Japanese Earthquake - was it really that devastating?

[joelupchurch]

I mean, ships are built near the water. It would be rather hard to tow such a thing around.

I suspect the ships will have to be cut up and hauled off as scrap. Some of the boats might be hauled back to sea if they are repairable.

 

[lark]

I suspect the ships will have to be cut up and hauled off as scrap. Some of the boats might be hauled back to sea if they are repairable.

I think leaving a large ship there as a memorial, with a museum built into it and all sorts of pictures of the disaster and tsunami devastation, would be rather beautiful.

Like this one: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01852/ships-620_1852083i.jpg

It needs to be fixed up a little, but I wouldn't waste the tsunami's efforts, rather route the road around it and turn it into a spectacular tourist attraction. Japan is going to need tourist attractions ...

 

[davenn]

Geologists actually didn't expect that fault to have such a big earthquake. http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/71281/title/Japan_quake_location_a_surprise
Laura

That really shows his lack of understanding of megathrust systems and their potentials !

quote...“This area has a long history of earthquakes, but [the Sendai earthquake] doesn’t fit the pattern,” says Harold Tobin, a marine geophysicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “The expectation was high for a 7.5, but that’s a hundred times smaller than a 9.0.”

that almost makes me laugh. Wonder what sort of marine geophysicist he is ? maybe he doesn't specialise in plate tectonics ?
Any, I repeat ANY major thrust system is capable of producing such events, That is just a given especially when you look back in history at the different regions around the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Cheers
Dave

 

[nismaratwork]

I think leaving a large ship there as a memorial, with a museum built into it and all sorts of pictures of the disaster and tsunami devastation, would be rather beautiful.

Like this one: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01852/ships-620_1852083i.jpg

It needs to be fixed up a little, but I wouldn't waste the tsunami's efforts, rather route the road around it and turn it into a spectacular tourist attraction. Japan is going to need tourist attractions ...

It would have to be removed, cleaned, drained and scrubbed first, then replaced. Knowing the Japanese I'd suspect something made from a ship, not a whole ship itself. One is a reminder, the latter is a momument.

 

[OmCheeto]

That really shows his lack of understanding of megathrust systems and their potentials !

..."This area has a long history of earthquakes, but [the Sendai earthquake] doesn’t fit the pattern,” says Harold Tobin, a marine geophysicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “The expectation was high for a 7.5, but that’s a hundred times smaller than a 9.0.”

that almost makes me laugh. Wonder what sort of marine geophysicist he is ? maybe he doesn't specialise in plate tectonics ?
Any, I repeat ANY major thrust system is capable of producing such events, That is just a given especially when you look back in history at the different regions around the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Cheers
Dave

I don't have any background in megathrust earthquakes, and it made me laugh too.

The USGS has just posted an interesting bit regarding the quake:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2011/usc0001xgp/#summary"
...
The location, depth, and focal mechanism of the March 11 earthquake are consistent with the event having occurred on the subduction zone plate boundary. Modeling of the rupture of this earthquake indicate that the fault moved upwards of 30-40 m, and slipped over an area approximately 300 km long (along-strike) by 150 km wide (in the down-dip direction). The rupture zone is roughly centered on the earthquake epicenter along-strike, while peak slips were up-dip of the hypocenter, towards the Japan Trench axis.

...

Beyond the ongoing aftershock sequence, the USGS does not believe that the earthquakes in Japan have significantly raised the probability of future major earthquakes. While the probability of future large earthquakes far from northern Honshu has not increased, neither has it decreased and large earthquakes will continue to occur just as we have observed in the past.

Page Last Modified: March 19, 2011 21:31:33 UTC

bolding mine

What would happen if a fault were to shift by 1 or 2 hundred meters, instead of just 30 or 40? Giga-Tsunami?

 

[OmCheeto]

It would have to be removed, cleaned, drained and scrubbed first, then replaced. Knowing the Japanese I'd suspect something made from a ship, not a whole ship itself. One is a reminder, the latter is a momument.

Bah! Clean-em up and make restaurants out of them.

Might as well make the reminders practical.

 

[EntropicLove]

*jaw drops*

Wow a boat on a building; there's something you don't see everyday.

 

[nismaratwork]

Bah! Clean-em up and make restaurants out of them.

Might as well make the reminders practical.

That is rather the arresting image, but something tells me it's a practical engineering issue, and probably a bit too visceral. You want a memorial to be that, but not to trigger flashbacks in every other person passing by...

 

[joelupchurch]

When I click through to the underlying data, I seem to get something close to .6g for the Max Acc (%g) at the reactor.

NEI Nuclear Notes is saying:

The March 11 earthquake was stronger than the Daiichi plant was designed to withstand, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum reported. Maximum ground acceleration near reactor 3 was 507 centimeters per second squared - more than the plant's design reference values of 449.

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2011/03/evening-report_20.html"

That works out to .51g

 

[ViewsofMars]

The World Health Organization has recently released "Japan earthquake and tsunami
Situation Report No. 33 - 11 May 2011" that I thought would be valuable for those who
are interested. The pdf has 59 pages of information.

http://www.wpro.who.int/NR/rdonlyres/B614B476-46F1-4094-846D-F5B9D5BD0FB7/0/Sitrep3311May.pdf

It is heart wrenching. The devastation is over whelming. It takes my breath away.
I can only hope for a better life in the future for the people in Japan that were
affected by this disaster.