"March. 2011" "Japan suffers a huge earthquake." "Triggering a massive tsunami." "[ Man speaking Japanese ]" "One of the world's most advanced nations teeters on the brink of collapse." "This is a minute-by-minute account of events..." "[ Man speaking Japanese ] ...With eyewitness videos..." "Tsunami." "Yeah, we're leaving." "...And exclusive survivor interviews." "I didn't actually realize that I was gonna be documenting the final moments of an entire town." "Narrator:" "World-leading scientists analyze the mega physics." "This earthquake is one of the top five on Earth." "This was a planetary monster." "Narrator:" "We reveal the actual sound of the quake..." "[ Rumbling ] ...And explore the future threat." "Which earthquake zone is next?" "MegaQuake:" "The Hour That Shook Japan Discovery Channel Special Original Air Date on April 24, 2011" "== sync, corrected by elderman ==" "One of our planet's most volatile regions is the Pacific Ring of Fire..." "A continuous fracture in the Earth's crust which circles the Pacific Ocean." "At 2:45 p.m. on March 11, 2011, 80 miles off Japan..." "One section of this fault is about to rupture." "Downtown Tokyo." "The largest city in the world." "35 million people are going about their daily lives." "200 miles north in Sendai..." "American teacher Paula Lutze has just finished lunch." "Me and my colleagues, we were sitting in our office 'cause I think it was, like, close to 3:00." "We start to go prepare our classrooms for the kids." "[ Piano music playing ]" "Narrator:" "At nearby Osato High School, former teacher Wesley Julian is filming a graduation ceremony." "Julian:" "It was just full of emotion and so exciting to reunite with the students and the teachers." "Beautiful ceremony." "It ended." "We went to lunch in the staff room." "Narrator:" "There is no sense of what's about to happen." "But 80 miles out in the Pacific Ocean and 20 miles down inside the Earth's crust The Pacific Plate is being forced down underneath Japan." "Solid rock twists and cracks." "Stresses build up in the system until something snaps." "[ Alarm blaring ]" "In Tokyo, seismic data streams into the country's earthquake-monitoring headquarters." "Ozaki:" "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "The magnitude which was shown on the monitor was pretty big." "So I felt it might be wrong." "The readings must be calibrated incorrectly." "Narrator:" "Other scientists record underwater sound of the tectonic plates grinding against each other." "Speeded up 32 times, here for the first time ever is the actual sound of the earthquake." "[ Rumbling ]" "[ Indistinct shouting in Japanese ]" "People in Sendai are among the first to feel the tremors." "It just kept getting stronger and stronger." "All of us just stood up, looked at each other, and ran out." "[ Indistinct shouting, clatter ]" "About 30 seconds into the earthquake," "I got out my camera and just turned it to the video mode and pressed "record"" "because I knew it was going to be the big one." "Holy crap." "[ Rumbling ]" "This is a big one." "Holy..." "And there's nothing I can do." "I can't run anywhere." "Are we okay here?" "Man:" "Yeah." "I'll just follow what they're doing." "My thought was, "Is this building gonna collapse?"" "[ Rumbling ]" "Narrator:" "Another remarkable video from a Sendai suburb captures the panic as a house shakes around a mother and her son." "After 50 seconds, the ground offers the only source of refuge." "Man: [ Panting ]" "The earthquake continues for five minutes." "[ Woman speaking Japanese ]" "Lutze:" "We had one big one, and then it kind of stopped, but then another one happened." "Like, it just kept going." "And then it would kind of die down, and then another one would come." "[ Rumbling, clatter ]" "Narrator:" "At Sendai Airport, air-traffic controller Yoshi Kibune faces a critical emergency." "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "Florescent lamps in the ceiling were falling down." "There were aircraft flying in the vicinity at the time." "So we worked hard to make them circle above because the airport could not be used." "It just felt like..." "It would never end." "[ Indistinct shouting ]" "And I'm watching, like, the telephone poles just shake." "Julian:" "No joke." "The scariest part about being in an earthquake is being completely helpless." "The Earth is deciding it's going to move, and you just have to move with it." "Narrator:" "Even in Tokyo, 230 miles from the epicenter The shocks are strong enough to catch seismologist Satoko Oki by complete surprise." "My office is in the base isolation building." "So it should not move." "[ Rumbling ]" "But still, I couldn't even stand up." "That was the biggest and longest earthquake" "I've ever experienced." "Narrator:" "Across town, businessman Ayumu Dokizono witnesses an extraordinary spectacle." "When I just looked at the building," "I was so surprised that the building was swaying." "I was so surprised that I felt, "Oh, I have to film it."" "[ Rumbling ]" "Narrator:" "Incredibly, only seven people die in Tokyo." "But strange things start to happen." "Cracks in the ground open and close." "And in a process called liquefaction, the seismic shock squeezes water out of the Earth." "The quake