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this is the voa special english techology report.a powerful earthquake struck the northeast coast japan at two forty six pm local time on march eleven. japan  media logical agacy were least first tsunami warnings just three minutes later. the country has one of the best earthquake early warning systems in the world. there are more than four thousand seismic intensity meters in place throughout japan to measure earthquake activity .these meters provide information within  two minutes seven earthquake happening. information about the strength and the centers earthquake can be learned with three minutes.there are also concrete sea walls around much of the japanese coastline.but these measures proved no match for the powerful earthquake and tsunami .Costas Synolakis is the tsunami expert  with the department of civil and environmental engineering at the university of Southern California in Los Angeles.  japan is one of the most well prepared countries on earth in terms of tsunami warnings .they had a  warning . i think what went wrong is that they had not anticipated 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 event in the last one hundred fifty years. and scientists had not expected such a large earthquake happening of the coast of japan.the nine point zero magnitude earthquake was the forth most powerful earthquake every recorded wordwide. it was also the worst earthquake ever hit japan.the tsunami waves that followed were reported to has reached as high as  thirty meters in some areas .  Costas Synolakis says japan concrete sea walls were not built to handle such  high waves . the concrete sea walls in many places in japan about 10 meters ,that is about 33 feet .In Sendai ,they were about 3 meters ,that is 10 feet.so that shows you the

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