Photo courtesy of Tokyo Electric Power Co., TEPCO
In 2011, an earthquake caused a meltdown at the Fukushima Dalichi power plant, shown above.
By Hannah Raykher ’23
Staff Writer
On Wednesday, March 16, a large earthquake hit the eastern coast of Japan. The quake killed at least four people and injured over one hundred, according to CNN. Initially, the earthquake was rated a 7.3 on the Richter scale but was later updated to a 7.4, as reported by CNN.
The quake hit the Fukushima prefecture, a large prefecture on Japan’s eastern coast, facing the Pacific ocean. In 2011, the Fukushima prefecture was the site of a destructive earthquake and tsunami, causing a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, according to the BBC.
The recent earthquake was felt in the Fukushima prefecture as well as in the Iwate, Akita, Yamagata, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Saitama, Miyagi, Kanagawa, Yamanashi, Chiba and Niigata prefectures, Kyodo News reported. After the initial hit, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami warning which they later lifted upon deeming that a tsunami was not a threat, according to CNN.
Over two million homes lost power, but it was fully restored on Thursday morning, BBC reported. The earthquake was so strong that people were reportedly unable to stand up, and the shocks were felt as far as Tokyo, about 170 miles away from Fukushima, as reported by Reuters.
As a result of the earthquake, a high-speed train was derailed between Fukushima and Shiroishi stations, according to Kyodo News. Bullet train service is set to return in a few weeks after the tracks are repaired. 78 people were stuck in the train for over four hours but no one was hurt, according to BBC.
Carrie Lewis ’23 is from Los Angeles, a region that frequently experiences earthquakes. “I remember earthquakes always happening in the summer even though we would have countless drills at school,” Lewis said. “They’re very scary, but also constant so the smaller ones are easy to handle. The craziest one I’ve experienced was in the summer of 2008. I can picture the house shaking and my mom yelling for us all to huddle with her. Everyone gathered in the middle of the house and it ended in about three minutes. Luckily, everyone was okay.”
West Coast native and geography major Sarah Parsons ’24 has also had their own experiences with earthquakes and feels that the natural phenomenon has impacted their sense of self.
“One earthquake I was in was a small one on the Fourth of July [of roughly] magnitude 4.5. It just felt like a big truck going down the street or something like that. In general, in school, we always had earthquake drills, but I know that at least in the Northwest, a lot of buildings are not earthquake safe,” Parsons said. “In my town, some schools have been rebuilt in order to make them more earthquake safe. There’s a lot of social discussion [and] political discourse … around the Cascadia Earthquake, which would be a really big earthquake in Oregon and Washington that could happen in the next couple of years, so I feel like that is something that has impacted my upbringing a bit.”
As expressed by these students, while earthquakes can upend physical landscapes, they can also have a profound effect on the minds and emotions of those who experience them.