Talk:2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami/Archive 6

External links modified (January 2018)
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Major Change
{edit: semi-protected} The thing in the main information box near the top is now incorrect as it is 2018, it says it happened 6 years ago, when now it should read 7 years ago. ɤ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.240.103.155 (talk) 19:51, 1 March 2018 (UTC)


 * It uses the Template:Start date and age, so it will automatically increment to 7 years on March 11. Mikenorton (talk) 21:43, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 March 2018
near the top, change 18µs to 18 µs Rhipps (talk) 22:03, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅ Iffy★Chat -- 22:26, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Casualties
In the text, "The latest report from the Japanese National Police Agency report ...", maybe not use the same word? 66.81.244.68 (talk) 08:52, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Erroneous implications of "The tsunami caused nuclear accidents"
The introduction reads

"The tsunami caused nuclear accidents, primarily the level 7 meltdowns at three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex, and the associated evacuation zones affecting hundreds of thousands of residents."

However, according to the sources cited, there was only the failure of the diesel generators at Fukushima, with the three resulting meltdowns. The sentence as written leads readers to believe there were many accidents other than Fukushima, which is an erroneous implication and should be revised to

"The tsunami caused level 7 meltdowns at three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex, and the associated evacuation zones affected hundreds of thousands of residents."

However I cannot edit it as it is currently protected. Orangesherbet0 (talk) 08:24, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

No such thing as a "tsunami surge [sic]" or a "tsunami wave [sic]" or "tsunami waves [sic]"; the singular, "tsunami" or the plural, "tsunamis" are the proper nouns in all contexts
I don't have the time to delete "surge" wherever it appears, and I wish that you had not allowed its use in this article. A thing is either a tsunami or it's not. You can't use it as an adjective, such as "tsunami wave [sic]" or "tsunami surge [sic]". All tsunamis are "waves" and all tsunamis "surge". Tsunami means "harbor wave" in Japanese, in case you forgot. I also deleted "wave" wherever I saw it. Autodidact1 (talk) 07:02, 29 July 2019 (UTC)


 * It may be tautological (although remember that it's a loanword in English), but the term "tsunami wave" is widely used, "tsunami surge" less so. A single major tsunami event typically generates a series of separate waves, so I see nothing wrong in that usage. Mikenorton (talk) 08:44, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

... and those "waves" of yours are all tsunamis! Autodidact1 (talk) 08:43, 30 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Exactly what it means in Japanese is not particularly relevant, or we should only use it when they are observed in harbours, which would obviously be crazy. On wikipedia we follow what the sources say and "tsunami waves" is very commonly used - see here on Google Scholar. Mikenorton (talk) 08:31, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

...yes, only when observed in harbors or other such littoral places; at sea they are not tsunamis but seismic waves. "Tsunami waves [sic]" is a journalistic vulgarism that I correct whenever I see it. Some journalists are surprised to learn that it's a tautology, if they even know what that is. You, apparently, are obstinately defending this barbarism to the death. Autodidact1 (talk) 08:43, 30 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Barbarism? Don't be absurd. Mikenorton has made some perfectly reasonable points, in particular that tsunami is a loanword, so the language that has borrowed it may use it in its own way. Language is defined by use, not logic. There also may be a difference between how dictionaries define the term (eg Merriam-Webster say "a great sea wave" and Cambridge "an extremely large wave") and how geographic and government organisations use it (the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines a tsunami as "a series of waves" and UNESCO define it as "a series of large waves", for example). PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 09:10, 30 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I presume that you didn't bother to look at the linked Google Scholar search, which shows over 16,500 papers that use the term "tsunami wave", do you think that they're all barbaric and you're the only one that's right? As PaleCloudedWhite has indicated, a tsunami normally consists of a train of waves - the highest is often not the first and they are never referred to a sequence of tsunamis, just waves (or indeed surges), there's just one tsunami per earthquake. Mikenorton (talk) 16:03, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Discrepancy in Casualty Numbers
In the second paragraph of the introduction: Residents of Sendai had only eight to ten minutes warning, and more than 19,000 were killed, many at the more than a hundred evacuation sites that washed away.[36]

But in the fourth paragraph: The tsunami swept the Japanese mainland and killed over ten thousand people, mainly through drowning, though blunt trauma also caused many deaths. The latest report from the Japanese National Police Agency report confirms 15,897 deaths,[47] 6,157 injured,[48] and 2,532 people missing[49] across twenty prefectures — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.90.244.79 (talk) 18:08, 16 August 2019 (UTC)


