When his hospital started to shudder violently on the afternoon of March 11, Sen Hiraizumi sensed immediately that it was an earthquake of far greater force than he had ever experienced. When the shaking failed to quickly subside, his apprehension turned to fear: he knew enough about his country's seismic history to know that a tsunami could not be far behind. Over the course of a frantic 20 min, Hiraizumi, the deputy director of Yamada Hospital in Iwate prefecture, and his staff moved more than 40 i npatients to the roof of the two-storey building, then watched in horror as the waves roared through their town, sweeping away cars and houses and swallowing up people who had left it seconds too late to escape.
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