DOCUMENTARY_ MEGA TSUNAMI HIT JAPAN 2011
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00:01March 2011, Japan suffers a huge earthquake
00:10triggering a massive tsunami
00:17One of the world's most advanced nations
00:20teeters on the brink of collapse
00:25This is a minute-by-minute account of events
00:30with eyewitness videos
00:33and exclusive survivor interviews
00:37I didn't actually realize that I was going to be documenting the final moments of an entire town
00:41World-leading scientists analyze the megaphysics
00:45This earthquake is one of the top five on Earth
00:51This was a planetary monster
00:54We reveal the actual sound of the quake
00:56and explore the future threat
01:00Which earthquake zone is next?
01:02One of our planet's most volatile regions
01:06is the Pacific Ring of Fire
01:09A continuous fracture in the Earth's crust
01:11which circles the Pacific Ocean
01:12One of our planet's most volatile regions
01:17One of our planet's most volatile regions
01:20is the Pacific Ring of Fire
01:23A continuous fracture in the Earth's crust
01:26which circles the Pacific Ocean
01:28is the Pacific Ocean
01:31At 2.45pm on March 11th
01:3580 miles off Japan
01:38One section of this fault is about to rupture
01:41Downtown Tokyo
01:53The largest city in the world
01:5635 million people are going about their daily lives
01:59200 miles north in Sendai
02:02American teacher Paula Luzzi has just finished lunch
02:13Me and my colleagues
02:15We were sitting in our office
02:16because I think it was close to 3
02:18We start to go prepare our classrooms for the kids
02:21At nearby Osato High School
02:26Former teacher Wesley Julian
02:29is filming a graduation ceremony
02:31It was just full of emotion
02:34and so exciting to reunite with the students and the teachers
02:37Beautiful ceremony
02:40It ended, we went to lunch in the staff room
02:43A few miles south of Sendai
02:46Katsuyoshi Hayasaka gets ready to go shopping
02:49It doesn't happen every day
02:52but my grandchild phoned me in the morning
02:55asking Granddad, could you give me a lift to go shopping?
02:58There is no sense of what's about to happen
03:02But 80 miles out in the Pacific Ocean
03:04and 20 miles down inside the Earth's crust
03:07The Pacific plate is being forced down underneath Japan
03:11Solid rock twists down the earth's crust
03:14The Pacific plate is being forced down underneath Japan
03:16Solid rock twists and cracks
03:17Stresses build up in the system
03:19until something snaps
03:21In Tokyo
03:23The Pacific plate is being forced down in the Pacific Ocean
03:26But 80 miles out in the Pacific Ocean
03:28and 20 miles down inside the Earth's crust
03:30The Pacific plate is being forced down underneath Japan
03:32Solid rock twists and cracks
03:35Stresses build up in the system
03:38until something snaps
03:41In Tokyo
03:44Seismic data streams into the country's earthquake monitoring HQ
03:50The magnitude which was shown on the monitor was pretty big
03:54So I thought it might be wrong
04:02The readings must be calibrated incorrectly
04:07Other scientists record underwater sound of the tectonic plates
04:12grinding against each other
04:16Speed it up 32 times
04:21Here for the first time ever
04:24Is the actual sound of the earthquake
04:41People in Sendai are among the first to feel the tremors
04:44It was
04:49It just kept getting stronger and stronger
04:52So like all of us just kind of stood up
04:53looked at each other and ran out
04:55About 30 seconds into the earthquake
05:06I got out my camera
05:08and just turned it to the video mode and pressed record
05:10Because I knew it was going to be the big one
05:12Holy crap
05:14Holy crap
05:20Holy crap
05:22And there's nothing I can do
05:24I can't run anywhere
05:26Are we okay in here?
05:29Yes
05:31We'll just follow what they're doing
05:33My thought was
05:35Is this building going to collapse?
05:36Another remarkable video from a Sendai suburb
05:44Captures the panic as a house shakes around a mother and her son
05:49Son
06:11After 50 seconds the ground offers the only source of refuge
06:14refuge.
