text: A wave approaches Miyako City from the Heigawa estuary in Iwate Prefecture after a magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck the area in Miyako, Japan, on March 11, 2011. It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the country and the fourth most powerful to ever be recorded globally. It killed nearly 16,000 people and caused food and water shortages to hundreds of thousands in the aftermath. The tsunami precipitated the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the most severe nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster