the trough) of 1.6m were measured.
Mount Maunganui (on the northern coast of North Island), and Charleston (on the west coast of South Island), and Timaru (on the east coast of South Island) also recorded wave heights over a metre.

At the majority of the 19 sea-level gauges monitored, the biggest waves did not arrive for many hours after the instruments started registering changes from normal tide readings.
At Timaru, the largest wave height did not occur until more than 40 hours after the first wave hit, the institute said.
This delay was probably due to waves bouncing off continental shelves all around the Pacific including South America and local coastal headlands and offshore ridges, it explained.

"It's important to understand that tsunami waves can continue for some time after the first few waves hit," added NIWA Principal Scientist, Dr Rob Bell.
"It's not safe to assume that once you have seen one wave, the risk subsides and all returns quickly to normal.
"We are still recording obvious wave heights at our sea-level gauges now, days after the earthquake, which are affecting currents in harbours and estuaries.
"The size and timing of the waves recorded by the sea-level gauges are very similar to those estimated in the response phase of this event.

"The accuracy of this information is vital for civil defence and emergency management when they are making decisions about tsunami warnings, to ensure the hazardous impacts of a tsunami event in New Zealand are minimised."

...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12759189
 
The human tragedy:

Japan earthquake: the children who have lost their parents
Many of the children taking refuge at the Kama Elementary School, on the eastern fringes of the town of Ishinomaki, are playing in the corridors or helping their parents scrub mud-coated boots in the filthy water of the school pool.
By Julian Ryall, Ishinomaki 10:28AM GMT 16 Mar 2011

But the atmosphere in the room on the third floor, where 30 children whose parents simply disappeared when the tsunami swept through the town, is very different.

Viewed through the window, the children sit more still and are apparently engrossed in books or card games. They are watched over by other relatives or teachers and we are not allowed to enter or speak with them. Understandably, they do not want their charges to have more reminders of the disaster that has befallen them.

Masami Hoshi was the sports teacher at the school but, since the Japanese tsunami, has been trying to get enough food for the 657 people living in the four-storey school building and locate missing students and their parents.
He has achieved that with a handful, but these 30 are still alone.
"The tsunami came just when the parents of the middle classes were arriving to collect their children, so we managed to get them inside and to safety," Hoshi told The Daily Telegraph.

"The younger ones had left with their parents a little earlier," he said. "The ones who went to homes behind the school probably survived. Those who went that way" – he points across a playground coated with grey mud towards a main road littered with cars, electricity pylons and shattered glass – "probably didn't make it." :(

Even though the school is a mile away from the sea wall that was meant to protect Ishinomaki, the wall of water raced across the playground and into the ground floor of the building. A clear line on the wall shows just how high it reached. It is chest-high on an adult and above the heads of most of the pupils here.

"Some of the parents were sucked back out across the playground when the waters receded so we grabbed fire hoses and threw them out and dragged them all back in," said Hoshi.

The school has no electricity, heating or running water. Hoshi is waiting for food to be delivered and has no idea how long that might take.

Children's pictures are still on the walls and show images of mountains, animals and a boat on the ocean. A middle-aged woman keeps up a constant – but hear-hopeless – effort to sweep the corridors of congealed mud and debris. Futons and clothing is dried over the railings of the upper storeys of the school.

Nearly 163,000 people are listed as residents of Ishinomaki and so far 425 have been confirmed as dead with another 1,693 missing.
It may take many weeks to discover the fate of these children's parents and brothers and sisters, if they are ever found at all.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... rents.html
 
163 thousand with about 2 thousand dead or missing.

Thats actualy a small number.

its just bad the disaster happened at the wrong time.

My Floridan friend said that the Japanese are very well behavied people, no reports of rioting or looting yet.
 
According to the BBC News all day the UK government is telling British citizens to get the hell out of Tokyo in not so many words.
 
Japan to repair damaged undersea cables
By Katia Moskvitch, Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Aftershocks are still preventing Japan's telecommunication companies from repairing undersea cables, damaged in the recent earthquake and tsunami.
To restore services, many providers have rerouted traffic to backup cables.