06:35The earthquake continues for five minutes.
06:42We had one big one, and then it kind of stopped, but then another one happened.
06:49It just kept going, and then it would kind of die down, and then another one would come.
07:08At Sendai Airport, air traffic controller Yoshikabune faces a critical emergency.
07:17Fluorescent lumps in the ceiling were falling down.
07:23There were aircraft flying in the vicinity at the time, so we worked hard to make them
07:27circle above, because the airport could not be used.
07:30It just felt like it would never end.
07:42And I'm watching, like, the telephone poles just shake.
07:49The scariest part about being in an earthquake is being completely helpless.
08:03The Earth is deciding it's going to move, and you just have to move with it.
08:09Even in Tokyo, 230 miles from the epicenter, the shocks are strong enough to catch seismologists
08:19at Toko Oki by complete surprise.
08:23My office is in a base isolation building, so it should not move.
08:30But still, I couldn't even stand up.
08:33That was the biggest and longest earthquake I've ever experienced.
08:37Across town, businessman Ayumu Dokizono witnesses an extraordinary spectacle.
08:46When I was just looking at the building, I was so surprised that the building was swaying.
09:06I was so surprised that I felt, oh, I have to film it.
09:07Only seven people die in Tokyo, but strange things start to happen.
09:14Cracks in the ground open and close.
09:17And in a process called liquefaction, the seismic shocks squeeze water out of the Earth.
09:27The quake measures nine on the Richter scale.
09:31With a force equal to 600 million times the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
09:38That's enough energy to power the entire US for 100 years.
09:43All exploding outwards from one point in five minutes.
09:48This earthquake is one of the top five in the largest earthquake ever.
09:56I mean, on Earth.
09:58It is so big that it tilts the world 25 centimeters on its axis and slows the Earth's rotation to shorten our days by a fraction of a second.
10:13In Japan, the earthquake even rattles the most safely guarded installations.
10:22Just 90 miles from the fault line stands Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
10:28With electricity cables damaged, emergency systems kick into action.
10:35Engaging backup diesel generators for power.
10:40And beginning the shutdown sequence for the plant's three active nuclear reactors.
10:47But 80 miles out to sea, the earthquake has unleashed an even more terrifying force.
10:54And it's rippling outwards at 500 miles per hour.
11:00Japan is reeling from the largest earthquake to strike it for 1,000 years.
11:13It's only the fifth magnitude 9 tremor in recorded history.
11:19But one thing scares the Japanese even more.
11:31A tsunami tidal wave.
11:36And this is exactly what the quake triggered.
11:41When the Earth ruptured, 250 miles of ocean floor thrust upwards over three meters.
11:49This displaced 100 billion cubic meters of water in the ocean above.
11:57Causing a surge that initially travels at 500 miles per hour.
12:03At the very beginning, it propagates almost the same speed as an airplane.
12:11At Sendai Tsunami Warning Center, the alarm sounds.
12:24The race is on to find out the size of the oncoming wave.
12:30Due to the tsunami and the earthquake itself, most of the monitoring stations were damaged.
12:37It was something that was unreal.
12:41As monitoring systems in Japan are overwhelmed, scientists worldwide track the advancing wave.
12:49I received a call at 1.20 in the morning from a colleague in California.
12:55He said, turn on the television. All hell is breaking loose in Japan.
12:59The earthquake had occurred about 35 minutes earlier.
13:03I was able to see some of the immediate coverage of the tsunamis coming in.
13:09This was a planetary monster.
13:11Three miles out to sea, the Coast Guard filmed the first breathtaking sight of the tsunami.
13:18It's cold!
13:30You're the only one that came from the water?
