Abstract
A mega tsunami hit the Sendai Bay Coast on March 11, 2011, overtopped coastal levees and intruded into far inland while sweeping houses, people and others away. Eighty percent of the levees, which rimmed the coast to protect the land from storm surges together with the wind waves were broken in various degrees of damage by the tsunami. The national and local governments decided to rebuild the levees to be durable even for mega tsunamis. This requirement motivates us to find the destruction mechanism of the coastal levees. We conducted field investigations and collected the tsunami records, aerial photos and tsunami videos. Especially, the video taken from the helicopter “Michinokugo” which flew along the Sendai Coast to the south during the attack of the tsunami’s leading wave enables us to see the breaking process. Integrated analysis leads to two step mechanisms of the destruction: the first step of breaking the upper structure of the levees by the surging bore of the leading wave and the second step of expanding erosion by the return flow concentration.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Miyagi Prefectural Government (2004) Sendai bay coast basic protection project, chapter 5
The 2011 Tohoku Earthquake Tsunami Joint Survey Group (2012) Tohoku earthquake tsunami information. http://www.coastal.jp/ttjt/
Acknowledgement
This study was supported by the Specific Project Grant 2012 by IRIDeS and by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), 23360193. These supports are gratefully acknowledged. The authors also wish to express their gratitude to Ms. Yuriko Takeda for the excellent GIS analysis.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Iida, T., Mano, A., Udo, K., Tanaka, H. (2014). Destruction Patterns and Mechanisms of Coastal Levees on the Sendai Bay Coast Hit by the 2011 Tsunami. In: Kontar, Y., Santiago-Fandiño, V., Takahashi, T. (eds) Tsunami Events and Lessons Learned. Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research, vol 35. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7269-4_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7269-4_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-7268-7
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-7269-4
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)