KDDI, Japan's second-largest telecoms operator, said it will send out a ship equipped with remotely-controlled robots as soon as the ground is still.
The robots can dive to a depth of 2,500m to repair the damaged cables - a task that may take months to complete.

In the mean-time, there is enough redundancy in the telecommunications infrastructure linking Japan to the rest of the world to keep the country connected.

KDDI spokesman Shin-ichiro Itoyama, speaking by phone from the company's headquarters in Tokyo, said that the deep water robots had previously only been used to lay cables on the seabed and not for any major repairs as there had never been much damage from previous earthquakes.

More than 5,400 people perished in Friday's 9.0-magnitude quake - the most powerful ever to hit Japan - and the ensuing tsunami.
Some 9,500 people are still missing.

At one point, during the interview, Mr Itoyama broke-off: "Oh wait a second, the ground is shaking again," he said.
Powerful aftershocks continue to rattle the devastated country, reaching magnitudes of 6.0 and higher.

Mr Itoyama said he was one of the few KDDI employees left working in the office. The majority were told to stay at home as long as the aftershocks last.
He explained that it was very difficult to assess the damage to the cables in the Pacific as many were buried in the seabed in those areas most affected by the disaster, including Ibaraki and Miyagi Prefectures.

Although there were serious service disruptions right after the earthquake and tsunami, with communications between Japan and US badly affected, that had since been restored, he added.
"On March 15, we solved all the problems by means of using other cables and back-up systems and we have recovered all the services between Japan and US," he said.
Mr Itoyama added that the traffic had been partially re-routed using the Russia-Japan cable network operated by KDDI and Russia's Rostelecom.

KDDI is not the only telecommunications company in Japan badly affected by the disaster.
The country's biggest operator, NTT, was hit hard as well.
"About half a million of telephone circuits are down," Kazuhiro Gomi, the head of the US branch of NTT, told the BBC.
"Nowadays, the Internet is as important as telephone lines - and about 150,000 internet circuits are down."
Mr Gomi added that mobile phone services have also suffered, especially in the north-east coastal area.

Other companies with undersea cables in the waters around Japan include Australian operator Telstra International, Taiwan's largest phone operator Chunghwa Telecom, and global telecommunications service provider Pacnet, headquartered in Singapore and Hong Kong.

While some of them say their services have been restored, others are still struggling.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12777785
 
Japanese earthquake takes heavy toll on ageing population
Shocking stories of deaths emerge as the military is enlisted to help at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant
Robert Booth, and Justin McCurry in Tokyo guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 March 2011 20.56 GMT

The devastating impact of the Japanese earthquake on the country's ageing population was exposed on Thursday as dozens of elderly people were confirmed dead in hospitals and residential homes as heating fuel and medicine ran out.

In one particularly shocking incident, Japan's self-defence force discovered 128 elderly people abandoned by medical staff at a hospital six miles from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Most of them were comatose and 14 died shortly afterwards. Eleven others were reported dead at a retirement home in Kesennuma because of freezing temperatures, six days after 47 of their fellow residents were killed in the tsunami. The surviving residents of the retirement home in Kesennuma were described by its owner, Morimitsu Inawashida, as "alone and under high stress". He said fuel for their kerosene heaters was running out.

Almost a quarter of Japan's population are 65 or over, and hypothermia, dehydration and respiratory diseases are taking hold among the elderly in shelters, many of whom lost their medication when the wave struck, according to Eric Ouannes, general director of Doctors Without Borders' Japan affiliate.

This comes after Japan's elderly people bore the brunt of the initial impact of the quake and tsunami, with many of them unable to flee to higher ground.

Although the people from the hospital near Fukushima were moved by the self-defence forces to a gymnasium in Iwaki, there were reports that conditions were not much better there. An official for the government said it felt "helpless and very sorry for them". "The condition at the gymnasium was horrible," said Cheui Inamura. "No running water, no medicine and very, very little food. We simply did not have means to provide good care."

etc...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... ion-deaths
 
Kondoru said:
Ho, an ironic ad at the top of that page.
Click to expand...
Sorry Konduru, no idea what the ad was that you saw.