13:32land everyone is still recovering from the earthquake they have less than 30
13:39minutes before the big waves start to hit and there's another danger parts of
13:50the Japanese coast have sunk one meter lower meaning that the impact of the
13:57tsunami will be even greater in the coastal port of Otsuchi American eyewitness
14:07Brian Barnes is working on a conservation project when I went to Japan I didn't even
14:13think about you know possible earthquake so not yet we're leaving yeah we're
14:19leaving I didn't know that the tsunami would happen but I assumed that it was
14:24probably about a you know at least a 90 percent chance where do we go go to the
14:28hill where do we go just go huh yeah the hill the hill the hill all the employees
14:33are leaving Brian races for higher ground his camera's still rolling are we
14:38hearing sirens yeah yeah this town has a lot of history with tsunamis
14:45when the tsunami approaches land it slows dramatically but as the sea becomes shallower
14:57the waves rise higher and higher reaching up to 14 meters tall
15:02in the radar room at Sendai Airport air traffic controllers are desperately diverting aircraft away
15:12from the quake hit runway Jim no you know it's took our amari none of us really have time to think
15:20about our own lives everyone was just working very hard to manage the aircraft this time
15:25outside airport personnel frantically evacuate passengers from ground level
15:35in nearby towns tens of thousands of people are running for their lives
15:51you know we've got a lot of people are running for their lives
15:55us among them katsuyoshi Hayasaka the only nearby structure capable of with standing the waves
16:05is the concrete school building a few blocks away we were instructed to go to the third or fourth
16:14floor as we didn't know how high that tsunami would reach I do you go to the co2 say it I
16:20that I'm sorry fire crews traffic officers and police were walking around in the neighborhood
16:27shouting evacuate immediately the Japanese coastline is just seconds from impact
16:39at 3 15 p.m. on March the 11th 2011 the tsunami approaches the east coast of Japan
17:06American eyewitness Brian Barnes has seconds to escape
17:35but he's lost come on somebody help me here where are you headed to the hill we got to go across
17:43the bridge I guess what if the bridge fell down turn left hopefully not we're driving through town
17:48with the tsunami is warning blaring I just felt like it was it was time to to document what was
17:54happening I didn't actually realize that I was going to be documenting the final moments of an
17:58the entire town as the clock ticks towards 320 the biggest waves start pounding the coast
18:14hundreds capture the moment on camcorders and camera phones
18:18hundreds in the port of Shiogama the sea erupts
18:29for this car and the occupants there's no escape
18:4980 miles up the coast and Kamaishi millions of cubic meters of water are forced through streets just 10 meters wide
19:09the narrow channels accelerating the speed of the flow
19:17I kept hearing tsunami and it was 10 meters and here are the towns that it's going to hit
19:25but I had no idea of the power and force that the tsunami would bring
19:35we all had a feeling a tsunami was going to come just because when you have that big of an earthquake
19:42there's just always a fear we have quite a bit of kids who live in those coastal cities
19:47we're just sending out prayers to them you know just making sure that hopefully they were not there
19:55when it hit paula and wesley are safe on higher ground but tens of thousands aren't
20:04in Kassanuma
20:31One eyewitness video shows town become sea inside four minutes.
20:4815 seconds, road becomes river.
21:01One minute 20 seconds, a warehouse weighing thousands of tons is picked up like a rag dog.
21:23Two minutes, he spots a person in the water.
21:30It's a flood of truly biblical proportions.
21:43Just three minutes, 15 seconds after it started, the torrent has reached the third floor, over
21:50eight meters high.
21:55Up the coast, Brian Barnes is trapped on a hilltop.
21:59There's just all hill breaks loose and the water really comes in pushing forward.
22:03The tree that was right below me and the trees cracking away from the hill.
22:08Here it comes!
22:10Just completely developed this 40-foot tree in a matter of seconds.
22:17My thought at the moment was, when will it stop?
22:22You know, is it going to come all the way up to swallow this entire hill?
22:26And, you know, I mean, at that point, you just start thinking, you know, I mean, those are
22:32your final seconds in life.
22:42By 3.55 PM, the tsunami reaches Arahama.
22:46Katsuyoshi Hayasaka gets to the roof of this school building just in time.
22:56As soon as someone shouted, it's the tsunami, a huge tidal wave came towards us with thundering
23:02noise and clouds of dust as walls tumbled down.
