It’s been nearly 13 years since the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, but on Monday the 1st of January memories will have been refreshed by civilians, as the shaking began in Ishikawa and the tsunami alarms sounded.
Japan doesn’t report earthquakes by magnitude. It reports how much the ground shakes. The scale goes from 1 to 7. And on Monday in Ishikawa the shaking hit the maximum, 7.
Even though the earthquake caused a great deal of damage, Japan’s ability to mitigate similar calamities is truly astounding.
When you contrast the aftermath of Monday’s disaster with the enormous earthquake that struck Tokyo in 1923, it is evident how successful the nation’s engineering efforts have developed.
Large portions of the city were destroyed by the Great Kanto Quake. Contemporary brick structures designed in a European style collapsed.
The first earthquake-resistant construction code in Japan was created because of the disaster. New construction would henceforth require concrete and steel reinforcement. Beams in wooden constructions would be thicker.
Every time a significant earthquake strikes the nation, the damage is assessed, and new restrictions are put into place. The largest jump happened in 1981, and all new construction was then obliged to have seismic isolation measures. Again, further lessons were discovered during the 1995 Kobe earthquake.
Success can be gauged by the fact that Tokyo’s seismic level reached five during the devastating 9.0 earthquake that struck in 2011. That is the same as the 1923 shaking of the capital of Japan.
After the city was destroyed in 1923, 140,000 people perished. Large skyscrapers swayed and windows smashed in 2011, but no significant structures collapsed. Thousands of people were killed by the tsunami, not by earth tremors.
