Last year the country of Japan suffered a devastating disaster of unspeakable proportions. A massive earthquake on the eastern coast of the country triggered a deadly tsunami that caused the flooding of the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Three dominos fell at once, resulting in a significant and tragic loss of life and property. I visited Japan earlier this year. As I traveled throughout the Tokyo area, I couldn’t see any evidence of these disasters. I asked several residents of the city and all told me that the earthquake did not affect the rest of Japan very much. They all discussed how ready Japan was for earthquakes, having suffered many over the centuries. It was in Tokyo that I learned that not many people actually died as the result of the earthquake. Most of the deaths were the result of drowning in the flood waters created by the tsunami. Over and over again, the people I met wanted to talk about how well their buildings were designed to resist the destructive force of earthquakes.
In 2003 a much smaller earthquake struck Iran. Measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale, the Bam earthquake had much less energy but was more destructive than the 2011 Japanese earthquake, which had a magnitude of 9.0. (Data provided by United States Geological Survey.)