23:07There was a crushing noise and the air was full of debris.
23:17At 3.57 PM, the water pours into Sendai airport, one mile inland.
23:28Air traffic controller, Yoshi Kabune, is still trying to divert planes when he is forced
23:41to escape to a higher floor.
23:45I watched as my own car, which was parked in the car park in front, got swept away.
23:52There were still people walking on the ground who were unaware of that tsunami.
24:04I heard people yelling at them to get away, and I saw some people in confusion as they
24:09tried to escape.
24:10The tsunami wave doesn't stop.
24:20The tsunami wave doesn't stop until it reaches six miles inland.
24:39Japan has suffered two deadly blows.
24:44First earthquake, and then tsunami.
24:50The third disaster is about to strike as the nation faces potential nuclear meltdown.
24:57At 3.42 PM, just 56 minutes after Japan is rocked by one of the top five earthquakes in recorded
25:11history, the tsunami wave approaches Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
25:19Inside are three active nuclear reactors.
25:28Diesel generators are pumping water around the reactors to cool the nuclear fuel rods.
25:37But to remain operational, these generators must stay dry.
25:44In Tokyo, one man is watching the unfolding disaster with increasing alarm.
25:50Nuclear engineer Mitsuhiko Tanaka helped design the Fukushima plant.
25:55As soon as I put on the television, I learned that it was offshore Fukushima, that was the epicenter.
26:04And then a tsunami warning followed.
26:06I felt that this was going to be terrible.
26:12The plant is protected by sea walls 5.7 meters high.
26:18But they are no match for the 14-meter wave.
26:26Film just after the wave is hit, this remarkable video shows the damage.
26:33Swamped by the wave, the diesel generators are destroyed.
26:37There is something very important that has to happen after an automatic shutdown, and that
26:51is to immediately cool the reactor.
26:55Now, there is just one backup cooling system left, battery-operated pumps.
27:01But they only have an eight-hour charge, and the clock is ticking.
27:08While Fukushima edges towards nuclear meltdown, across Japan's east coast, people are fighting for their lives.
27:18At its highest measured point, the tsunami reached 38 meters above sea level.
27:27It broke my heart to see some of the areas that I've walked, how many of those cities are gone,
27:34how many of the places have I been to that aren't there anymore,
27:40how many of my friends are missing their homes or not even alive anymore.
27:44For many, helicopters offer the only escape route from their island prisons.
27:50We heard the noise of a helicopter in the sky.
27:58It had a searchlight and hovered around the roof.
28:01Then a rescue worker came off the helicopter and told us,
28:05we're going to rescue one by one.
28:14Brian Barnes returns to Atsuchi to discover a scene of utter devastation.
28:21It was like nothing that you could even imagine.
28:24Hollywood couldn't even create something like this, I don't think.
28:28I think there was about 18,000 people that lived there.
28:32And at this point, there's not enough people living to take care of their dead.
28:36They've lost more than half the town.
28:39So there's pretty much hell on earth.
28:44But Japan's nightmare is about to get even worse.
28:49At Fukushima nuclear plant,
28:52the battery-operated cooling pumps run out of power.
28:56And then...
29:00Seismic event turns into nuclear catastrophe.
29:09An explosion blows the roof off reactor building one.
29:15Two days later, another explosion hits reactor building three.
29:25With all automatic systems disabled,
29:28the authorities have to make a terrifying decision.
29:32They must send men into a radioactive zone
29:36to manually cool the reactors.
29:40One of the chosen few is Tokyo fireman Yukio Takayama.
29:46When we got through the main gate at the Fukushima nuclear power plant,
29:54I think it was after 2300 hours on the 18th, at night.
29:59My very first impression was that
30:02it was like a strangely silent haunted house.
30:05This footage shows Yukio and the team as they move in towards the reactors in total darkness.
30:18You couldn't smell anything or see anything dangerous.
30:29There was nothing that you could see.
