Nation set to suffer aftershocks for months

THE Japanese people are likely to feel strong aftershocks for another one to three months following yesterday’s devastating earthquake, according to an Irish expert in Japanese earthquakes.

NUI Galway lecturer in geography, Dr Kevin Hickey said while the television images of the 6-10 metre tsunami are terrifying, the Japanese are as prepared for such eventualities as anyone can be. The tsunami wave was generated as a massive earthquake off the northeastern coast displaced a huge body of water, causing it to move at a ferocious speed.

“Most people are killed in tsunamis by falling debris. It’s not really a wave, you see, it’s a wall of water travelling with huge force. There are substantial coastal barriers and electronically operated gates along the coastal areas of Japan. Japan also has a system of raised platforms around the coast where people can run to safety. However, as this earthquake has shown, you can’t completely enclose a coastline,” he said.

“The Japanese are also part of Pacific Tsunami Warning System and are as prepared as anyone can be. They would contrast strongly with Indonesia which wasn’t prepared for the 2004 Indonesian tsunami at all. If the Indonesians had been prepared, all those lives would have been saved,” he said.

Yesterday’s wave was travelling at up to 700km per hour at times however and even with the approximate 15 minutes notice that householders and businesses received, in many cases, that would not be enough time to get to safety.

According to Dr Hickey, the Japanese early warning system is linked to public sirens and radio stations would all have immediately broadcast warnings once they were informed of the impending wave.

Japan is a hotspot for earthquakes as its sits in the middle of the main Eurasian, main Pacific and Philippines tectonic plates.

All these plates are ‘fighting for same land’ and this leads to frequent earthquakes. In the 1995 Kobe earthquake, there were 6,000 fatalities.

The biggest earthquake in Toyko was in 1923 when 140,000 were killed in a 7.9 quake on the Richter scale.