notforsale

Today is the fifth anniversary of the 2011 Japanese 9.0 earthquake, which took place on a subduction zone some 80 miles off the coast, very similar to the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which is about the same distance off Oregon’s Coast. Here are a few downright scary facts about the quake, from The Telegraph (http://tinyurl.com/telefacts):

The 5-minute earthquake’s energy was that of 8,000 Hiroshima atom bombs when the 280 miles of the earth’s crust fractured. The coastline sank 4 feet in some places, and the entire Japanese archipelago shifted 8 feet east — but the Oshika Peninsula shifted 17 feet east, and the planet itself was shifted 4 inches by the tremor.

Naturally, an earthquake of that size also generated a tsunami, which reached a maximum height of about 130 feet (think about it — the Astoria Column is 125 feet tall). The wave was 30 feet high in many coastal locations, but the sea walls averaged only about 20 feet high in the districts that had them.

Two hundred million tons of water hit each kilometer (3,280 feet) of the Tohoku coast in four or more waves that went inland for several miles. A photo of some of the damage is shown, courtesy of Lance Cpl. Garry Welch, U.S. Marine Corps. More photos are available at http://tinyurl.com/tsupix

When the tsunami hit, Hiromitsu Shinkawa (pictured inset in an AP Photo) was running to get away, then turned around to get something from home. The result? He was swept 10 miles out to sea on the wreckage of his house, where he stayed for two days until he was rescued by the Japanese navy, according to another story in The Telegraph (http://tinyurl.com/float10). “I thought today was the last day of my life,” he said. And it easily could have been.

Don’t want to get caught like he did? Be prepared: Check out Oregon tsunami evacuation maps at http://tinyurl.com/NCevacmap. Know where to go, and, where not to.

— Elleda Wilson