A 150-km stretch of Japan's northeastern coastline sustained catastrophic damage from Friday's earthquake and the huge tsunami triggered by it, according to a tsunami expert who flew over the area.
A 150-km stretch of Japan's northeastern coastline sustained catastrophic damage from Friday's earthquake and the huge tsunami triggered by it, according to a tsunami expert who flew over the area.
Kenji Satake, a professor at the Earthquake Research Institute at the University of Tokyo, said towering waves as high as nearly 10 meters may have hit some communities.
"There is flooding several kilometers inland along a stretch from Soma in Fukushima Prefecture, Miyagi Prefecture's Sendai and Ishinomaki and Iwate Prefecture's Ofunato," said Satake, who has surveyed tsunami across the world, including the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004.
Satake flew in The Asahi Shimbun's Asuka airplane over the northern Tohoku region's Pacific coastline. Fields and residential areas were flooded right up the coastline.
He said it was possible that a large part of the area may actually have subsided below sea level, accounting for the fact that the waters had not receded.
"I have seen cases of communities disappearing in the Indian Ocean tsunami and elsewhere, but I cannot believe similar damage could be seen in Japan," he said.
In Onagawa, Miyagi Prefecture, houses across a large area near the coast had been washed away.
"Judging from damage to houses and buildings in Onagawa, the tsunami waves may have been squeezed in the bay, causing the wave to grow close to 10 meters," he said.
In the coast area of Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, fires were seen burning, putting up a large pall of white smoke. A oil slick was seen on the sea surface.
"Ships stranded on the shore of Kesennuma were swept away for nearly 1 km from the pier, showing how strong and high the tsunami was," he said. At 7 a.m., flames were still burning in Ofunato.
On lowland near the coast at Rikuzentakata in Iwate Prefecture, many structures had been swept away. In higher areas some wooden houses remained.
"Rubble from destroyed houses has covered two- or three-story buildings. This shows that the tsunami was nearly 10 meters high," Satake said. "Damage to the houses near the coast is worse than expected. Even a small difference in the height of the land on which houses were built made a huge difference to the amount of damage,"
A tsunami caused by the magnitude-8.3 Jogan earthquake in the north of Japan in 869 is believed to have killed more than 1,000 people. Tsunami triggered by that quake affected a strip of land between 1 km and 3 km inland in the Sendai Plain and more than 3 km in the Ishinomaki Plain.
"In a similar way to the Jogan quake, a large-scale immersion occurred in the current earthquake," Satake analyzed.
Along a long stretch of coastline, stretching from Fukushima Prefecture to Miyagi Prefecture, there were swathes of driftwood and garbage floating offshore. In some areas, the belt stretched as far as 10 km out to sea.