巨大地震
ＪＲ東日本は３１日、東日本巨大地震に伴う津波で流失・破損した東北地方の７路線の駅舎や線路などの被害状況を発表した。
少なくとも２３駅が流失し、線路の被害はこれまでの調査だけで約６８０か所に上った。
調査の対象は福島、宮城、岩手、青森の４県にある八戸、山田、大船渡、気仙沼、石巻、仙石、常磐の計７路線。ＪＲ東によると、駅舎の流失が最も多かったのは気仙沼線で、志津川、歌津など９駅に上った。
また、７路線で、津波で線路が流失したり、がれきに埋没したりしたのは１８か所で、延長計約２２キロに及ぶ。レールが曲がった地点も約１６０か所あった。
線路の被害が最多だったのは常磐線で、いわき（福島県いわき市）―亘理
わたり
（宮城県亘理町）間で約４００か所。ただ、同区間のうち東京電力福島第一原子力発電所から３０キロ圏内は点検できていない。
（2011年3月31日20時08分 読売新聞）
Showing posts with label toll. Show all posts
Showing posts with label toll. Show all posts
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
30/03 死者１万１２５７人不明１万６３４４人―３０日１５時
2011年3月30日16時18分
. 警察庁によると、３０日午後３時現在の死者数は１２都道県で１万１２５７人にのぼった。行方不明は６県で１万６３４４人。負傷者は１８都道県で２７７８人。
確認されている死者数は宮城６８４３人、岩手３３２６人、福島１０３０人、茨城２０人、千葉１７人、東京７人、栃木と神奈川で各４人、青森で３人、北海道、山形、群馬で各１人。行方不明となっているのは宮城６９３３人、福島４８６３人、岩手４５４４人、千葉２人、青森、茨城各１人。
建物被害は全壊１万６５３４戸、流失は２１６５戸、全半焼１４６戸など。道路被害は２１２６カ所にのぼる。
また同日午前１０時現在、福島、宮城、岩手の３県で、死者のうち身元が確認されたのは８７９９人で、このうち遺族らに引き渡されたのは８４１２人。
.
. 警察庁によると、３０日午後３時現在の死者数は１２都道県で１万１２５７人にのぼった。行方不明は６県で１万６３４４人。負傷者は１８都道県で２７７８人。
確認されている死者数は宮城６８４３人、岩手３３２６人、福島１０３０人、茨城２０人、千葉１７人、東京７人、栃木と神奈川で各４人、青森で３人、北海道、山形、群馬で各１人。行方不明となっているのは宮城６９３３人、福島４８６３人、岩手４５４４人、千葉２人、青森、茨城各１人。
建物被害は全壊１万６５３４戸、流失は２１６５戸、全半焼１４６戸など。道路被害は２１２６カ所にのぼる。
また同日午前１０時現在、福島、宮城、岩手の３県で、死者のうち身元が確認されたのは８７９９人で、このうち遺族らに引き渡されたのは８４１２人。
.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
29/03 死亡１万１１０２人不明１万６４９３人―２９日
１８時2011年3月29日18時56分
警察庁によると、２９日午後６時現在の死者数は１２都道県で１万１１０２人にのぼった。行方不明は６県で１万６４９３人。負傷者は１８都道県で２７７８人。
確認されている死者数は宮城６７４４人、岩手３２８３人、福島１０１７人、茨城２０人、千葉１７人、東京７人、栃木と神奈川で各４人、青森で３人、北海道、山形、群馬で各１人。行方不明となっているのは宮城７０４７人、福島４８９８人、岩手４５４４人、千葉２人、青森、茨城各１人。
建物被害は全壊１万６５０１戸、流失は２１６５戸、全半焼１４６戸など。道路被害は２１２６カ所にのぼる。
また同日午前１０時現在、被害の大きかった岩手、宮城、福島の３県で死亡した人のうち身元が判明したのは８４７３人。８０３３人は遺族らに引き渡された。
警察庁によると、２９日午後６時現在の死者数は１２都道県で１万１１０２人にのぼった。行方不明は６県で１万６４９３人。負傷者は１８都道県で２７７８人。
確認されている死者数は宮城６７４４人、岩手３２８３人、福島１０１７人、茨城２０人、千葉１７人、東京７人、栃木と神奈川で各４人、青森で３人、北海道、山形、群馬で各１人。行方不明となっているのは宮城７０４７人、福島４８９８人、岩手４５４４人、千葉２人、青森、茨城各１人。
建物被害は全壊１万６５０１戸、流失は２１６５戸、全半焼１４６戸など。道路被害は２１２６カ所にのぼる。
また同日午前１０時現在、被害の大きかった岩手、宮城、福島の３県で死亡した人のうち身元が判明したのは８４７３人。８０３３人は遺族らに引き渡された。
Saturday, March 26, 2011
23/03 As Tsunami Robbed Life, It Also Robs Rite of Death
March 23, 2011
By MICHAEL WINES
HIGASHI-MATSUSHIMA, Japan — It was neither the place nor the time for a proper goodbye: not here, on a homely hilltop that used to house the city garbage incinerator. And not now, fully 12 days after a tsunami erased this town’s seacoast and forever sundered hundreds of families and friendships.