measures 9 on the Richter scale..." "With a force equal to 600 million times the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima." "That's enough energy to power the entire U.S. for 100 years." "All exploding outward from one point in five minutes." "This earthquake is one of the top five in largest earthquake..." "Ever " " I mean, on Earth." "Narrator:" "It's so big that it tilts the world 10 inches on its axis and slows the Earth's rotation to shorten our days by a fraction of a second." "In Japan, the earthquake even rattles the most safely guarded installations." "Just 90 miles from the fault line stands Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant." "With electricity cables damaged, emergency systems kick into action Engaging backup diesel generators for power..." "And beginning the shutdown sequence for the plant's three active nuclear reactors." "But 80 miles out to sea, the earthquake has unleashed an even more terrifying force and it's rippling outward at 500 miles per hour." "Narrator:" "Japan is reeling from the largest earthquake to strike it for 1,000 years." "It's only the fifth magnitude-9 tremor in recorded history." "[ Indistinct shouting ]" "But one thing scares the Japanese even more." "A tsunami tidal wave." "And this is exactly what the quake triggered." "When the Earth ruptured, 250 miles of ocean floor thrust upward over 20 feet." "This displaced 3.4 trillion cubic feet of water in the ocean above Causing a surge that initially travels at 500 miles per hour." "(Dr. Oki) At the very beginning, it propagates almost the same speed as airplane." "Narrator:" "At Sendai Tsunami Warning Center, the alarm sounds." "The race is on to find out the size of the oncoming wave." "Kawaharada:" "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "Due to that tsunami and the earthquake itself, most of the monitoring stations were damaged." "It was something that was unreal." "Narrator:" "As monitoring systems in Japan are overwhelmed, scientists worldwide track the advancing wave." "I received a call at 1:20 in the morning from a colleague in California." "He said, "Turn on the television." "All hell is breaking loose in Japan."" "The earthquake had occurred about 35 minutes earlier." "I was able to see some of the immediate coverage of the tsunamis coming in." "This was a planetary monster." "Narrator:" "3 miles out to sea, the Coast Guard film the first breathtaking sight of the tsunami." "[ Men speaking Japanese ]" "On land, everyone is still recovering from the earthquake." "They have less than 30 minutes before the big waves start to hit." "And there's another danger." "Parts of the Japanese coast have sunk 4 feet lower..." "Meaning that the impact of the tsunami will be even greater." "[ Alarm blaring ]" "In the coastal port of Otsuchi," "American eyewitness Brian Barnes is working on a conservation project." "When I went to Japan," "I didn't even think about a possible earthquake." "Tsunami." "Tsunami." "Yeah, we're leaving." "Yeah, we're leaving." "I didn't know that the tsunami would happen, but I assumed that there was probably about, you know, at least a 90% chance." "Where do we go?" "Go to the hill." "Where do we go?" "Just go, huh?" "Yeah, the hill, the hill, the hill." "Woman:" "All the employees are leaving." "Narrator:" "Brian races for higher ground, his camera still rolling." "Are we hearing sirens?" "Barnes:" "Yeah." "Yeah." "This town has a lot of history with tsunamis." "Narrator:" "When the tsunami approaches land, it slows dramatically." "But as the sea becomes shallower, the waves rise higher and higher, reaching up to 45 feet tall." "In the radar room at Sendai Airport, air-traffic controllers are desperately diverting aircraft away from the quake-hit runway." "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "None of us really had time to think about our own lives." "Everyone was just working very hard to manage the aircraft." "[ Shouts ]" "Narrator:" "Outside, airport personnel frantically evacuate passengers from ground level." "In nearby towns, tens of thousands of people are running for their lives." "Among them -- Katsuyoshi Hayasaka." "The only nearby structure capable of withstanding the wave is the concrete school building a few blocks away." "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "We were instructed to go to the third or fourth floor as we didn't know how high the tsunami would reach." "Fire crews, traffic officers, and police were walking around in the neighborhood, shouting, "Evacuate immediately!"" "Narrator:" "The Japanese coastline is just seconds from impact." "Narrator:" "At 3:15 p.m. on March 11, 2011, the tsunami approaches the east coast of Japan." "[ Indistinct shouting ]" "[ Alarm blaring ]" "Woman:" "How quick do tsunamis come?" "Man:" "If it was close, it'll be here in moments." "They're taking it pretty seriously, obviously." "American eyewitness Brian Barnes has seconds to escape." "But he's lost." "Come on." "Somebody help me here." "Where are you headed?" "To the hill." "We got to get across the bridge, I guess." "I wonder if the bridge fell down." "Turn left." "Hopefully not." "Barnes:" "We're driving through town with the tsunami warning blaring." "I just felt like it was