17
SHATTERED LEGACY
Just before 3:00 p.m. on Friday, March 11, 2011, as people across Japan were winding down work for the weekend, the country was ripped from its routine by a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake. It was the strongest quake ever recorded in the seismically active island nation, a geologic cataclysm so convulsive it shifted parts of northern Japan thirteen feet closer to the United States, tilted Earth’s axis, and may have even shortened the length of the day by a couple microseconds.1
The violent jolting soon precipitated even more serious worries.
The undersea temblor, centered just offshore from the northern city of Sendai, unleashed a tsunami towering to heights of 130 feet that obliterated everything in its path, far inland, ...
Get Collision Course now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
