Visualizing Japan's Power Outages After Earthquake, Tsunami

JAPAN -- March 21, 2011 at 3:12 PM EDT

Visualizing Japan's Power Outages After Earthquake, Tsunami

Power losses on March 12 indicated in red. Image courtesy NOAA National Geophysical Data Center.

The massive earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11 decimated villages along the northeastern coast and knocked out power to a vast swath of the country.

To determine how severe the power outage was, the U.S. Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program compared a March 12 image to one from 2010. NASA released this image Monday, showing the areas where power was knocked out in red, while the yellow indicates areas where power remained. Bright green spots indicate lights that were newly detected this month.

About 601,000 people remain without electricity as of Monday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported. Power has been restored to 234,000 people in the last few days.

The PBS NewsHour welcomes your original comments. We reserve the right to remove posts that do not follow these basic guidelines: comments must be relevant to the topic of the post; may not include profanity, personal attacks or hate speech; may not promote a business or raise money; may not be spam. Anything you post should be your own work. The PBS NewsHour reserves the right to read on the air and/or publish on its Web site or in any medium now known or unknown the comments or e-mails that we receive. By submitting comments, you agree to the PBS Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which include more details.