time to document what was happening." "I didn't actually realize that I was gonna be documenting the final moments of an entire town." "[ Alarm blaring ]" "Narrator:" "As the clock ticks toward 3:20, the biggest waves start pounding the coast." "[ Blaring continues ]" "Hundreds capture the moment on camcorders and camera phones." "In the port of Shiogama The sea erupts." "For this car and the occupants, there's no escape." "80 miles up the coast in Kamaishi, millions of cubic feet of water are forced through streets just 30 feet wide The narrow channels accelerating the speed of the flow." "I kept hearing "Tsunami," and it was 10 meters, and, "Here are the towns that it's gonna hit."" "But I had no idea of the power and force that the tsunami would bring." "Lutze:" "We all had a feeling a tsunami was gonna come just because when you have that big of an earthquake, there is just always a fear." "We have quite a bit of kids who live in those coastal cities." "We were just sending out prayers to them, you know, just making sure that hopefully they were not there when it hit." "Narrator:" "Paula and Wesley are safe on higher ground." "But tens of thousands aren't." "[ Man shouting in Japanese ]" "[ Shouting continues ]" "In Kesennuma..." "One eyewitness video shows town become sea inside four minutes." "[ Man shouting in Japanese ]" "15 seconds -- road becomes river." "1 minute, 20 seconds -- a warehouse weighing thousands of tons is picked up like a rag doll." "[ Alarm blaring ]" "Two minutes -- he spots a person in the water." "It's a flood of truly biblical proportions." "[ Man speaking Japanese ]" "Just 3 minutes, 15 seconds after it started, the torrent has reached the third floor, over 25 feet high." "Up the coast, Brian Barnes is trapped on a hilltop." "Barnes:" "Just all hell breaks loose, and the water really comes in, pushing forward." "The tree that was right below me, and the tree's cracking away from the hill." "Here it comes!" "[ Wood cracking ]" "Just completely enveloped this 40-foot tree in a matter of seconds." "My thought at the moment was, "When will it stop?" ""Is it gonna come all the way up, just swallow this entire hill?"" "And..." "You know, I mean, at that point, you just start thinking -- you know, I mean, those are your final seconds in life." "Narrator:" "By 3:55 p.m., the tsunami reaches Arahama." "Katsuyoshi Hayasaka gets to the roof of this school building just in time." "Hayasaka:" "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "As soon as someone shouted, "It's the tsunami,"" "a huge tidal wave came towards us with thundering noise and clouds of dust as walls tumbled down." "There was a crushing noise, and the air was full of debris." "Narrator:" "At 3:57, the water pours into Sendai Airport, 1 mile inland." "[ Indistinct shouting ]" "Air-traffic controller Yoshi Kibune is still trying to divert planes when he's forced to escape to a higher floor." "Kibune:" "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "I watched as my own car, which was parked in the car park in front, got swept away." "There were still people walking on the ground who were unaware of that tsunami." "I heard people yelling at them to get away, and I saw some people in confusion as they tried to escape." "[ Indistinct shouting ]" "Narrator:" "The tsunami wave doesn't stop until it reaches 6 miles inland." "[ Indistinct shouting ]" "Japan has suffered two deadly blows." "First earthquake... and then tsunami." "But a third disaster is about to strike..." "As the nation faces potential nuclear meltdown." "[ Man speaking Japanese ]" "Narrator:" "At 3:42 p.m., just 56 minutes after Japan is rocked by one of the top five earthquakes in recorded history The tsunami wave approaches Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant." "Inside are three active nuclear reactors." "Diesel generators are pumping water around the reactors to cool the nuclear fuel rods." "But these generators must stay dry." "In Tokyo, one man is watching the unfolding disaster with increasing alarm." "Nuclear Engineer Mitsuhiko Tanaka helped design the Fukushima plant." "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "As soon as I put on the television," "I learned that it was offshore of Fukushima." "That was the epicenter." "And then a tsunami warning followed." "I felt that this was going to be terrible." "Narrator:" "The plant is protected by sea walls 18 feet high." "But they are no match for the 45-foot wave." "[ Man shouting in Japanese ]" "Filmed just after the wave has hit, this astonishing video shows the damage." "Swamped by the wave, the diesel generators are destroyed." "Tanaka:" "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "There is something very important that has to happen after an automatic shutdown, and that is to immediately cool the reactor." "Narrator:" "Now there is just one backup cooling system left -- battery-operated pumps." "But they only have an 8-hour charge, and the clock is ticking." "While Fukushima edges toward nuclear meltdown, across Japan's east coast, people are fighting for their lives." "At its highest measured point, the tsunami reached 124 feet above sea level." "It broke my heart to see some of the areas that I've walked -- how