Presented by Dr Masaho Yoshida
A magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck Japan’s Noto peninsula on 1 January 2024, and the ground shaking and accompanying tsunami caused widespread destruction in areas adjacent to the epicenter. More than 240 people were killed and nearly 1,300 were injured, making it the deadliest earthquake in Japan since the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake. Liquefaction was severe in Wajima and Suzu in Ishikawa Prefecture, as well as in the adjacent prefectures of Kanazawa, Niigata and Fukui. In addition, landslides caused extensive damage to highway and railway embankments. This presentation will focus on the damage observed following a series of reconnaissance works in the affected areas and lessons learned from the disaster.
Dr Masaho Yoshida is currently a professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the National Institute of Technology, Fukui College. He obtained his Bachelor and Doctor of Engineering degrees from Kanazawa University, Japan. He was also a Visiting Scholar at UC San Diego from 2005-2006. His research interests include geo-disaster mitigation, earthquake engineering, soil liquefaction, and lateral spreading. He has been involved in many post-disaster reconnaissance investigations in Japan and overseas, including the 2018 Sulawesi earthquake in Indonesia.