INTERACTIVE: Japan earthquake, then and now (Click on the link
to view the interactive presentation) On March 11, 2011, at 2:46
p.m. local time, a magnitude 8.9 earthquake jolted the northeast
coastal area of Japan. The epicenter was in Oshika Peninsula of
Tohoku. But the largest devastation was wrought on Iwate
Prefecture, devastated by tsunami waves that reached as high as
40 meters (133 feet). It would turn out to be the strongest
earthquake to hit Japan ever, more powerful than the Great Kanto
earthquake that devastated Tokyo in 1923 or more recently, the
Great Hanshin earthquake that shook the Kobe area in 1995. The
quake took more than 19,000 lives with total damages estimated
at over US$122 billion. Nearly a year later, a photographer of
Agence France Presse (AFP) went back to the scenes where the
original pictures of the quake were taken by AFP. Here, in an
interactive format, is how the area looked like before and
after.