Japan raises specter of more devastating quake
The Nankai Trough extends for hundred of kilometers parallel with the Japanese coast, off heavily populated areas south of Tokyo. A new report has issued a chilling warning of what a major quake in the trough would mean. An earthquake in the Nankai Trough could be on a scale 10 times that of the disaster that befell Tohoku in March 2011. More worryingly, experts warn that a mega-quake is overdue. A little over two years after vast stretches of northeastern Japan were laid waste by the worst natural disaster to strike Japan in living memory, killing close to 19,000 people, a 400-page study has warned that a far more serious threat lies brooding just off the coast. A report compiled by the Central Disaster Management Council, as a direct result of the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake of two years ago, predicts that a magnitude-9 quake in the volatile Nankai Trough could trigger a tsunami as much as 30 meters high that could kill 320,000 people. The disaster would d