Yet on this raw, wind-whipped Wednesday afternoon, Fujimi and Ekuko Kimura watched as a procession of soldiers unloaded the coffin of Taishi Kimura, husband and son, from the back of an army truck, and laid it with 35 others in a narrow trench, partitioned into graves with pieces of plywood.
It was the rudest of funerals for a family already shouldering unbearable grief. It fell to the Kimuras — later, after the soldiers left — to turn a mass burial into a poignant and graceful farewell.
In Japan, it is not normal to bury the dead, much less to lay dozens side by side in a backhoe-dug furrow. Cremation is both nearly universal and an important rite in an elaborate funeral tradition deeply rooted in Buddhism.
But across coastal northeast Japan, tradition has collided this month with mathematical reality. The number of dead and missing from the March 11 tsunami has climbed past 22,000, and in the small towns and rural villages where most people died, there are by far too many bodies to burn.
Highashi-Matsushima, a seaport of 43,000 people, has recovered 680 bodies since the tsunami hit, and nearly 500 more are missing and presumed dead. The town’s single aging crematory can accommodate but four bodies a day.
“If we burned all the bodies, it would take a very long time,” said the city spokesman, Takashi Takayama. “The bodies are being kept now in two places, and we’re concerned that they might decompose.”
So reluctantly, Higashi-Matsushima has resorted to burial. At least 10 other municipalities in the coastal disaster zone have either followed suit or are about to.
The town buried its first 24 bodies on Tuesday after securing permission from survivors. On Wednesday, a crowd of perhaps 100 mourners gathered at the incinerator property, a piece of vacant city land on high ground, for the second day of interments.
They were a diverse group. Many were evacuees, clad in donated clothes or the same jeans and sneakers they wore when they fled the tsunami. A luckier few were in formal shoes and black mourning dress.
They all worked from a common template: a wrenching tale of heartbreak and loss that varied only by names, relationships and a few degrees of bad luck.
Yasumasa Kyomo’s wife of seven years had heard the tsunami warning, and was rushing their 5-year-old son from kindergarten to take shelter on the second floor of their home. Her body was found on March 15. “The front window of the car was smashed,” said Mr. Kyomo, 52. “My son was swept away, and is still missing. If they had fled a hundred yards more, they could have escaped. It was a matter of a few minutes.”
Sachiko Saito’s 61-year-old husband, Fujio, was disabled. Her daughter Hiromi, 29, heard the tsunami warning and went to rescue him, but never reached his seafront home and is still missing. Her husband was later identified by the wallet found on his body.
“He tried to run away,” said Ms. Saito, 53. “But he couldn’t.”
And then there was Fujimi Kimura, 31, who was working across a river from her home, husband and two sons when the tsunami hit. The wave washed out all communications and the only bridge, leaving her stranded and unable to reach her family.
For four days, she contained the dread of her family’s fate by immersing herself in volunteer work at a refugee center. On the fifth, a boat ferried her across the river to the Yamoto town hall, where she found her husband, Taishi, also 31, on a list of the dead.
“The boys’ grandparents had gone to get the kids from school,” she said. “They took them to the second floor of our house, but my husband couldn’t make it. He was swept away in front of their eyes.”
A portable trailer at one end of the incinerator grounds housed a small shrine with candles and two vases of daffodils, where friends and relatives of the dead could light incense and shield themselves from the wintry wind.
