The 8.9-magnitude earthquake that hit Japan last week is considered as the fifth strongest earthquake in the world since 1900 and the most powerful recorded in the most earthquake-prepared country.

The tsunami was not as devastating as the previous ones that struck in different parts of the world. Many establishments were able to withstand the tremors. The earthquake was 700 times stronger than the 8.8 ttormagnitude that hit Haiti last year but the number of casualties and deaths is relatively lower than the more than 200,000 killed in the Caribbean country.

According to David Applegate, a senior science adviser at the US Geological Survey, the earthquake was so strong that it caused a rupture measuring 186 miles long and 93 miles wide in the sea floor located off the eastern coast of Japan. The quakes was tectonic in origin as one huge tectonic plate bumped into another, similar to the earthquake that caused the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia.

Scientist Brian Atwater of the US Geological Survey revealed that the energy generated by the quake is equivalent to a month’s energy consumption in the United States. Its strength caused the island of Honshu to move 8 feet to the east. It caused the rotation of the earth to speed up by 1.6 microseconds, according to NASA.

Japan has long prepared itself for the so-called “Big One” but the epicenter of the earthquake was located hundreds of miles north where experts believed it would strike. This region of Japan has not been hit by an earthquake of this magnitude for over 1,100 years. It happened at the boundary of the North American and Pacific plates in the northwestern portion of the “Ring of Fire” which was a relatively quiet region.

The worst recorded earthquake in Japan took place in 1923 in Kanto. It was a magnitude 8.3 killing 143,000 people. In 1995, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake caused the death of 6,400 people. According to Kathleen Tierney, Director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado, that earthquake surprised experts because there had not been a megaquake in the area in modern times.

Japan’s early warning system is based on the kind of wave generated by faults. It alerts residents 15 seconds before the tremors happen. Sensors monitor the earliest arriving, fast-moving primary or compression waves. During the last three years, the warning system enabled alerts to be announced on television giving residents time to hide under doorframes and turn off the gas in cooking stoves.

In the United States, the US Geological Survey and research teams in California have been studying how to develop early warning systems for earthquakes but there is still no system in place.

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