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5M Leadership → Signal Integrity Resources → The Evacuation Zone Map

Signal Line Protection, Episode 6, Before the Fracture

154,000 people told to leave

Three evacuation orders across four days. Step through the expanding zones, 3km, 10km, 20km, and the human cost of each. The geography of a buried signal.

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The human cost, March 11, 2011
The evacuation zones expand
Three orders. Four days. 154,000 people told to leave.
Fukushima Daiichi 3 km 10 km 20 km N Pacific Ocean ~20 km
Zone 1, 3 km radius
Immediate evacuation
March 11, 2011, 20:50 JST
Within hours of the tsunami strike, an evacuation order is issued for all residents within 3 kilometres of the plant. The order comes before the first explosion. Operators are still attempting to restore cooling. The radius will not hold.
~1,800 residents evacuated
Zone 2, 10 km radius
First expansion
March 12, 2011, 05:44 JST
Before dawn on March 12, the zone expands to 10 kilometres as Unit 1 deteriorates. At 15:36 the same day, the Unit 1 hydrogen explosion confirms what operators feared. The 10km order covers towns, farms, and coastal communities that had survived the tsunami itself.
~59,000 residents evacuated
Zone 3, 20 km radius
Full evacuation order
March 12, 2011, 18:25 JST
By evening on March 12, the zone reaches 20 kilometres. As Units 2 and 3 deteriorate through March 14 and 15, a shelter-in-place order is added for the 20–30km band. In total, 154,000 people will leave, many permanently. Some will never be permitted to return.
154,000 total evacuated
What the evacuation produced
2,202
Disaster-related deaths, evacuation stress, loss of medical care, displacement
30+ yrs
Time before some zones may be resettled, if ever
12%
Of evacuees who had returned to their homes by 2021
$100B+
Economic cost, vs $1B to have acted on the 2008 study

The evacuation zones are the geography of a buried signal. Each ring represents not the scale of the earthquake, not the height of the tsunami, but the organizational distance between a 2008 study and a decision that was never made. The wave was 1.7 metres shorter than predicted. The engineers had been almost exactly right. The organization had been given three years to act.

Companion resource
Signal architecture determines whether the right information reaches decision authority. The Decision Rights Resources cover what happens when it does, from the Deepwater Horizon episode.
Decision Rights Resources →
All Signal Integrity resources
Timeline
2008 to 2011: Three years of delay
Meltdown sequence
41 minutes to three meltdowns
Decision pathway
How the signal died at each gate
Evacuation map
154,000 people, three expanding zones
Framework
Signal Line Protection, the three elements
Take the diagnostic
Signal Integrity Diagnostic tool