The ads on a lot of these web pages are added dynamically, by something like an offshoot of Google, so they'll vary viewer, to viewer. Quite often, using cookie based info., they'll either be triggered by web page content, according to country of origin, or the viewer's own browsing history, or both.
 
Kondoru said:
Ho, an ironic ad at the top of that page.
Click to expand...
True - save the kids, let the old folk rot! :(

'It's all lost; it's all gone' – the devastation of a town defeated by nature
Assessing the tsunami damage, a Japanese-American engineer is taken back to his boyhood
By Andrew Buncombe in Kesennuma
Friday, 18 March 2011

Two days before the massive tsunami roared in over the coastline of north-eastern Japan, Kit Miyamoto was delivering a lecture in Tokyo about the challenge of defending communities against earthquakes.

Yesterday afternoon, the Japanese American structural engineer was ambling slowly along the dock of this devastated port and gazing in no small wonder at a fishing boat – the Miojin Maru - that had been lifted out of the sea and left there. It was a reminder, if it were needed, of precisely what he had been talking about during his lecture. “I have been up and down the coast along here surveying the damage,” said Mr Miyamoto, a white safety hat pushed down firmly on his head. “The damage has been great. I think we have become too arrogant – we rely too much on technology.”

Mr Miyamoto had been dispatched by the Tokyo Institute of Technology to assess the damage along the north-eastern coast and review which measures had been effective against the force of the mighty wave and which had not. As it was there could barely have been a better aide memoire for his theories then this utterly shattered port city where a minimum of 350 people lost their lives and where hundreds are still missing.

“What worked here and elsewhere was the early warning system. I think it saved more than 100,000 lives along the coast because it gave people an extra 20-30 minutes,” he said. “The cement buildings also did well. Very few buildings here were damaged by the quake itself, and most of those destroyed by the tsunami were wooden buildings. Also, the sea wall did not do well.”

The port of Kesennuma is famed in Japan as one of the most important centres for landing tuna and shark fin. The area around the dock is lined with factories and production plants, and the heritage-styled street lamps close to the dock carry the crest of a gently curling fish. But the deep, narrow harbour whose deep water has for decades allowed ships to dock here and has helped bring wealth and prosperity was also a curse; when the wave roared in last week, its force was further compressed by the mouth of the bay, intensifying its destructive power. A number of gas facilities were turned over, igniting a vast fire that swept through part of the town.

Many of the dead in this community of 75,000, said Mr Miyamoto, were those who took too long to get into their cars to try and drive away. As it was, they found themselves caught in traffic jams and when the tsunami arrived there was nowhere for them to go. The vehicles they had hoped would become carriages of escape rapidly turned into tombs. Now, they have been abandoned among the streets, stranded where they were left by the waves.

etc...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 45414.html
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
Kondoru said:
Ho, an ironic ad at the top of that page.
Click to expand...
Sorry Konduru, no idea what the ad was that you saw.
Click to expand...
It's still visible on my pooter:

Japan Emergency Appeal, by Save the Children.
 
Sensationalist coverage
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/wor ... 11835.html
DAVID McNEILL

Sat, Mar 19, 2011

Tokyo has become a ghost town resembling a zombie movie, with no food, fuel or water. Millions are being poisoned by radiation from the stricken Fukushima plant.

So says the Sun newspaper this week, one of many foreign publications accused of scaremongering and distracting from the struggle to help nearly half a million refugees in the northeast.

Headlined: “Get Out of Tokyo Now: Nightmare Warning to Brits as Crisis Worsens.” The Sun ’s story criticised the British embassy in Tokyo for not evacuating its nationals from the capital.

The story was prompted by news this week that France had offered free flights to its citizens to flee the capital.

Britain said yesterday it has chartered flights from Tokyo to Hong Kong in response to the crisis.

Another Sun story carried quotes by ex-pats in the city who described “deserted streets” with food, water and fuel running out. Mother-of-two Keely Fujiyama, who is married to a Japanese national, said the city resembled a ghost town: “It’s like London in the zombie movie 28 Days Later .” The claim was news to most residents of Tokyo, where, despite power cuts and some shortages, millions of people have been going to work, shopping for food and drinking in bars.