Each coffin was unloaded by a crew of 12 soldiers in camouflage and white gloves. Six soldiers carried the coffin with military precision to its resting place; six marched in silent escort. Seven more waited at the grave. A silent salute followed the lowering of each body into the trench.
It was the bureaucracy’s best effort to imbue Wednesday’s interments with the dignity of genuine funerals rather than what they were: an unavoidable response to a potential public health problem. Later in the day, Buddhist monks would come to the site to pray over the graves.
But for now, the soldiers boarded the truck and drove off, leaving the mourners alone. As if on cue, the wind died, and the sun briefly appeared. A city official with a bullhorn shepherded them to the trench for a final goodbye.
Every surviving family had something to leave its loved one. Sometimes it was little more than a can of coffee or a ball of compressed rice, following a local tradition that regards food and money as essential gear for the long trip to the afterlife. Those who had lost everything had nothing more than a few flowers wrapped in newspaper, placed upright in a plastic sleeve at the head of each grave.
Fujimi Kimura wrestled with how to say goodbye to a husband whose presence only seemed to grow in death.
“In the beginning, I thought we were lucky to be alive. But as the days went on, I began to face reality,” she said. “Now it’s been 12 days, and I still can’t accept it — I can’t accept the fact that my husband is gone. He was a very kind man. He loved his kids, and he took care of them, and the kids really loved him.”
During the final private moments at Mr. Kimura’s grave, Ekuko, his mother, bent down and left a bouquet of flowers and two fresh-cut branches of a plum tree, on the cusp of blooming. Fujimi lifted the coffin’s wooden lid. Atop her husband’s body, she placed rice balls, a can of coffee, a banana and a few yen. Then she left items from the home they shared, the trappings of a life now gone: some of his favorite clothes and the bamboo sword he used in kendo, a Japanese martial art that he loved.
“I cannot meet you now,” she said before closing the lid for the last time. “But I will definitely come to see you in the future.”
Moshe Komato contributed research.
By MICHAEL WINES
HIGASHI-MATSUSHIMA, Japan — It was neither the place nor the time for a proper goodbye: not here, on a homely hilltop that used to house the city garbage incinerator. And not now, fully 12 days after a tsunami erased this town’s seacoast and forever sundered hundreds of families and friendships.
Yet on this raw, wind-whipped Wednesday afternoon, Fujimi and Ekuko Kimura watched as a procession of soldiers unloaded the coffin of Taishi Kimura, husband and son, from the back of an army truck, and laid it with 35 others in a narrow trench, partitioned into graves with pieces of plywood.
It was the rudest of funerals for a family already shouldering unbearable grief. It fell to the Kimuras — later, after the soldiers left — to turn a mass burial into a poignant and graceful farewell.
In Japan, it is not normal to bury the dead, much less to lay dozens side by side in a backhoe-dug furrow. Cremation is both nearly universal and an important rite in an elaborate funeral tradition deeply rooted in Buddhism.
But across coastal northeast Japan, tradition has collided this month with mathematical reality. The number of dead and missing from the March 11 tsunami has climbed past 22,000, and in the small towns and rural villages where most people died, there are by far too many bodies to burn.
Highashi-Matsushima, a seaport of 43,000 people, has recovered 680 bodies since the tsunami hit, and nearly 500 more are missing and presumed dead. The town’s single aging crematory can accommodate but four bodies a day.
“If we burned all the bodies, it would take a very long time,” said the city spokesman, Takashi Takayama. “The bodies are being kept now in two places, and we’re concerned that they might decompose.”
So reluctantly, Higashi-Matsushima has resorted to burial. At least 10 other municipalities in the coastal disaster zone have either followed suit or are about to.
The town buried its first 24 bodies on Tuesday after securing permission from survivors. On Wednesday, a crowd of perhaps 100 mourners gathered at the incinerator property, a piece of vacant city land on high ground, for the second day of interments.
They were a diverse group. Many were evacuees, clad in donated clothes or the same jeans and sneakers they wore when they fled the tsunami. A luckier few were in formal shoes and black mourning dress.
They all worked from a common template: a wrenching tale of heartbreak and loss that varied only by names, relationships and a few degrees of bad luck.
