Five years ago a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off Japan’s northeastern shore—the most powerful earthquake ever recorded to have hit Japan—generating enormous tsunami waves that spread across miles of shoreline, climbing as high as 130 feet (40 meters). The powerful inundation of seawater tore apart coastal towns and villages, carrying ships inland as thousands of homes were flattened, then washed tons of debris and vehicles back out to sea. Damage to the reactors at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant then caused a third disaster, contaminating a wide area that still forces nearly 100,000 residents to live as evacuees. The March 11 earthquake and subsequent disasters cost tens of billions of dollars, and nearly 16,000 lives.
5 Years Since the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake
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A tsunami reaches Miyako City, overtopping seawalls and flooding streets in Iwate Prefecture, Japan, after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck the area March 11, 2011. #
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Tsunami waves hit the coast of Minamisoma in Fukushima Prefecture, photographed on March 11, 2011 by Sadatsugu Tomizawa and released via Jiji Press on March 21, 2011. #
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Toya Chiba, a reporter for local newspaper Iwate Tokai Shimbun, is swept by a tsunami at Kamaishi port, Iwate Prefecture on March 11, 2011, in a photograph released by Kamaishi Port Office via Kyodo on April 14, 2011. Chiba managed to survive the tsunami by grabbing a dangling rope and climbing onto a coal heap around 8 meters high after being swept along for about 30 meters, Kyodo News reported. #
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This picture taken by a Sendai city official, Hiroshi Kawahara on March 11, 2011, shows muddy tsunami water swallowing vehicles and houses at a bridge in Sendai city in Miyagi Prefecture. #
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In this image made from Japan's NTV/NNN, a news program, smoke ascends from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant's Unit 3 in Okumamachi, northern Japan, on March 14, 2011. The second hydrogen explosion in three days rocked Japan's stricken nuclear plant, sending a massive column of smoke into the air and wounding 11 workers. #
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Officials in protective gear check for signs of radiation on children from the evacuation area near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Koriyama, on March 13, 2011. #
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A Japanese home is seen adrift in the Pacific Ocean on March 13, 2011. The structure was spotted as ships and aircraft from the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group were searching for survivors in the coastal waters near Sendai, Japan. #
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Five years later, on February 25, 2016, TEPCO employees work at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The decontamination and decommissioning process at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s embattled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant continues in Okuma, Japan. Quake and tsunami damage to the nuclear reactors in 2011 caused a nuclear disaster which still forces 99,750 people to live as evacuees, housed away from contaminated areas. #
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On February 26, 2016, five years after the disaster, a lone house sits on the scarred landscape, inside the exclusion zone, close to the devastated Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Namie, Fukushima, Japan. The area is now closed to residents due radiation contamination from the Fukishima nuclear disaster. #
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Personal items are strewn around a tsunami damaged home inside the exclusion zone close to the devastated Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on February 26, 2016, in Minamisoma, Fukushima, Japan. #
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A graveyard stands in the tsunami scarred landscape, inside the exclusion zone, close to the devastated Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on February 26, 2016 in Namie, Fukushima Japan. Thousands of homes used to stand here. #
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The passing of five years shows in a parking lot, as vegetation and the elements begin to take their toll on vehicles, homes, and businesses inside the deserted exclusion zone close to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on February 26, 2016 in Tomioka, Fukushima, Japan. #
Christopher Furlong / Getty
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