2. Tsunami in History
The word "tsunami" is originally a Japanese word, but today
it's commonly used in English. And it's been all over the news
since a powerful earthquake sent a wall of water into
northeastern Japan on March 11.
The first English use of the word happened more than 100
years ago, says linguist Ben Zimmer, of the Visual Thesaurus.
That's when an earthquake struck off the east coast of Japan,
very close to where the recent tsunami hit.
3. Reasons/causes leading to Tsunami
A Tsunami can be caused by an- earthquake, a
powerful volcanic eruption, or an
underwater landslide. The impact of a
large meteorite could also cause a tsunami.
Tsunamis travel across the open ocean at great
speeds and build into large deadly waves in the
shallow water of a shoreline.
4. Characteristics
•How often do the tsunamis
occur?
•How fast does a tsunami travel?
•What does a tsunami look like
when it reaches the shore?
5. Drawback
A tsunami can appear in a number of ways. If the first part of a
tsunami to reach the coast is a trough, rather than a wave crest,
the water along the shoreline is dragged back dramatically,
exposing parts of the shore that are normally underwater and
stranding many marine creatures.
Drawback can be a warning that a tsunami is approaching the
shoreline but the problem is that the time between the sea water
receding and the full tsunami moving in is usually only seconds or,
at best, a few minutes. Because the drawback is the visible
expression of half a cycle of the tsunami wave, it can last half of
the wave’s period (more than 10 minutes).
6. The 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tōhoku (東北地方太平洋沖地震 Tōhoku-chihō
Taiheiyō Oki Jishin?) was a magnitude 9.0 (Mw) undersea megathrust earthquake off the coast
of Japan that occurred at 14:46 JST (05:46 UTC) on Friday 11 March 2011, with
the epicentre approximately 70 kilometres (43 mi) east of the Oshika Peninsula of Tōhoku and
the hypocenter at an underwater depth of approximately 30 km (19 mi). The earthquake is
also often referred to in Japan as theGreat East Japan earthquake (東日本大震災 Higashi
nihon daishinsai and also known as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, and the 3.11 earthquake. It
was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded to have hit Japan, and the fourth most
powerful earthquake in the world since modern record-keeping began in 1900. The
earthquake triggered powerfultsunami waves that reached heights of up to 40.5 metres
(133 ft) in Miyako in Tōhoku's Iwate Prefecture, and which, in theSendai area, travelled up to
10 km (6 mi) inland. The earthquake moved Honshu (the main island of Japan) 2.4 m (8 ft)
east and shifted the Earth on its axis by estimates of between 10 cm (4 in) and 25 cm
(10 in), and generated sound waves detected by the low-orbiting GOCE satellite.
7. Case Study Continued:
On 10 March 2015, a Japanese National Police Agency report confirmed 15,891
deaths, 6,152 injured, and 2,584 people missing across twenty prefectures, as well
as 228,863 people living away from their home in either temporary housing or due
to permanent relocation. A February 10, 2014 agency report listed 127,290
buildings totally collapsed, with a further 272,788 buildings 'half collapsed', and
another 747,989 buildings partially damaged. The earthquake and tsunami also
caused extensive and severe structural damage in north-eastern Japan, including
heavy damage to roads and railways as well as fires in many areas, and a dam
collapse. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said, "In the 65 years after the end of
World War II, this is the toughest and the most difficult crisis for Japan." Around
4.4 million households in northeastern Japan were left without electricity and
1.5 million without water.
8.
9. After the scale of damage from the earthquake and tsunami became clear, the BCP Response Headquarters
was set up over the weekend (March 12, 13) and began operating on March 14 with the initial aim of
ascertaining the safety of our employees and sustaining business operations. Our primary focus was on
establishing a structure to provide support for the damaged Tohoku Branch. We then assessed the situation at
Group companies to determine what support they needed, and provided assistance accordingly. The disaster
wreaked havoc on the transportation networks in Tokyo and surrounding areas, preventing many people from
traveling to work on the following Monday. In response, we used internal emergency contact networks, our
email system for verifying safety and whereabouts (sending of group email), and our intranet and extranet to
communicate with our employees in the early hours of the 14th about coming in to work that day. Although
the earthquake overturned office fixtures and caused other damage to the Tohoku Branch, normal operation
was resumed barely ten days later on March 22. While the state of emergency that prompted enactment of
the BCP was rescinded on March 29, the BCP Response Headquarters will remain in place to mount a response
to anticipated power shortages. Also, another point of having a BCP is to have specific preventive steps of
some kind already in place, not just enact them when catastrophe strikes. Going forward, ITOCHU will do all it
can to prevent further tragedy and help those in the region who have already suffered
10. Design basis for nuclear power plants in Japan:
►Incident rate of one earthquake within a 50 000
yearsperiod. ►Incident rate of one large 1) tsunami
within a 30 yearsperiod.
Design basis for nuclear power plants in Germany:
►Iidttfthkithi100000id ►Incident rate of one
earthquake within a 100 000 yearsperiod in
combination with relevant flood water heights to be
presumed
