60% of city halls in quake-hit areas at risk of flooding not relocating

Today, much of the Sanriku Coast is outlined in white concrete, a towering border guarding against the next tidal wave, rising to heights in some places above and in other places far below the tsunami 12 years ago.

One of the most striking exhibits on display at the surprisingly sleek yet awfully solemn Iwate Tsunami Memorial Museum is a multi-meter deep sample of soil providing visible evidence of tsunami deposits over time — 10, 50, 100, thousands of years ago — allowing the visitor to deduce that it’s only a matter of time before the next tsunami arrives and washes in a new layer of gravel, mud, shells, and microfossils originating from the seafloor, beaches, and coastal soils.

Approximately 64% of those who perished in the 3/11 tsunami were over the age of 60, and 90% of those died of drowning. Several of the Iwate Tsunami Memorial Museum’s exhibits highlight victims who reasoned poorly when deciding not to evacuate. In one, a man told his evacuating wife that he could simply retreat to the third floor of the house if necessary. He drowned. In another, a man convinced his wife to stay with him by stressing that the city’s seawall was high enough to protect them. They drowned.

The museum is there to teach us about the risks of this area and the likely mistakes unknowingly made by those before us. Let’s continually educate ourselves to avoid losing another 19,000 lives in the next tsunami — because the next one is certainly coming.

rising to heights in some places above and in other places far below the tsunami 12 years ago.

The district of Taro in Miyako City, a bit north of Rikuzentaka, adopted 10-meter-high sea walls as early as 1934, after being engulfed by huge tsunamis in 1896 and 1933. But the 16-meter wave that arrived on March 11 streaming over the sea walls and partially destroying them as it carried away homes and cars. 

The sea walls in Taro now rise up to 14.7 meters high.

When the big earthquake hit Tokyo,and Skyscrapers fall over,you would be a fool living in high rise in Tokyo,that not built in bedrock

What exactly about this would make you a fool?

When the big earthquake hit Tokyo,and Skyscrapers fall over,you would be a fool living in high rise in Tokyo,that not built in bedrock

60% of city halls in quake-hit areas at risk of flooding not relocating

To move to new place it will require dozens of hankos by them time they almost reach required hanko disaster hit, shouganai.