UW played major role in telling story of Japan quake

Jody Bourgeois vividly recalls the great Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011. She in a university office in Sapporo, Japan, and as the tragedy unfolded she soon became much in demand for reporters bringing the story to people in the United States. She spent much of the day after the earthquake - and parts of many days to come - doing s via Skype and email. She also chronicled events on her own blog. As tsunami damage and earthquake aftershocks took an increasingly obvious toll on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, people in North America became anxious about the possibility of radioactive contamination crossing the Pacific Ocean. Dan Jaffe, a science and technology professor at UW Bothell who was the first to document air pollution from Asia making it across the Pacific, provided reassurance that the danger from radiation was low. Subsequent air sample testing led by UW physics faculty R.G. Hamish Robertson and Michael Miller showed Jaffe's assessment was accurate.