many of those cities are gone?" "How many of the places have I been to that aren't there anymore?" "[ Alarm blaring ]" "How many of my friends are missing their homes or are not even alive anymore?" "Narrator:" "For many, helicopters offer the only escape route from their island prisons." "Hayasaka:" "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "We heard the noise of a helicopter in the sky." "It had a search light and hovered around the roof." "Then a rescue worker came off the helicopter and told us," ""We're going to rescue you one by one."" "Narrator:" "Brian Barnes returns to Otsuchi to discover a scene of utter devastation." "It was like nothing that you could even imagine." "You know, Hollywood couldn't even create something like this," "I don't think." "I think there was about 18,000 people that lived there." "And at this point, there's not enough people living to take care of their dead." "They've lost more than half the town." "So it was pretty much hell on Earth." "Narrator:" "But Japan's nightmare is about to get even worse." "At Fukushima Nuclear Plant, the battery-operated cooling pumps run out of power." "And then..." "Seismic event turns into nuclear catastrophe." "[ Man speaking Japanese ]" "An explosion blows the roof off reactor building one." "Two days later, another explosion hits reactor building three." "With all automatic systems disabled, the authorities have to make a terrifying decision." "They must send men into a radioactive disaster zone to manually cool the reactors." "One of the chosen few is Tokyo fireman Yukio Takayama." "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "When we got through the main gate at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant," "I think it was after 2300 hours on the 18th at night." "My very first impression was that it was like a strangely silent haunted house." "Narrator:" "This footage shows Yukio and the team as they move in toward the reactors in total darkness." "Takayama:" "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "You couldn't smell anything or see anything dangerous." "There was nothing that you could see." "All we had in front of us was the collapsed nuclear power station, reactor number three, right in front of us, which was billowing smoke." "You had this strange kind of fear." "Narrator:" "Inside the plant," "Yukio and 300 others work in shifts of 50, pouring seawater on the reactors, risking their lives to avert even greater catastrophe." "Takayama:" "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "I was frightened." "I don't know much about radiation, but I believed that being exposed to large amounts of it meant certain death." "So fear is only natural." "But counteracting that fear was a sense of duty that all of us feel." "Narrator:" "The Fukushima radiation leak is eventually given the maximum nuclear-disaster rating of 7." "The same as Chernobyl." "This is the biggest disaster to strike Japan since World War II." "And it's an event that has affected the whole Pacific region." "11 hours after the earthquake, the tsunami had crossed the entire Pacific Ocean." "Brushing past Hawaii, it traveled nearly 5,000 miles at an average speed of 450 miles per hour, eventually ripping ashore in Santa Cruz, California." "If a tremor in Japan can cause this It's an ominous warning of the seismic threat that lies under America's own coastline." "Narrator:" "As the true nightmare of Japan's earthquake and tsunami emerges..." "Earthquake scientists race to calculate the implications of this disaster for the rest of the world." "Jordan:" "It's been a remarkable time for big earthquakes." "There was a magnitude-6.1 aftershock right beneath the city of Christchurch in New Zealand." "That was a tremendously damaging event." "It killed over 180 people." "We had an earthquake off Chile, magnitude 8.8, just last year." "And now this year, magnitude 9 off Japan." "Narrator:" "In just over a year, three points on the Pacific Ring of Fire have exploded." "There is one question on everyone's minds." "Is the U.S. West Coast next?" "Jordan:" "One of the things we try and understand when an earthquake like this happens in some faraway place like Japan is, what are the implications for us in the United States?" "Narrator:" "Over 25 million people live along the Pacific Coast of North America." "From Mexico in the south to Alaska in the north, the whole region is seismically active." "One of the biggest danger zones is in California, where the Ring of Fire runs inland, straight down the San Andreas fault line." "Professor Tom Jordan has simulated the effect of a major earthquake in this area." "This shows the San Andreas fault in central California." "And what you're gonna look at here is a simulation of a magnitude-8 earthquake as it ruptures the Northern part of the San Andreas, comes speeding down at 6,000 miles per hour." "Essentially, Los Angeles is a big bowl of jelly that shakes." "This, of course, is not the kind of earthquake you'd want to be in." "Narrator:" "But further north," "America faces an even greater danger." "Jordan:" "As many people now understand, there is a fault very similar to the one that broke in Japan off the northwestern coastline of Oregon, Washington," "Northern