Sea walls built to protect Japan from tsunamis

Sea walls built to protect Japan from tsunamis Today’s Video of the Day from the USGS shows a massive sea wall that was constructed in Japan after the devastating earthquake and tsunami of 2011.

The destructive tsunami completely leveled cities along the east coast of Japan, killing approximately 18,000 people.

To protect coastal communities from future disasters, Japan’s government initiated the development of hundreds of sea walls.

Rikuzen-Takata, one of the cities hit the hardest by the 2011 tsunami, is now surrounded by a 41-foot-high sea wall. The construction of seawalls continued in the last decade, and at least two massive antitsunami seawalls are under construction. One in Kuji, a city in Iwate Prefecture that was damaged in Friday’s tsunami, was scheduled to be completed soon. Also you can see the world’s most extensive sea defences did little to protect Japan’s coast from the devastating tsunami. Therefore the tsunami developed the  buildings to withstand such an impact.

There was a devastating 11 March 2011 quake that was a magnitude 9, the strongest quake in Japan on record. The massive tsunami it triggered caused world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. All nuclear plants on the coast threatened by the tsunami remain closed in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer

Video Credit: USGS