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This is the VOA special English program technology report.
A powerful earthquake struck the northeastern coast of Japan at 2:46PM local on March.11.Japan's Meteorological agency released its first tsunami warnings just 3 minutes later.The country has one of the best earthquake early warning system in the world.There are more than 4,000 science make intensity meters inplace through out Japan to measure earthquake activity. This meters provide imformation within 2 minutes of an earthquake happening.Imformation about the string and the centre of the earthquake can be learned within 3 minutes.There are also concrete sea walls around much Japanese coast line.But these measures proved no match for the powerful earthquake and tsunami.Casttas Sinolakis is a tsumani expert with the department of the civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Japan is one of most well-prepared countrys on earth in terms of its tsunami warnings.They had a warning,I think what was wronged is that they had not a anticipated in the size of this event.
He says there are two reasons for this,Japan has not had any event anywhere near as big as this one in the last 150 years.And scientists had not expected such a large earthquake happening of the coast of Japan.The 9.0 magnitude earthquake was the fourth most powerful earthquake ever recorded worldwide.It was also the worst earthquake ever to hit Japan,the tsunami waves that followed were reported to at reached as high as 13 meters in some areas.Kastasinolakis says Japan's concrete sea walls were not build to handle such high waves.
The concrete sea walls in many places in the Japan are about 7 meters that about 33 feet,in the Sendai there were about 3 meters that about 10 feet.So,That's shows you that at least in that area they were not expecting the such size of wave.
A tsunami wave can travel as fast as 800 kilometers for hour.To get to a higher ground,people would often have to travel for many kilometers.This can take more time than a fast traveling tsunami will permit.This is especially true in cases like Japan where the center of the earthquake struck so close to the coast line.The tsunami waves followed almost immediately.Experts say early warning systems will continue to be limited by this facts until earthquakes and tsunamis can be predicted.
And that's the VOA special English technology report,written by Jone sense.You can find more news about the disaster in Japan at out website voaspecialenglish.com.You can also find transcripts,MP3s and pubcasts at our website.And you can find us at Facebook,and Youtube at voalearningenglish.I'm Steve Ember.

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