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THE extraordinary efforts to clear up the aftermath of the T艒hoku earthquake can be seen here in the town of Rikuzentakata, Iwate prefecture, in north-east Japan.
The left-hand image was taken following the magnitude 9.0 megathrust event that struck off the coast on 11 March. The right-hand picture was taken at the start of June.
The most powerful recorded earthquake to have hit Japan triggered a massive tsunami, with . The water annihilated Rikuzentakata.
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The Japanese prime minister, , remarked that it was the . Official national statistics list more than . The overall cost of the damage could be , making it the most expensive natural disaster on record.
The timescale for recovery depends on many factors, from the to the duration of the clean-up at the . Nuclear fuel at the plant melted, the reactors were shaken by a series of explosions and there was widespread radioactive contamination. The accident was given .
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development a short-term decline in Japan’s economic output, from 3.9 per cent of GDP growth in 2010 to 0.8 per cent in 2011, and a bounce back to 2.3 per cent next year.
These images suggest that full recovery remains a long way off.
