On the one year anniversary of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, we have updated Google Maps with the latest satellite imagery of the affected areas.
As you can see in the photo below, the new imagery covers the Northeastern coast from Hachinohe in Aomori Prefecture down to Hitachi City in Ibaraki Prefecture. This high-resolution imagery from GeoEye was taken in February and March and provides a telling view of what the affected areas look like a year into recovery.
To access the satellite imagery in Google Maps, search for the locations to bring up the areas in the Maps viewport, and then click on the “Satellite” icon in the upper right corner. The updated imagery is also available in Google Earth.
Since the earthquake and tsunami last March 11th, we have been updating satellite and aerial imagery of the area to show the effects of the disaster as well as the pace of rebuilding. The new imagery shows that the road to full recovery is still long. There are, however, signs of progress — from large trucks on the streets to newly repaired bridges and bustling ports.
For those who live in the area or anyone interested in following the recovery efforts, we encourage you to sign up for the Follow Your World tool to automatically receive notifications whenever we refresh imagery of the Tohoku area.
Posted by Kei Kawai, Senior Product Manager, on behalf of the International Crisis Response team
