Tsunami damage characteristics and cause-of-death tendency: A case study on the 2011 Tohoku earthquake tsunami in Miyagi Prefecture’s municipalities

Abstract

 The Great East Japan Earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011. Japan was severely damaged by the disaster and various previous studies have been conducted. Seto and Imamura (2020) analyzed the cause and location of death using information on victims provided by the Miyagi Prefectural Police Headquarters, and showed the trends for each prefecture. In this study, we examined the cause-of-death tendency based on the location of the body in Miyagi Prefecture's municipalities and obtained the following results. The breakdown of each cause of death by municipality in Miyagi Prefecture was clarified. We showed that the trends in causes of death differed greatly between coastal and inland areas. Drowning was related to the estimated daytime exposed population which demonsrates a relationship between inundation ratio and population density for the plain areas. It can be also suggested that death due to fire occurs locally and is related to the total burned area. It is also found that unknown death is related to debris amount in relation to the inundated area. Hypothermia was suggested to be an effect of loss of body temperature due to tsunami exposure.