The Earthquake and Tsunami that devastated Japan - March 2011

1. 11 March 2011 Earthquake 8.9 & Tsunami The strongest quake ever recorded in Japan on Friday unleashed a monster tsunami that has reportedly claimed thousands of lives, and a minister warned there could be a discharge of radiation from a nuclear plant. The towering wall of water generated by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake -- the seventh biggest in history -- pulverised the northeastern city of Sendai, where police reportedly said that 200-300 bodies had been found on the coast.

2. Large areas of Japan's northern Pacific coast have been swamped by a devastating tsunami, engulfing entire towns following a major 8.9 offshore quake. The massive wave of water, as high as 10 metres in some parts, reached more than five kilometres inland. Towns and farms around Sendai city in northern Japan have been engulfed by a seven-metre tsunami, while a four-metre wave swamped parts of Kamaishi on the Pacific coast. The Cosmo oil refinery in Chiba prefecture outside Tokyo has exploded, sending flames dozens of metres into the air, with firefighters unable to contain the inferno. It is one of more than 40 blazes burning across Japan.

6. Tsunami engulfs Natori

7. Whirlpool seen off Orai city

8. Sendai Airport is engulfed by the massive wall of water

9. Tsunami sweeps trees, houses in Natori

10. Gas containers ablaze after Japan quake

11. Train strewn amid quake rubble

12. Aeroplanes lie in tsunami debris at Sendai Airport

13. Houses and cars swept out to sea in Kesennuma city

14. Water inundates Miyagi post tsunami

15. People are rescued from tsunami-destroyed buildings

16. Japan quake sparks widespread destruction

17. Oil refinery burns after massive quake

18. Burning houses swept away in tsunami

19. Road collapsed after earthquake in Japan

20. The first quake struck about 382 kilometres northeast of Tokyo.

21. * 688 confirmed killed in quake-tsunami, 10,000 people unaccounted for. * Cooling system of a reactor at Fukushima No. 1 atomic plant fails on Saturday and a second reactor malfunctions on Sunday morning. * Smoke billows after an explosion at the plant located about 250 kilometres (160 miles) northeast of Tokyo. * Workers douse the stricken reactor with sea water to try to avert catastrophe. Japan battles twin disasters, trying to stop a radiation leak at a nuclear plant after an 8.9 quake triggers tsunami up to 10 meters (30 feet), with waves sweeping away homes, crops, vehicles and submerging farmland.

22. Japan Self-Defense Force cradles the four-month-old in Ishinomaki. When soldiers reached the ruined down of Ishinomaki, a coastal town northeast of Sendai, they found young parents sheltering in ruins with their four-month-old daughter.

23. A boy waits for boiled water to cook instant noodles outside a shelter in Sendai . Many children have had trouble sleeping, woken repeatedly in the night by bad dreams, while others have mentally shut down, shunning any company but their parents, whom they refuse to let out of their sight for even a moment. Grandparents have tried their own form of therapy, telling children stories of the difficulties they faced in their own childhood during and after World War II, and how they managed to overcome them. Inside a classroom of Kesennuma Elementary School, where some 400 people have been sheltered, 10-year-old Shotaro Koizumi watched over his six-year-old sister Haruna, while their father worked with other adults to run errands and exchange information.