One of Japan’s best-known foreign TV personalities felt strongly enough about the coverage this week to post a YouTube video pleading with the overseas media to “stop stirring up hysteria” about what is happening in the country.

“You’re freaking out the foreign community in Japan and it is taking people’s efforts from where they need to be placed, which is up north,” said Daniel Kahl, who has been in Japan for 30 years.

Japan’s foreign ministry (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) has already rebuked the foreign diplomatic community for exaggerating the crisis in Fukushima.

Washington Post commentator Paul Blustein also wrote a piece this week, warning that the flood of sensationalist stories about Tokyo could scare people away from the country and hamper the relief effort.

“My wife, who is Japanese, has been brushing away tears night after night as she watches televised interviews of people from the stricken coastal areas. Their anguish is the proper focus of attention.”
Click to expand...
 
I doubt it takes anything like an earthquake to stop the Japanese...They are used to them.

What distresses me is all those pics of people sat around in the snow without lighting a fire.

Even I get cold when the tempretures drop below zero
 
Some OMG! pics of the aftermath:

The 175,000-tonne ship lifted up and dumped on the harbour-side like a bit of driftwood by Japanese tsunami
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 7:07 PM on 19th March 2011

This is the 175,000-tonne ship that was lifted up by Friday's tsunami and dumped on top of a pier in Japan.

The cargo ship lies on the dock promenade Kamaishi, more than a week after the huge surge of water tossed it about like so much driftwood.
The stern of the Asia Symphony juts out several metres onto a road, as some survivors drive past on their way to see what remains of their belongings. [Er no, that's the bow! :roll: ]

It is one of thousands of apocalyptic scenes that now provide the backdrop to life for victims who managed to escape the wall of water.

etc...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1H8jbkuAG
 
A dog's best friend: The loyal spaniel that stayed by its companion's side until they were rescued from tsunami zone
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 9:39 AM on 21st March 2011

This loyal spaniel saved the life of his injured friend who was barely moving by sticking by his side following the tsunami - and leading a group of rescuers to him.

In heartwarming footage, the brown and white dog leads reporters to the injured mud-splattered animal who is lying flat out among the wreckage.
The dog had seemingly stuck by the side of the wounded animal in Arahama, Sendai, for days following the earthquake and tsunami.

TV crews who were filming in the area initially thought the spaniel was guarding a dead dog, before they excitedly realised the injured animal was alive and being protected.
The dog was later rushed to the vets in Mito, while the loyal dog was taken to a nearby shelter.
The crews thought the white dog was dead but shout excitedly 'Yes! Yes! He is alive' as they spot his head moving.

[pics, video]

etc...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... iving.html
 
Kondoru said:
Another cute animal story fron Japan
Click to expand...
But it's not just about animals. These dogs were pets of people who may not have survived.

There must be many people grieving for lost pets, and pets grieving for lost owners. :(

The 'cute animal story' is just one frame from a big disaster movie.
 
Impressive before and after pics here:

The Japanese road repaired SIX days after it was destroyed by quake
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 2:01 AM on 24th March 2011

The picture of gaping chasms in a Japanese highway demonstrated the power of the March 11 earthquake.
Now the astonishing speed of reconstruction is being used to highlight the nation’s ability to get back on its feet.
Work began on March 17 and six days later the cratered section of the Great Kanto Highway in Naka was as good as new. It was ready to re-open to traffic last night.

etc...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1HWlP25S8

Perhaps we could get some Japs to come over here to fix our potholes! 8)
 
Burma quake: More than 50 dead in tremor near Thailand

More than 50 people have died in a magnitude-6.8 earthquake in Burma which struck near the Lao and Thai borders.
It struck at 1355 GMT on Thursday and was centred about 70 miles (110 km) from the northern Thai city of Chiang Rai, the US Geological Survey said.

It was felt 800km to the south in the Thai capital Bangkok, and in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.
The quake was shallow, at a depth of 6.2 miles (10km). There are fears the casualties could be much higher.

