Rescuing Perishable Evidence

摘要

The Japanese and American engineers stood atop a tsunami "refuge hill" near Sendai, Japan, and looked across an endless, muddy landscape of structures wrecked by the March 11 tsunami. One of the investigators stretched a long measuring pole into a surviving tree. Its branches apparently had been broken by a massive stone monument—commemorating a previous tsunami of 77 years ago—that was launched from its hilltop pedestal by the latest tsunami. "Three meters," he said, indicating how much higher the water must have been than the hill. "About 10 feet."