 * In the "Casualties" section it states "In Japan, the National Police Agency has confirmed 15,897 deaths,[206] 6,157 injured,[207] and 2,532 people missing[208] across twenty prefectures.[51] In addition, some three thousands extra deaths have been identified as "earthquake-related deaths",[209][210] bringing the total number of deaths caused by the disaster to 19,575 as of 2017 September.[211]", which matches the numbers used in the lead section. Mikenorton (talk) 20:17, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Damages listed in USD?
I noticed most of the costs in this article are in USD by default instead of Japan's native yen, is there any particular reason for that? I have no problems with a conversion for international purposes, of course, but the article only lists costs in local currency three times with everything else exclusively being in USD. Not even the infobox gives a figure for how much ¥ the disaster actually cost the Japanese government. 109.78.163.98 (talk) 05:51, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Bad English in the 6th part of the intro
Bad sentence: "Many electrical generators were taken down, and at least three nuclear reactors suffered explosions due to hydrogen gas that had built up within their outer containment buildings after cooling system failure resulting from the loss of electrical power." Better: "Many electrical generators run out of fuel. The loss of electrical power halted cooling systems.  The heat built-up caused generation of hydrogen gas.  Without ventilation gas accumulated within nuclear reactor containment structures and eventually exploded." --67.87.191.87 (talk) 21:36, 11 March 2019 (UTC) This looks good, and I'll add it to the article shortly. Thank you for suggesting this. TK421bsod (talk) 19:46, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Duration of shaking
The article currently states that the duration of shaking was 6 minutes. I've looked at a lot of journal papers on the earthquake and they seem to be all agreed that the duration of shaking was somewhere in the range 100–200 seconds (e.g. Orense 2012) and probably between 150 and 160 seconds (e.g. Ammon et al. 2011). Although I can't find the duration in either of the cited sources (one is a dead link), I have been able to find several general sources (not journal papers) that give the 6 minute duration (e.g. Live Science). This leaves a dilemma - what do we quote? Are they talking about exactly the same thing? Mikenorton (talk) 22:25, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Inconsistent report of fatalities
General stats of article report just under 16k fatalities. First paragraph of article calls out 19k fatalities in Sendai alone. Cjdiersen (talk) 04:22, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Issue is still there, 11 March 2020, on 9th anniversary when traffic is probably high.--Chelleomi (talk) 00:11, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
 * If you look, the infobox (with precision, citing National Police Agency of Japan report in 2019) cites 15,899 deaths and 2,529 people missing. This is repeated with somewhat more verbosity in the 4th paragraph. The comment in the second paragraph citing a book by Richard A. Clarke, says 19,000 dead. The Clarke book is both less precise and older. His figure probably comes from adding the missing as "presumed dead" and rounding up. Since the numbers elsewhere are more precise, I'll remove the comment from the 2nd paragraph. Tarl N. ( discuss ) 00:35, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Revival of discussion of whether the magnitude should be 9.1.
The USGS says 9.1, so can that please be changed?--185.232.140.201 (talk) 18:10, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

U.S. spelling?
There has been some back-and-forth changing between U.S. and non-U.S. spellings (see WP:ENGVAR for policies), which needs to be discussed here. I will mention that changing all the spelling in an article to U.S. spellings and then adding a notice at the top saying "now, use U.S. spellings" is not appropriate. We need a better rationale for why this should be using a specific variant of english. Tarl N. ( discuss ) 20:57, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * No rational has been provided for the change to US spelling. Furthermore, the spelling was changed in defacto quotations - the titles of references. MB 21:12, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * With an article of this length, establishing a dominant spelling style isn't easy, but I note that "metre" and "kilometre" is used far more often than "meter" or "kilometer". To counter this there is a predominance of "-ize" endings throughout. The article also began using U.S. spelling, but quickly became a mixture. Mikenorton (talk) 22:30, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd observe that mixed spellings in large articles appears to be becoming the norm - with 2 billion english-speaking people around these days, the U.S.' 300 million are a definite minority. It is certainly my personal opinion that under normal conditions we should tolerate any acceptable spelling, and it is policy that we should not go around wholesale changing spellings. I particularly object to the "sp=us|abbr=off" being added to all the convert templates, which seemed to be an in-your-face change. Either way, let's allow the original editor to comment. Tarl N. ( discuss ) 22:35, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * This tsunami also affected the US. This article has also been tagged using the American spelling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Editnotices/Page/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami). Per core Anglosphere, the US is the largest native speaker of English. According to Google, the American spelling of metric units (kilometer, liter, centimeter |see) are more popular than the Brits one |see. Ivan Humphrey (talk) 05:46, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I wasn't aware of that edit tag. Looking at the history, it wasn't present for several years, because when the page was renamed (in 2011) the notice didn't follow (until 2016). It's an interesting question whether it still applies, since the article has more years without the notice than with.
 * Lastly, per WP:BRD, when you are reverted, immediately take it to the talk page, do NOT immediately re-revert. That's edit warring, which is what attracted my attention. The fact that I disagree with your edit came later.
 * To summarize, you do have a point about the edit template flagging the article as American English, but much of the content was written when that template effectively didn't exist. I strongly disagree with you going out of your way to blast the full spelling of metric terms into the text, there is no reason to force abbreviations off, dramatizing the different spelling of metric terms. Your edit, as it stands, cannot be retained, you'll have to start over if you get consensus on changing the spellings (at this point it seems to be 3-1 against you). Please also be more careful about in-line text vs. quoted titles, you cannot change the spelling of external text. Tarl N. ( discuss ) 06:08, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 February 2021
Since someone already removed the "Shindo 7" for the "IX (Violent)" template method, is there a way how we can add the Shindo 7 back? // Note: It's Aliza. I'm not logged in, so yeah. \\ 2601:589:C680:E00:C4E7:9B9C:1392:9781 (talk) 15:10, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