"The death toll of the quake has increased to more than 50 in Tarlay and Mine Lin townships," said one unnamed official quoted by AFP.
"Roads are also closed. According to the information that we have, more than 130 buildings collapsed because of the quake. There might be more casualties and damage."
"Total death toll has now reached nearly 50 and the number of the injured is about 40 while over 100 buildings were destroyed," a Civil Administration official in Tachilek on Burma's border told Reuters by telephone.

The BBC understands that the districts of Baan Thadeua and Baan Laen, within a 40km radius of Tachilek, have been worst hit.
Cracks are visible in roads and rice fields have been wrecked by rising silt and water.
On the Thai side of the border, paddy fields and temples from Chaengsaen to Mae Sai have been damaged.

A Burmese official told AFP news agency that 25 people had been killed in the town of Tarlay alone.
The official said five monasteries and 35 buildings in the town had collapsed and that roads in the area had been damaged, making access for rescue parties difficult.

One woman in Thailand's Chiang Rai province, close to the epicentre, was killed when a wall collapsed.
The BBC's Rachel Harvey in Bangkok said it could be a while before the extent of the damage is known.

Earlier reports suggested there had been two strong earthquakes moments apart in the same area, but the USGS later clarified that there had been just one quake.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12852237
 
rynner2 said:
Impressive before and after pics here:

The Japanese road repaired SIX days after it was destroyed by quake
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 2:01 AM on 24th March 2011

The picture of gaping chasms in a Japanese highway demonstrated the power of the March 11 earthquake.
Now the astonishing speed of reconstruction is being used to highlight the nation’s ability to get back on its feet.
Work began on March 17 and six days later the cratered section of the Great Kanto Highway in Naka was as good as new. It was ready to re-open to traffic last night.

etc...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1HWlP25S8

Perhaps we could get some Japs to come over here to fix our potholes! 8)
Click to expand...

In the UK and Ireland a lot of redtape would have to be gone through. Procurement procedures and if its over a certain amount it would have to be advertised in a EU journal. Some of it makes sense, fraud prevention, but its drowned in burocracy.
 
They often work at night here, to avoid disrupting high traffic areas. Often when I'm trying to get to work early in the morning to avoid rush hour.
 
I wonder what's going on with Fukushima... one gets the inpression there's little improvement, but North Africa has pushed it out of the news.

Japan nuclear plant: Radioactivity rises in sea nearby

The BBC's Chris Hogg in Tokyo says the Japanese government has tried to reassure people about the plant's safety

Levels of radioactive iodine in the sea near the tsunami-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant are 1,250 times higher than the safety limit, officials say.

The readings were taken about 300m (984ft) offshore. It is feared the radiation could be seeping into groundwater from one of the reactors.

But the radiation will no longer be a risk after eight days, officials say.

There are areas of radioactive water in four of the reactors at the plant, and two workers are in hospital.

The plant's operator says the core of one of the six reactors may have been damaged.

It has announced that fresh water rather than seawater will now be used to cool the damaged reactors, in the hope that this will be more effective.

The maximum safety limits for radiation in the food chain in Japan are small. The regulatory system is more rigorous than in many other countries.

So for example, you would have to eat a lot of the contaminated vegetables declared unsafe, for a long time, before there was any serious risk to your health.

But that will be of little comfort to consumers who are increasingly uneasy and unsure how best to protect themselves from harm.

In Tokyo's famous Tsukiji fish market the wholesalers say hotels and restaurants are buying less. Some are closed in the evenings because of power shortages, or just because people aren't in the mood to go out to eat.

The levels of radiation found in the seawater will not lead to contamination of the fish caught around Japan, officials insist. But not everyone believes them.

The official death toll from the 11 March earthquake and tsunami has passed 10,000, and more than 17,440 people are missing.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been made homeless; an estimated 250,000 people are living in emergency shelters. Food, water and fuel are in short supply.

The Japanese government has put the rebuilding cost at $309bn (£191.8bn).
Safety measures

The levels of radiation found in the sea near the plant were more than eight times higher than those found in the same area last week, the Japanese officials said.

