1st Anniversary Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami 2012

On March 11, 2011, the most powerful earthquake to ever hit Japan, with a magnitude of 8,9 on the Richter scale (USGS), caused one of the most destructive tsunami’s the earth has ever witnessed.

Not only complete coastal towns and up to six kilometer inlands were flooded and destructed by the enormous waves (some were reported to have heights of up to forty meters), but it also struck the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant complex.

Unprepared for these kind of extreme earth forces, the powerful waves caused for, the still ongoing, level 7 meltdowns at the three reactors, leading to permanent evacuation of thousands of residents in a twelve mile radius of the nuclear complex.

Recently, the former Kan-administration acknowledged that they considered the evacuation of the Tokyo metropolitan area, after the authorities realized the impact and size of the fall-out at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant complex.

With 15,850 deaths confirmed by the Japanese National Policy Agency and total damage costs of $235 billion by estimates of the World Bank, the earthquake and it's side effects have been the worst catastrophe Japan has faced since World War Two.