Revisiting “Japan’s Killer Quake”
Ten years ago today, one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history took place 62 miles off the coast of Japan. The resulting tsunami destroyed property, took tens of thousands lives, and triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
In 2012, the PBS science program NOVA won a duPont-Columbia Award for reporting on the quake. The in-depth documentary the NOVA team produced, Japan’s Killer Quake, brought together vast amounts of information and footage to clearly answer critical scientific and historical questions. The piece explained the science behind massive earthquakes, how they cause tsunamis, and what kinds of early warning systems scientists use to know when major seismic events happen.
Within days of the earthquake, an international NOVA team was in Japan filming. The resulting hour-long documentary blended stories of the human tragedy gathered through authoritative on-site reporting with NOVA’s science-based mission. Beyond telling the story of the earthquake’s aftermath, the piece also showed how an earthquake of such extraordinary power could have caused even more devastation.
Ten years later, Japan’s Killer Quake remains a gripping, informative piece that not only captured the scale of the tragedy but also offered a scientific perspective on earthquakes and natural disasters.