Blogs from the Coastal Structures Team - Tohoku, Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011 - page 85

Figure A.14 Naruse River's north entrance jetty, looking east (Source:
Ron Noble)
For the remainder of the day, we visited Matsushima City, Sendai Port and its
fronting beach, Sendai Beach at Arahama, and the north entrance side of the Natori
River. Matsushima City and its beach, boat docks and boat anchorages were protected
by numerous closely spaced offshore islands that resulted in no visual damage to its
shoreline. Even though our team was not tasked to cover major commercial port
facilities, we made a quick visit to Sendai Port which had sustained significant
damage. We visited one of their large gantry container cranes which had sustained a
small amount of damage; however, the port had also been impacted from earthquake
related subsidence and settlement. The tsunami inundation was reported to be three to
four meters deep, which resulted in severe damage to the various port industrial plant
facilities. Numerous containers were damaged; about 1,000 had been washed into the
water.
On the port's south side, we viewed from a distance its beach, tsunami seawall
protection, and offshore breakwaters. The beach appeared in good condition and
minimum damage was reported for the offshore breakwater protection other than a
leaning entry lighthouse due to bottom scour. A portion of the tsunami seawall had
experienced heavy damage but was already undergoing repairs.
Near Sendai, Arahama Beach had offshore breakwaters for beach protection and a
long seawall onshore for back shore protection. The offshore protection was a series
of six detached breakwaters, each about 75 to 100 meters long with about a 50-meter
gap. Each breakwater had been constructed with triangular concrete armor units as
cover protection. The seawall was a concrete wall about 4.5 meters high. Despite
these structures, almost the entire community had been completely destroyed. Scour
holes were quite common. Directly behind the seawall was a small concrete restroom
building completely intact, however one side of this restroom had a scour hole 2.6
meters in depth. Numerous other scour holes could be seen in this area adjacent to