30:31All we had in front of us was the collapsed nuclear power station,
30:35reactor number three, right in front of us,
30:38which was below in smoke.
30:40You felt this strange kind of fear.
30:43Inside the plant, Yukio and 300 others work in shifts of 50,
30:48pouring seawater on the reactors,
30:51risking their lives to avert even greater catastrophe.
30:57I was frightened.
30:59I don't know much about radiation,
31:01but I believe that being exposed to large amounts of it meant certain death.
31:06So fear is only natural,
31:09but counteracting that fear was a sense of duty that all of us feel.
31:19The Fukushima radiation leak
31:21is eventually given the maximum nuclear disaster rating of seven.
31:27The same as Chernobyl.
31:29This is the biggest disaster to strike Japan since World War II.
31:44And it's an event that has affected the whole Pacific region.
31:51Eleven hours after the earthquake,
31:53the tsunami had crossed the entire Pacific Ocean.
31:56rushing past Hawaii,
31:59it traveled nearly 5,000 miles
32:01at an average speed of 450 miles per hour,
32:06eventually ripping ashore in Santa Cruz, California.
32:13If a tremor in Japan can cause this,
32:18it's an ominous warning of the seismic threat
32:21that lies under America's own coastline.
32:24As the true nightmare of Japan's earthquake and tsunami emerges,
32:33earthquake scientists race to work out the implications of this disaster
32:39for the rest of the world.
32:41It's been a remarkable time for big earthquakes.
32:45There was a magnitude 6.1 aftershock
32:47right beneath the city of Christchurch in New Zealand.
32:50That was a tremendously damaging event.
32:54It killed over 180 people.
32:57We had an earthquake off Chile, magnitude 8.8 just last year.
33:02And now this year, magnitude 9 off Japan.
33:06In just over a year, three points on the Pacific Ring of Fire have exploded.
33:11A possible fourth point in the sequence is the U.S. West Coast.
33:19There is now one question on everyone's minds.
33:22One of the things we try and understand when an earthquake like this happens,
33:28in some far away place like Japan,
33:31is what are the implications for us in the United States?
33:34Over 25 million people live along the Pacific coast of North America.
33:41From Mexico in the south to Alaska in the north,
33:46the whole region is seismically active.
33:49One of the biggest danger zones is in California,
33:54where the Ring of Fire runs inland, straight down the San Andreas fault line.
33:59Professor Tom Jordan has simulated the effect of a major earthquake in this area.
34:09This shows the San Andreas fault in central California,
34:15and what you're going to look at here is a simulation of a magnitude 8 earthquake
34:19as it ruptures the northern part of the San Andreas,
34:22comes speeding down at 6,000 miles per hour.
34:28Essentially, Los Angeles is a big bowl of jelly that shakes.
34:32This, of course, is not the kind of earthquake you would want to be in.
34:36But further north, America faces an even greater danger.
34:41As many people now understand,
34:44there is a fault very similar to the one that broke in Japan
34:47off the northwestern coastline of Oregon, Washington,
34:53northern California and British Columbia.
34:56Lurking just 50 miles off the coast
35:00is an active seismic zone known as the Cascadia fault line.
35:07On this fault line, oceanic crust is diving under continental North America.
35:12And here too, the rock is under massive pressure.
35:18If it reaches breaking point,
35:21the Pacific Northwest could face a similar catastrophe.
35:27A terrifying earthquake.
35:30Triggering a huge tsunami that would hit the west coast of America in just 25 minutes.
35:42An event like this, which is right offshore,
35:45gives very little warning time to the people that live onshore.
35:49The cities of Vancouver and Seattle are right in the firing line.
35:54We always tell people, if you feel a big earthquake near the ocean,
35:59get to higher ground, because there's really not time for tsunami warning systems to kick in,
36:05and they sort of have to self-evacuate.
36:07Countries all around the ring of fire must learn from the disaster in Japan.
36:14By building stronger sea defenses,
36:18and learning how to predict earthquakes.
36:21We don't know how to tell you,
36:25hey, next week, you know, get out of town, there's going to be a big earthquake.
