BACKGROUND: Japan's March 11 disaster in facts and figures

Feb 27, 2012, 2:06 GMT

Tokyo - A magnitude-9 earthquake struck north-eastern Japan on March 11, causing a tsunami, which ravaged the coast. More than 19,000 people died or disappeared. The disaster also triggered an accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

EARTHQUAKE

The magnitude-9 quake, the strongest ever recorded in tremor-prone Japan, struck at 2:46 pm (0546 GMT).

Epicentre: 70 kilometres east of the Oshika Peninsula in Miyagi prefecture

Depth: 24 kilometres

Number of aftershocks (of magnitude 5 and above): 593

TSUNAMI

The tsunami first reached the mainland 20 minutes after the quake and hit more than 1,300 kilometres of Japan's Pacific coast from the northern island of Hokkaido to the southern island of Okinawa. It inundated more than 400 square kilometres of land, according to the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake Tsunami Joint Survey Group.

The tsunami reached up to 5 kilometres inland, the group said. The maximum run-up height measured 40.4 metres in Miyako, it said.

Heights: 11.8 metres in Ofunato, 8.9 metres in Soma and 7.7 metres in Ishinomaki Ayukawa, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency

TOLL (according to the National Police Agency)

Dead: 15,852

Missing: 3,287

Injured: 6,011

Houses destroyed: 373,707

NUCLEAR ACCIDENT

The tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station 45 minutes after the earthquake. It knocked out power, leading to the failure of the plant's cooling systems. A series of fires and blasts resulted, triggering a massive release of radioactive substances into the environment. The plant suffered core meltdowns at three of its six reactors.

More than 80,000 residents were forced to leave the area, and the government set up a no-go zone of a 20-kilometre radius around the plant in late April. As of February 9, 62,610 people had evacuated from Fukushima prefecture.

Radiation readings: 1.12 microsieverts an hour in Fukushima city, about 60 kilometres north-west of the plant, compared with a pre-disaster level of 0.04 microsieverts; 13.15 microsieverts an hour in Futaba, 7 kilometres from the plant; and 5.2 microsieverts an hour in Iitate, 39 kilometres north-west of the plant.

ONE YEAR ON

People still living in temporary housing: 260,840 in the prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima

State of nuclear plant: Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda declared on December 16 that a cold shutdown has been achieved at the plant. That means no nuclear reactions are occurring and little radiation is leaking into the environment. The declaration marked an end to the emergency phase of the disaster and the start of the clean-up and scrapping of the reactors.

Number of reactors shut down across Japan: As of February 21, only two of the nation's 54 reactors were in service. All 54 reactors in Japan were scheduled to be suspended for servicing by the end of April. Unless a utility restarts one, none would be left running after that.

Waste disposal: A total of 22.53 million tons of rubble and waste are estimated to have resulted from the disaster. About 5 per cent of it had been disposed of as of February 20.

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