Walk Through Earthquake Rubble Online
By HIROKO TABUCHI |
GoogleA screenshot from Google's Street View showing damage from the tsunami that hit Japan.
A toppled building; mangled cars and miles and miles of debris:
Google has uploaded scenes from the Japanese tsunami's aftermath to its Street View service, offering a unique if heart-wrenching virtual peek into the destruction along Japan's Pacific coast.
Google intends to send its camera-laden cars periodically to the disaster zone to create a digital archive of the destruction, as well as the progress made in reconstruction, Kei Kawai, Street View senior project manager, said in a blog post.
The project is part of a response by Google after the March quake and tsunami that has helped it win new friends in Japan.
Street View photographers have now driven about 44,000 kilometers, or over 27,000 miles, through the affected areas, according to Google. (Coverage of swathes of Fukushima remains sketchy, partly because of radiation fears.) Google cars took the latest set of photos between July and November.
Another site, Memories for the Future, lets users jump back and forth between pre- and post-tsunami landscapes. In a suburb of Sendai, for example, neat rice paddies give way to wastelands strewn with debris.
"If you start inland and venture out toward the coast, you'll see the idyllic countryside change dramatically, becoming cluttered with mountains of rubble and debris as you get closer to the ocean," said Mr. Kawai.
"Seeing the street-level imagery of the affected areas puts the plight of these communities into perspective and ensures that the memories of the disaster remain relevant and tangible for future generations."
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