California, and British Columbia." "Narrator:" "Lurking just 50 miles off the coast is an active seismic zone known as the Cascadia fault line." "On this fault line, oceanic crust is diving under continental North America." "And here, too, the rock is under massive pressure." "If it reaches breaking point..." "[ Rumbling ] ...The Pacific Northwest could face a similar catastrophe." "A terrifying earthquake... triggering a huge tsunami that would hit the west coast of America in just 25 minutes." "Jordan:" "An event like this which is right offshore gives very little warning time to the people that live onshore." "Narrator:" "The cities of Vancouver and Seattle are right in the firing line." "We always tell people," ""If you feel a big earthquake near the ocean," ""get to higher ground" ""because there's really not time for tsunami warning systems to kick in."" "And they sort of have to self-evacuate." "Narrator:" "Countries all around the Ring of Fire must learn from the disaster in Japan..." "By building stronger sea defenses and learning how to predict earthquakes." "We don't know how to tell you," ""Hey, next week, you know, get out of town." "There's gonna be a big earthquake."" "We are working on that problem very hard, but earthquakes turn out to be very difficult to predict." "Narrator:" "Nowhere is this problem greater than in Tokyo..." "As hundreds of aftershocks rattle an already-shaken nation." "Julian:" "I was actually a little shocked about the earthquakes that came after the big one." "I guess that would be the one area where I really wasn't prepared because from the time it happened that Friday to the time I left -- around Tuesday of the next week -- they happened constantly;" "I would say almost every hour or so." "Narrator:" "Tom Jordan has analyzed the aftershocks." "We're gonna look at the sequence of earthquakes that occurred during this incredible week." "That green dot is a foreshock that occurred 50 hours before the main shock." "You can see the main shock in red and then all of the aftershocks that occurred for the following week." "[ Rumbling ]" "Narrator:" "In the month after the big earthquake..." "Three powerful magnitude-7 aftershocks have rocked Japan." "As terrible as this earthquake has been, we haven't seen the end of it." "The aftershocks that are occurring in Japan are going to continue for months and years into the future." "And one of the big concerns we have is, where will those aftershocks be?" "The city of Tokyo, the world's largest city, sits on the edge of the current aftershock zone." "So we have to be very concerned about the seismic risk to Tokyo." "This sequence isn't over." "Narrator:" "As earthquake scientists continue to analyze what happened in Japan..." "The real human cost is only now coming to the surface." "Barnes:" "There's not a word in the English dictionary to describe the amount of catastrophic damage that the tsunami did to Northern Japan." "This was a mega disaster." "They've completely lost infrastructure." "They've lost tens of thousands of their citizens." "If you're in a position of government," "I mean, how do you even begin to start to talk about, you know, coming back from something -- a hit like this?" "It just boggles the mind." "[ Indistinct talking ]" "Narrator:" "Paula Lutze is staying in Japan to help the relief effort." "We kind of set up an organization." "We put a huge map on the wall and said," ""These are the locations that we're gonna go to to scout out to see what they need."" "So, like, for the past, what, week and a half, that's what we've been doing." "In the early morning, we get truckloads from down south, we get truckloads from up north." "We sort them, and then we ship them out in different trucks that Meysen owns." "Narrator:" "Back in the U.S.," "Wesley Julian is still coming to terms with what he witnessed." "Julian:" "Whenever I watch this footage," "I'm always taken back right to that moment." "And that moment was the scariest moment of my life." "Because of this earthquake, I've re-evaluated a lot about maybe how lucky I am because I made it out alive." "One of my friends did die in the tsunami." "So I have thought about the last time I said goodbye." "And it was just a casual "See ya."" "Woman:" "So now goodbyes are a big deal." "Yeah, so, I would say..." "They're a big deal." "Yeah." "Sorry." "[ Chuckles ]" "[ Sniffles ]" "[ Man speaking Japanese ]" "Narrator:" "Across Japan, tens of thousands of survivors live in makeshift shelters." "Hayasaka:" "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "I've been living for 70 years." "I have experienced many things in my life, and I think I'm back to square one." "We need to start from scratch." "Narrator:" "For the first time since the disaster..." "Katsuyoshi Hayasaka returns to his hometown to search for his house." "The only landmark that remains is the building that saved his life." "Hayasaka:" "[ Speaking Japanese ]" "Interpreter:" "The most important thing is, what do we do now?" "I'm not talking about a couple of individuals here." "I mean, we have to consider what all of us are going to do -- like a place to shelter from the wind and the rain." "That's what matters most." "== sync, corrected by elderman =="