Yasumasa Kyomo’s wife of seven years had heard the tsunami warning, and was rushing their 5-year-old son from kindergarten to take shelter on the second floor of their home. Her body was found on March 15. “The front window of the car was smashed,” said Mr. Kyomo, 52. “My son was swept away, and is still missing. If they had fled a hundred yards more, they could have escaped. It was a matter of a few minutes.”
Sachiko Saito’s 61-year-old husband, Fujio, was disabled. Her daughter Hiromi, 29, heard the tsunami warning and went to rescue him, but never reached his seafront home and is still missing. Her husband was later identified by the wallet found on his body.
“He tried to run away,” said Ms. Saito, 53. “But he couldn’t.”
And then there was Fujimi Kimura, 31, who was working across a river from her home, husband and two sons when the tsunami hit. The wave washed out all communications and the only bridge, leaving her stranded and unable to reach her family.
For four days, she contained the dread of her family’s fate by immersing herself in volunteer work at a refugee center. On the fifth, a boat ferried her across the river to the Yamoto town hall, where she found her husband, Taishi, also 31, on a list of the dead.
“The boys’ grandparents had gone to get the kids from school,” she said. “They took them to the second floor of our house, but my husband couldn’t make it. He was swept away in front of their eyes.”
A portable trailer at one end of the incinerator grounds housed a small shrine with candles and two vases of daffodils, where friends and relatives of the dead could light incense and shield themselves from the wintry wind.
Each coffin was unloaded by a crew of 12 soldiers in camouflage and white gloves. Six soldiers carried the coffin with military precision to its resting place; six marched in silent escort. Seven more waited at the grave. A silent salute followed the lowering of each body into the trench.
It was the bureaucracy’s best effort to imbue Wednesday’s interments with the dignity of genuine funerals rather than what they were: an unavoidable response to a potential public health problem. Later in the day, Buddhist monks would come to the site to pray over the graves.
But for now, the soldiers boarded the truck and drove off, leaving the mourners alone. As if on cue, the wind died, and the sun briefly appeared. A city official with a bullhorn shepherded them to the trench for a final goodbye.
Every surviving family had something to leave its loved one. Sometimes it was little more than a can of coffee or a ball of compressed rice, following a local tradition that regards food and money as essential gear for the long trip to the afterlife. Those who had lost everything had nothing more than a few flowers wrapped in newspaper, placed upright in a plastic sleeve at the head of each grave.
Fujimi Kimura wrestled with how to say goodbye to a husband whose presence only seemed to grow in death.
“In the beginning, I thought we were lucky to be alive. But as the days went on, I began to face reality,” she said. “Now it’s been 12 days, and I still can’t accept it — I can’t accept the fact that my husband is gone. He was a very kind man. He loved his kids, and he took care of them, and the kids really loved him.”
During the final private moments at Mr. Kimura’s grave, Ekuko, his mother, bent down and left a bouquet of flowers and two fresh-cut branches of a plum tree, on the cusp of blooming. Fujimi lifted the coffin’s wooden lid. Atop her husband’s body, she placed rice balls, a can of coffee, a banana and a few yen. Then she left items from the home they shared, the trappings of a life now gone: some of his favorite clothes and the bamboo sword he used in kendo, a Japanese martial art that he loved.
“I cannot meet you now,” she said before closing the lid for the last time. “But I will definitely come to see you in the future.”
Moshe Komato contributed research.
Monday, March 21, 2011
20/03 580 on front line in battle at Fukushima nuclear plant
2011/03/20
In a second-floor room of Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s main office in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward, about 100 people watch the events unfold on a large screen.
What they are witnessing is every operation at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to cool reactor cores, keep spent fuel rods submerged and bring much needed power to the crippled facility.
"I feel like crying as I see the harsh conditions facing my colleagues at the site," said a TEPCO employee in the room.
Of the 800 workers at the plant when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck on March 11, 750 left on Tuesday after a fire broke out at the No. 4 reactor.
The remaining 50 members stayed amid the ever-present danger of high radiation levels to try to bring the situation under control and prevent a meltdown.
They were dubbed the "Fukushima 50" by U.S. and European media.
"They are the faceless 50, unnamed operators who stayed behind," The New York Times said.
But they have been increasingly receiving help.
The workers on the front line of the battle include employees of TEPCO and subsidiaries Toden Kogyo Co. and Tokyo Electric Power Environmental Engineering Co., as well as employees from Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi Ltd., which constructed the power plant.
