Japan had an unfortunate end to 2023 with a massive earthquake and to add on to that, a rough start to the new year due to a plane crashing within the first week of 2024.
The earthquake alone had a domino effect, triggering tsunamis, fires, and aftershocks and has been the largest quake in the area in the past century. Due to the location of Japan, being directly over four moving tectonic plates, the cause of the earthquake happens to be because of how prone and unstable this location is. “Most major earthquakes in Japan are caused by the Pacific Plate off the east coast, which slides beneath another plate. This subduction was the driving force behind Japan’s largest ever recorded earthquake — a magnitude-9.1 quake that struck the Tohoku region in 2011 and triggered a massive tsunami — says Yoshihiro Hiramatsu, a seismologist at Kanazawa University in Japan.”
The morning after, JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency recorded an additional 146 mild quakes. With the large amount of sizable aftershocks a seismologist, Aitaro Kato says, “The source area is very wide; his giant fracture is of a type known as a reverse fault, which occurs when one slab of rock moves on top of another; multiple fault ruptures inside the plate probably triggered the aftershocks that followed the larger earthquake.”
Moving on to the new year, two days into 2024; “On January 2, 2024 in Tokyo, Japan 379 passengers witnessed their plane burst into flames as it began to touchdown at Tokyo’s Haneda airport in the evening.” As far as they know it was a collision with a coast guard craft that caused the damage leading to the actual explosion of the plane.
Fortunately, all the passengers were able to completely evacuate the plane with a small but significant amount of injuries. “The JAL flight touches down right behind coast guard aircraft and rams into it, creating an orange fireball against the night sky. The much smaller Bombardier is quickly engulfed in fire, while the A350 — covered in flames and spewing gray smoke — continues down the runway for about 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) before coming to a stop, where fire engines and emergency workers scramble to put out the fire.” Sources were able to review the footage capturing the collision; “NHK television airs footage from its monitoring camera set up at the Haneda airport showing the coast guard Bombardier moving from the C5 taxiway onto the runway, during the two-minute interval, and stopping there just before the collision.” This brutal awakening was the beginning of what seems to be a chain or bad luck for citizens in Japan. Given the tragedies they’ve encountered within the first month it’s difficult to tell what kind of year they can expect.
