Japan was stroke by a 8.9 earthquake yesterday, followed by a massive tsunami that has let the country anxious towards its failing nuclear plant.
UPDATE: 29/10/11
PLEASE, NO NOT READ THIS AS FACTS; THEY ARE NOW ALL WRONG AND OUTDATED AND THIS POST IS NO LONGER RELEVANT TO THE ACTUAL SITUATION. Sorry about the waste of time… (but I mean, check the posted date…)
According to the US Geological Survey, the earthquake that stroke Japan on Friday 11 March was the biggest the country had ever encountered since it’s started to measure quakes.
Compared with Haiti’s, which had a power of 7.3 magnitude, the Japanese tremor was slightly bigger, but it is the locations of their epicenters that made such differences between the two countries.
Haiti’s Léogane city was right under the quake and was consequently wiped out; in Japan, the epicenter was approximately 80 miles away from the Miyagi prefecture. Sendai, the closest city from the earthquake’s epicenter, took massive damages as a 10m tsunami broke on in the country northern shores.
The biggest difference between Japan and Haiti comes from the number of dead. The Land of the Rising Sun has, so far, 687 dead and around 650 disappeared — even though several other reports point out that ten of thousands are still missing.
On the other hand, Haiti had more than 230,000 dead. So many, in fact, that epidemic spread and killed numerous other Haitians, adding weight on its death scale.
Another difference comes from the cost of the earthquakes’ damages.
Thanks to the Japanese measures to counter earthquakes, the material losses were not as great as they would’ve been had the earthquake stroke Tokyo, situated 190 miles away from Sendai. Even if it’s still too early to know the exact cost of the damages, JP Morgan has estimated they were between £1bn and £2bn.
The Haiti earthquake was many times more expansive than that, reaching £7bn. Knowing that the economy is much weaker than in Japan, the ratio simply is immense.
As a note, the 1995 Kobe earthquake cost Japan around $100bn (£72bn), according to the eFinanicalNews.
The most alarming factor with the Japanese earthquake comes from its nuclear plant situated at Fukushima.
The reactor Fukushima 1 is threatening to cause another Three Mile Island catastrophe, the American nuclear station which saw one of its core partially melting, releasing radioactive gases.
So far, the situation seems to be under control as the Japanese authority said there was no unintentional leaks of radioactive materials — some gases were left out of the reactor to avoid its explosion.
If you want to read more about what’s happened in Fukushima, there is an article that explains the situation.
For constant news about the situation, the BBC website is broadcasting information on the Internet.
Image courtesy of Connect.In.com
H
March 20, 2011
the land of rising sun?? -_-
Quentin
March 20, 2011
just to avoid repetition… and it’s true it’s such a beautiful country compared to… anyway, you can’t say anything bad on Japan, you’d be seen as a heartless girl haha
kerafractionist
May 25, 2011
wow i really feel retarded right now. i did a 15 pg. essay on this and everything was totally opposite!
Quentin
May 26, 2011
this post is very old now and I guess every data about Japan is out-dated. Don’t worry too much about your essay! I’d like to know what you put in your essay and — if there is — the mark you have!
curly!
October 29, 2011
LOL! im doin an essay and there aint no fricken COMPARISONS guys leave some on here :’)
Quentin
October 29, 2011
I should maybe state this post is no longer relevant to the situation because I wrote it a few days after the earthquake, when the situation was still very unclear…