The others died in a 30-foot-high tsunami that struck 30 minutes after being triggered by the quake.In all, the raging waters killed nearly 20,000 people, wiped out entire towns and city centers, caused one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters and forever changed this part of the country. Only 10 of 100 people in the building reached the safety of the roof. Altogether, 813 residents died and 421 remain missing. That record goes to the 2004 Banda Aceh earthquake and tsunami in Sumatra, a magnitude-9.1, which killed more than 230,000 people. When spotted, the 60-year-old man was floating off the coast of Fukushima\'s Futaba town on the roof of his house after being swept away in a tsunami.
All Rights Reserved.AP Photo/The Yomiuri Shimbun, Hiroaki Ohno,AP Photo/The Yomiuri Shimbun, Hiroto Sekiguchi,AP Photo/The Yomiuri Shimbun, Yasuhiro Takami,AP Photo/The Yomiuri Shimbun, Motoki Nakashima,AP Photo/Asahi Shimbun, Toshiyuki Tsunenari.Firefighters search for victims Monday, March 14, 2011, in Soma city, Fukushima prefecture, Japan, three days after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck the country\'s northeast coast.A ferry - its deck chairs and tables undisturbed - rests stranded on top of a building in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, northern Japan, Sunday, March 13, 2011.Officials in protective gear check for signs of radiation on children who are from the evacuation area near the Fukushima Daini nuclear plant in Koriyama, March 13, 2011.
In addition to massive government debt, Japan faced rising commodity prices and an aging labor pool. Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko will appear at a national service in Tokyo, and a minute of silence will be observed nationwide at 2:46 p.m., the exact moment that the magnitude-9.0 earthquake — one of the most powerful ever recorded — struck about 40 miles offshore.The government promised a massive response to the catastrophic damage.
You have to rely on your family and your friends and your neighbors. TOKYO Amid growing dissatisfaction with the slow pace of recovery, Japan marked the second anniversary Monday of the devastating earthquake and …
That’s the only way.”,Five years on, Japan tsunami scars visible and invisible,Five years after the devastated tsunami, Japan's destroyed communities are struggling to recover even now.Video provided by AFP,Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force, Ōfunato, Iwate prefecture, Japan Members of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force in rescue and recovery operations in Ōfunato, Iwate prefecture, Japan, after the city was devastated by the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami. OTSUCHI, Japan — Kozo Hirano can never forget that day five years ago Friday.Hirano and other town officials were discussing how to respond to a shattering earthquake that had just struck Japan’s northeastern coast when cold, black water suddenly crashed into the town hall. He was in good condition.Rescue workers carry an elderly man found alive by tsunami survivors buried under rubble along a slope of a hill in Minamisanrikucho in Miyagi Prefecture Monday, March 14, 2011.A British search and rescue team check their equipment as they arrive at the Misawa U.S. air force base in Misawa, Japan, Sunday, March 13, 2011. Just as important, he said, is the emotional recovery for Otsuchi’s surviving residents.“This town was built over hundreds and hundreds of years, but in ... just 10 or 15 minutes it was completely destroyed," Hirano said. Many residents won’t move to permanent housing until at least 2018.Of nearly 600 levees and seawalls that the government plans to build, repair or replace along the rugged coastline, only 70 have been completed, and construction has yet to begin on many others.Some of the delays appear to stem from a shortage of construction workers and materials diverted to the massive repair of the Fukushima nuclear plant and projects for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.Recovery plans in this small fishing village hemmed in by steep mountains provide a glimpse of the massive scale of the reconstruction efforts.Otsuchi took more than a year just to develop a recovery plan, because nearly all of its government administrators were killed and records were destroyed in the tsunami.