Workers from the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture and other places have joined them in the operation.
By Friday morning, about 580 workers were at the site, including those installing cables to bring electricity to the site.
The workers wear full-body protective suits and masks. Everyone wears a dosimeter around the clock to measure radiation levels. The device sets off an alarm if radiation doses reach 80 percent of the maximum allowable daily limit.
The workers take turns performing such laborious tasks as injecting water into the reactors and storage pools and opening valves to relieve pressure in the container.
Scattered debris from the explosion of a building covering one of the reactors has hampered their work.
And dangerous radiation levels have on occasion forced the workers to retreat from the reactors.
Some of the workers have now been reassigned to deal with potential problems at the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors.
The efforts have taken their toll.
More than 20 workers at the site have been injured since the quake and tsunami struck on March 11. One worker was seriously injured when he opened a valve to release steam from the containment vessel.
The local task force for TEPCO's nuclear plants in Fukushima Prefecture is stationed at a earthquake-resistant building in the mountainside.
The task force is in constant contact with TEPCO's emergency headquarters in Tokyo. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has its office in a separate room of the same building.
In the headquarters, TEPCO President Masataka Shimizu sits at a round table in the center of the room. Workers in charge of restoration and measuring operations sit at desks surrounding the round table.
They have noticed that some pressure meters and water-level gauges in the pressure and containment vessels are no longer functioning.
"I am thinking what we should do, recalling what happened at Three Mile Island (in 1979) and the (1986) Chernobyl nuclear disaster," a TEPCO senior official said.
In a second-floor room of Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s main office in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward, about 100 people watch the events unfold on a large screen.
What they are witnessing is every operation at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to cool reactor cores, keep spent fuel rods submerged and bring much needed power to the crippled facility.
"I feel like crying as I see the harsh conditions facing my colleagues at the site," said a TEPCO employee in the room.
Of the 800 workers at the plant when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck on March 11, 750 left on Tuesday after a fire broke out at the No. 4 reactor.
The remaining 50 members stayed amid the ever-present danger of high radiation levels to try to bring the situation under control and prevent a meltdown.
They were dubbed the "Fukushima 50" by U.S. and European media.
"They are the faceless 50, unnamed operators who stayed behind," The New York Times said.
But they have been increasingly receiving help.
The workers on the front line of the battle include employees of TEPCO and subsidiaries Toden Kogyo Co. and Tokyo Electric Power Environmental Engineering Co., as well as employees from Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi Ltd., which constructed the power plant.
Workers from the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture and other places have joined them in the operation.
By Friday morning, about 580 workers were at the site, including those installing cables to bring electricity to the site.
The workers wear full-body protective suits and masks. Everyone wears a dosimeter around the clock to measure radiation levels. The device sets off an alarm if radiation doses reach 80 percent of the maximum allowable daily limit.
The workers take turns performing such laborious tasks as injecting water into the reactors and storage pools and opening valves to relieve pressure in the container.
Scattered debris from the explosion of a building covering one of the reactors has hampered their work.
And dangerous radiation levels have on occasion forced the workers to retreat from the reactors.
Some of the workers have now been reassigned to deal with potential problems at the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors.
The efforts have taken their toll.
More than 20 workers at the site have been injured since the quake and tsunami struck on March 11. One worker was seriously injured when he opened a valve to release steam from the containment vessel.
The local task force for TEPCO's nuclear plants in Fukushima Prefecture is stationed at a earthquake-resistant building in the mountainside.
The task force is in constant contact with TEPCO's emergency headquarters in Tokyo. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has its office in a separate room of the same building.
In the headquarters, TEPCO President Masataka Shimizu sits at a round table in the center of the room. Workers in charge of restoration and measuring operations sit at desks surrounding the round table.
They have noticed that some pressure meters and water-level gauges in the pressure and containment vessels are no longer functioning.
"I am thinking what we should do, recalling what happened at Three Mile Island (in 1979) and the (1986) Chernobyl nuclear disaster," a TEPCO senior official said.
20/03 Death toll exceeds Great Hanshin Earthquake
2011/03/20
Editor's note: We will update our earthquake news as frequently as possible on AJW's Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/AJW.Asahi. Please check the latest developments in this disaster. From Toshio Jo, managing editor, International Division, The Asahi Shimbun.