A spokesman for Japan's Nuclear Safety Agency said the radioactivity level in the sea off the nuclear plant was "relatively high" but the impact on marine life would be minor.

"Generally speaking," spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama told a news conference, "radioactive material released into the sea will spread due to tides, so you need much more for seaweed and sea life to absorb it."

He continued: "And, since [the iodine] has a half-life of eight days, by the time people eat the sea products its amount is likely to have diminished significantly."

The contamination probably came from both airborne radiation released from the reactors or tainted water that spilled into the sea, Mr Nishiyama said.

In a televised address on Friday, Prime Minister Kan said: "The current situation is still very unpredictable. We're working to stop the situation from worsening. We need to continue to be extremely vigilant."

He also thanked the workers, firefighters and Self-Defence Forces for "risking their lives" to try to cool the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Japan's chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano has said a rigorous inquiry is under way to establish the cause of a leak at the plant, after tests showed water in the turbine halls of reactors 1 and 3 had radiation levels 10,000 times higher than normal.

Japan's Nuclear Safety Agency has reiterated its position that it believes the reactor may have been damaged but it is going no further than that, says the BBC's Mark Worthington in Tokyo.

The agency has denied any suggestion that the reactor core may have cracked, Kyodo news agency reports.

The two affected workers, who remain in hospital, had reportedly not been wearing the correct protective boots and had ignored a radiation alarm at the plant.

Food fears

A revision of safety measures has been ordered.

The government has asked people still living within 20-30km (12-18 miles) of the nuclear facility to leave voluntarily. Until now, residents in the zone had been advised to stay indoors.

Japan has banned shipments of foodstuffs grown in several prefectures around the damaged nuclear plant.

People in Fukushima prefecture have been told not to eat 11 types of green leafy vegetables because of contamination worries.

Importers of Japanese products are finding low levels of radiation in some food stuffs, however the amounts found do not pose a health hazard.

China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and other Asian importers have already placed bans on some imports of vegetables, seafood and milk products.

Australia, the European Union, the United States and Russia have followed suit.

The Fukushima plant is 250km north-east of the capital, Tokyo.

Radioactive iodine was detected in Tokyo's water supply earlier this week. Levels have since fallen, but remain high in other areas of northern Japan.
Click to expand...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12869184
 
So there isnt much to be scared of but people are scared anyway???

Iodine has a short half life, hasnt it???
 
Kondoru said:
So there isnt much to be scared of but people are scared anyway???

Iodine has a short half life, hasnt it???
Click to expand...

Yes, but bad journalism has a longer half-life.
 
Another earthquake off Japan:
Workers are battling to stop radiation leaks at the Fukushima plant, hit by a quake and tsunami over two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, Japan has lifted a tsunami warning that was issued after another earthquake off its northern coast.

The 6.5-magnitude quake struck at 0723 local time on Monday (2223 GMT Sunday), 109km (67 miles) east of the badly-damaged port city of Sendai.
It is not reported to have caused any damage.

A 9.0-magnitude earthquake on 11 March and the powerful tsunami it triggered killed more than 10,000 people and left many thousands more missing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12877198
Click to expand...
 
Horizon - Japan Earthquake:
A Horizon Special with Iain Stewart.

Professor Iain Stewart examines the powerful geological forces that unleashed the devastating Japanese earthquake, and explores how the release of this power of the planet brought Japan to the brink of a nuclear meltdown.

He follows moment by moment how the earthquake was generated under the Pacific Ocean, travelled to the Japanese mainland, and the rare conditions that unleashed a tsunami.

He also reveals the latest science behind earthquakes - from why we can't predict them, to what causes some of them to reach such power.

Iain shows why our civilisation has developed such a dangerous relationship with earthquakes, and why millions of us continue to live in earthquake zones across the world.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... n_Stewart/
 
That Horizon is worth watching - pictures and science you have probably not seen before.

iPlayer is not available outside UK, and I find it doesn't even always work properly inside UK, but something that does seem to help (in my case) is to select pop-out mode, and then boost that to full screen. Juddery video becomes smooth! :)
 
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