GENEVA
Ten years after the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE), I have come to understand that the success of the country s risk approach has as much to do with community readiness and human connection as it does with visible feats of structural engineering.
Sitting in my small office in Haiti in March 2011, I read with concern the news coming from the northeast coast of Japan. A massive earthquake had struck offshore, triggering a tsunami of such force that it toppled seawalls and other defenses, washed away entire towns and villages, killed up to 20,000 people, and set off one of the worst nuclear meltdowns in history.