✅ - I've added it back with a citation. I'd been meaning to do that. I'm still not entirely convinced about the MMI template. Mikenorton (talk) 16:08, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. --a_liza aliza's chat, lila's chat/aliza's mess, lila's mess 14:28, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 03:43, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * UKISAR in 2011 Japan earthquake 05 Search and rescue.jpg
 * UKISAR in 2011 Japan earthquake 09 Treacherous conditions.jpg

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 05:49, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Ocean Today - Tsunami Strike Japan - Pt1 Destruction.webm

"Great Great East Japan Earthquake" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Great Great East Japan Earthquake. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 June 13 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. -- Tavix ( talk ) 01:44, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

"3.11" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect 3.11. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 June 14 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.  - Jay (Talk) 21:11, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Facts are wrong.
As of Dec. 29, 2021. the distance from Oshika Peninsula of the epicenter is incorrect.

牡鹿半島の東南東約130 kmの太平洋（三陸沖）の海底（北緯38度06.2分、東経14 2度51.6分）、 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2400:2411:EA20:9100:F1D0:711B:172A:2C8C (talk) 00:43, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Nuclear explosure?
Surely we mean "nuclear exposure" in this sentence: "Injuries related to nuclear explosure or the discharge of radioactive water in Fukushima are difficult to trace as 60% of the 20,000 workers on-site declined to participate in state-sponsored free health checks." from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami#Casualties — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.199.223.176 (talk) 15:34, 27 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pointing that out - now changed. Mikenorton (talk) 16:42, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Norway
I know it sounds off the wall and insane, but the seiche waves in Norway's fjords definitely deserve a mention. I saw it on the David Attenborough Dinosaur special on NOVA the other day. Notwisconsin (talk) 11:58, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
 * It was big, but this was 8,300 kilometres away!Fulmard (talk) 19:04, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

New casualty figures
At the moment I don't have time to update the article but NHK has published a new list of casualties, which is slightly lower when compared to the 2021 report. It shows 15,900 deaths directly caused by the earthquake/tsunami and 3,789 earthquake-related deaths, for a total of 19,689 deaths, and 2,523 people who remain missing. The article contains a breakdown by prefecture. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20230309/k10014003201000.html Johndavies837 (talk) 08:05, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Lack of fuel caused the Fukushima Daiichi Nulcear Disaster?
The article currently (2023.11.3) states:

"The tsunami caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, primarily the meltdowns of three of its reactors, the discharge of radioactive water in Fukushima and the associated evacuation zones affecting hundreds of thousands of residents.[47][48] Many electrical generators ran out of fuel. The loss of electrical power halted cooling systems, causing heat to build up."

Say what? Is it not well accepted that the generators failed due to the damage caused from the tsunami, not due to their running out of fuel, or inability to refuel them. I can find thousands of references to the tsunami damage, not a single reference to lack of fuel. Can this claim be supported? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.243.166.151 (talk) 23:58, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 April 2023
Jimmynuetron121 (talk) 16:49, 11 April 2023 (UTC) Add how nuclear waste was taken care of
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. M.Bitton (talk) 17:32, 11 April 2023 (UTC)