* * *
The death toll one week after the Great East Japan Earthquake struck exceeded the figure for the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995.
Officials of the National Police Agency have confirmed 7,197 deaths as of 11 a.m. Saturday, surpassing the 6,434 deaths in the 1995 earthquake that devastated Kobe in western Japan.
The Great East Japan Earthquake is now the deadliest natural disaster in postwar Japan.
The number of casualties is expected to increase because the whereabouts of nearly 19,000 people are still unknown, according to figures compiled by The Asahi Shimbun.
The casualty figure was compiled by the National Police Agency based on reports submitted by prefectural police departments.
Twelve prefectures reported deaths, a large majority from the tsunami that caused major damage to the Sanriku coast area.
Miyagi Prefecture reported the most deaths at 4,289, followed by Iwate Prefecture with 2,223 and Fukushima Prefecture with 619.
The casualty figure does not include those who died at evacuation centers or medical facilities where senior citizens and other victims were transported to.
The number of missing is also fluid. Although police have received reports of about 10,000 people missing in six prefectures, contact has not been made with about 9,000 others in such municipalities as Minami-Sanriku in Miyagi Prefecture.
Large numbers of people have been isolated by the disaster.
As of Wednesday, about 10,000 people in Iwate Prefecture, about 6,050 people in Miyagi Prefecture and 98 people in Fukushima Prefecture were cut off from the rest of society, according to figures compiled by prefectural police departments.
In other areas, the actual situation is unknown due to damage to communications systems.
About 400,000 people are staying at evacuation centers. Municipalities around Japan are preparing public housing for those who want to flee the quake-stricken region.
Construction of temporary housing will begin Saturday in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, with plans calling for the completion of 200 units by the end of March.
Officials of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism have asked housing companies to provide 30,000 temporary housing units in two months.
The prefectural governments of Hyogo and Osaka, which were hit by the Great Hanshin Earthquake, plan to dispatch employees with expertise in construction to the quake-hit areas.
The Great East Japan Earthquake was the fourth largest in the world since 1900.
In terms of strength, the U.S. Geological Survey placed the magnitude-9.0 earthquake just behind the 2004 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.
The scale of the Great East Japan Earthquake was about 45 times that of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and about 1,450 times that of the Great Hanshin Earthquake.
Last week's earthquake occurred along the boundary where the Pacific Plate is subducted under the inland plate. A massive fault measuring about 500 kilometers in a north-south direction and about 200 km in an east-west direction moved a maximum of 20 meters along the ocean floor off the coast of an area ranging from Iwate Prefecture to Ibaraki Prefecture.
Japan Meteorological Agency officials believe a series of three earthquakes led to the gigantic scale. Shaking continued for about six minutes and was recorded with an intensity of a maximum 7 on the Japanese scale.
As of noon Friday, 262 aftershocks with at least a magnitude 5.0 have been observed, the largest number ever in Japan.
Temblors with an intensity of at least lower 5 on the Japanese scale were recorded 15 times, including the March 11 earthquake.
The largest aftershock struck off the coast of Ibaraki Prefecture on the afternoon of March 11 with a magnitude of 7.4 and an intensity of lower 6 on the Japanese scale.
Meteorological Agency officials said the number of aftershocks has been decreasing, but warned there was still a 30-percent probability of an aftershock of at least magnitude 7.0 occurring within three days from Friday.
There were also earthquakes of an intensity of at least lower 6, including one with its epicenter in northern Nagano Prefecture on March 12 and one in eastern Shizuoka Prefecture on March 15.
Since the focus of the Great East Japan Earthquake was close to land, the ensuing tsunami caused great damage.
An analysis by the Geospatial Information Authority found that at least 400 square kilometers of land was flooded by the tsunami, an area equivalent to 20 percent of the area of Tokyo. The tsunami reached a maximum 6 km inland.
A tsunami at least 7.3 meters high was observed in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture. A study by researchers of Tohoku University found that the tsunami reached a height of 10 meters in Sendai's Wakabayashi Ward.
An analysis by experts at the Earthquake Research Institute of the University of Tokyo found that the tsunami hit land as soon as 10 minutes after the earthquake struck.
Editor's note: We will update our earthquake news as frequently as possible on AJW's Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/AJW.Asahi. Please check the latest developments in this disaster. From Toshio Jo, managing editor, International Division, The Asahi Shimbun.
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The death toll one week after the Great East Japan Earthquake struck exceeded the figure for the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995.
Officials of the National Police Agency have confirmed 7,197 deaths as of 11 a.m. Saturday, surpassing the 6,434 deaths in the 1995 earthquake that devastated Kobe in western Japan.
The Great East Japan Earthquake is now the deadliest natural disaster in postwar Japan.
The number of casualties is expected to increase because the whereabouts of nearly 19,000 people are still unknown, according to figures compiled by The Asahi Shimbun.
The casualty figure was compiled by the National Police Agency based on reports submitted by prefectural police departments.
Twelve prefectures reported deaths, a large majority from the tsunami that caused major damage to the Sanriku coast area.
Miyagi Prefecture reported the most deaths at 4,289, followed by Iwate Prefecture with 2,223 and Fukushima Prefecture with 619.
The casualty figure does not include those who died at evacuation centers or medical facilities where senior citizens and other victims were transported to.
The number of missing is also fluid. Although police have received reports of about 10,000 people missing in six prefectures, contact has not been made with about 9,000 others in such municipalities as Minami-Sanriku in Miyagi Prefecture.
Large numbers of people have been isolated by the disaster.
As of Wednesday, about 10,000 people in Iwate Prefecture, about 6,050 people in Miyagi Prefecture and 98 people in Fukushima Prefecture were cut off from the rest of society, according to figures compiled by prefectural police departments.
In other areas, the actual situation is unknown due to damage to communications systems.
About 400,000 people are staying at evacuation centers. Municipalities around Japan are preparing public housing for those who want to flee the quake-stricken region.
Construction of temporary housing will begin Saturday in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, with plans calling for the completion of 200 units by the end of March.
Officials of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism have asked housing companies to provide 30,000 temporary housing units in two months.
The prefectural governments of Hyogo and Osaka, which were hit by the Great Hanshin Earthquake, plan to dispatch employees with expertise in construction to the quake-hit areas.
The Great East Japan Earthquake was the fourth largest in the world since 1900.
In terms of strength, the U.S. Geological Survey placed the magnitude-9.0 earthquake just behind the 2004 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.
The scale of the Great East Japan Earthquake was about 45 times that of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and about 1,450 times that of the Great Hanshin Earthquake.
Last week's earthquake occurred along the boundary where the Pacific Plate is subducted under the inland plate. A massive fault measuring about 500 kilometers in a north-south direction and about 200 km in an east-west direction moved a maximum of 20 meters along the ocean floor off the coast of an area ranging from Iwate Prefecture to Ibaraki Prefecture.
Japan Meteorological Agency officials believe a series of three earthquakes led to the gigantic scale. Shaking continued for about six minutes and was recorded with an intensity of a maximum 7 on the Japanese scale.
As of noon Friday, 262 aftershocks with at least a magnitude 5.0 have been observed, the largest number ever in Japan.
Temblors with an intensity of at least lower 5 on the Japanese scale were recorded 15 times, including the March 11 earthquake.
The largest aftershock struck off the coast of Ibaraki Prefecture on the afternoon of March 11 with a magnitude of 7.4 and an intensity of lower 6 on the Japanese scale.
Meteorological Agency officials said the number of aftershocks has been decreasing, but warned there was still a 30-percent probability of an aftershock of at least magnitude 7.0 occurring within three days from Friday.
There were also earthquakes of an intensity of at least lower 6, including one with its epicenter in northern Nagano Prefecture on March 12 and one in eastern Shizuoka Prefecture on March 15.
Since the focus of the Great East Japan Earthquake was close to land, the ensuing tsunami caused great damage.
An analysis by the Geospatial Information Authority found that at least 400 square kilometers of land was flooded by the tsunami, an area equivalent to 20 percent of the area of Tokyo. The tsunami reached a maximum 6 km inland.
A tsunami at least 7.3 meters high was observed in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture. A study by researchers of Tohoku University found that the tsunami reached a height of 10 meters in Sendai's Wakabayashi Ward.
An analysis by experts at the Earthquake Research Institute of the University of Tokyo found that the tsunami hit land as soon as 10 minutes after the earthquake struck.
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