The Japan Earthquake - Videos of the Cracks Moving! Liquefaction in action!

Hey guys, sorry about not posting any posts up in the last few weeks! By the end of the month there should be a few new posts on the blog.

To appease your appetite for geography, I'm putting up this post to highlight two videos that I find incredible. They show small fissures (cracks) in the road surfaces and parks in Japan during the earthquake widening and narrowing as the earthquake shook the area. It is reportedly the first ever time that this has been caught on video.

The earthquake also caused liquefaction on a wide scale (seen in the videos below). This caused the majority of the earthquake's damage. The image below, although not of this earthquake, does show the damage that liquefaction regularly does.

An example of buildings sinking into the ground due to Liquefaction:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SbvJB...collapsed%2Bbuilding.jpg

Here is some more information on the Japan earthquake (11th March 2011):

• This earthquake released a surface energy of 1.9±0.5 ×10¹⁷ joules. This is the energy that was released to cause the shaking of the ground and lift the sea floor to cause the tsunami. That is nearly double that of the Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami in 2004 (230,000 dead).

• The earthquake lasted a STAGGERING 6 minutes. Which gave time for people to run and grab their camcorders to record the fissure movement!

• As of 06/06/2011, there were 15365 deaths recorded, 5363 injured and 8206 missing. Those still missing are likely to be dead - bringing the death toll to 23571.

• The total cost is expected to pass $300billion, making it the most expensive natural disaster ever recorded.

• The Fukushima Nuclear Plant that is STILL in danger, with radioactive liquid leaking into the environment, nearly 3 months on.

• Highest wave heights reached more than 9.3 metres. That is taller than a 3 storey building.

Here are the two videos:

For more information on this tragic earthquake and tsunami, labelled as Japan's worst disaster since the second world war, I have another post detailing the incident.

Here is the original, very well received blog post on the earthquake:
http://thegeomessenger.blogspot.com/2011/03/case-study-japan-earthquake-and-tsunami.html

The Geomessenger