36:29We are working on that problem very hard,
36:31but earthquakes turn out to be very difficult to predict.
36:37Nowhere is this problem greater than in Tokyo,
36:41as hundreds of aftershocks rattle an already shaken nation.
36:48I was actually a little shocked about the earthquakes that came after the big one.
36:55I guess that would be the one area where I really wasn't prepared,
36:58because from the time it happened that Friday to the time I left around Tuesday of the next week,
37:05they happened constantly, I would say almost every hour or so.
37:11Tom Jordan has analyzed the aftershocks.
37:14We're going to look at the sequence of earthquakes that occurred during this incredible week.
37:19That green dot is a foreshock that occurred 50 hours before the main shock.
37:23You can see the main shock in red and then all of the aftershocks that occurred for the following week.
37:32In the months after the big earthquake,
37:35three powerful magnitude seven aftershocks have rocked Japan.
37:41As terrible as this earthquake has been, we haven't seen the end of it.
37:46The aftershocks that are occurring in Japan are going to continue for months and years into the future.
37:55And one of the big concerns we have is where will those aftershocks be?
38:01The city of Tokyo, the world's largest city, sits on the edge of the current aftershock zone.
38:11So we have to be very concerned about the seismic risk to Tokyo.
38:16This sequence isn't over.
38:17As earthquake scientists continue to analyze what happened in Japan,
38:31the real human cost is only now coming to the surface.
38:36There's not a word in the English dictionary to describe the amount of catastrophic damage that this tsunami did to northern Japan.
38:44This was a mega-disaster.
38:48They've completely lost the infrastructure.
38:50They've lost tens of thousands of their citizens.
38:54If you're in a position of government, I mean, how do you even begin to start to talk about, you know,
38:59coming back from something like this?
39:01It just boggles the mind.
39:02Paula Lutsi is staying in Japan to help the relief effort.
39:11We kind of sent up an organization.
39:13We put a huge map on the wall and said,
39:15these are the locations that we're going to go to to scout out to see what they need.
39:19So, like, for the past, what, week and a half, that's what we've been doing.
39:24In the early morning, we get truckloads from down south, we get truckloads from up north.
39:27We sort them and then we ship them out in different trucks that Mason owns.
39:34Back in the U.S., Wesley Julian is still coming to terms with what he witnessed.
39:44Whenever I watch this footage, I'm always taken back right to that moment.
39:49And that moment was the scariest moment of my life.
40:02Because of this earthquake, I've reevaluated a lot about maybe how lucky I am,
40:08because I made it out alive.
40:11One of my friends did die in the tsunami.
40:15So, I have thought about the last time I said goodbye.
40:20And it was just a casual, see ya.
40:27So, no, goodbye's are a big deal.
40:29Yeah. So, I would say, they're a big deal.
40:33Yeah.
40:36Sorry.
40:37Yeah.
40:42Across Japan, tens of thousands of survivors live in makeshift shelters.
40:54I've been living for 70 years.
40:57I have experienced many things in my life.
41:00And I think I'm back to square one.
41:03We need to start from scratch.
41:08For the first time since the disaster,
41:12Katsuyoshi Hayasaka returns to his hometown to search for his house.
41:17I'll see you in the river.
41:19I'll see you in the river.
41:21I'll see you in the river.
41:23I won't be able to see you in the river.
41:25I don't know.
41:30The only landmark that remains is the building that saved his life.
41:35I've been living in the river.
41:45I've made one of the rivers.
41:48Can you hear me?
41:50What the success is?
41:51This is an orange.
41:56This is my size.
42:00My owner is here.
42:05This is my home.
42:10Yes.
42:14the most important thing is what do we do now I'm not talking about a couple of individuals here
42:28I mean we have to consider what all of us are going to do like a place to shelter from the
42:35wind and the rain that's what matters most
43:05oh
43:15oh
43:17oh
43:19oh
43:21oh
43:23oh
43:25oh
43:27oh
43:29oh