Fukushima: Five years after Japan's worst nuclear disaster By Will Ripley, Junko Ogura and James Griffiths, CNN
Updated 4:19 AM ET, Fri March 11, 2016
Fukushima, Japan (CNN)Soichi Saito was in hospital when the earthquake hit. The 65-year old had just undergone surgery for prostate cancer and was recuperating when the walls of his 6th floor room began to shake. Medical equipment came crashing to the floor.
For almost six minutes on March 11, 2011, the 9.0 magnitude earthquake — the worst to ever hit Japan — rocked the country.
The quake was so strong that it permanently moved Japan's main island, Honshu, more than two meters to the east. The impact also raised huge waves up to 40 meters high that, as people were still reeling from the aftershocks, began crashing into the country.
More than 20,000 people died or went missing in the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, while hundreds of thousands more lost their homes.
The earthquake and tsunami were just the beginning however.
Saito recalls staring helplessly out of his hospital room window as waves inundated the town beneath him. His first thought was of the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
"If the tsunami caused the plant to lose power to cool the reactors, it would be a disaster."
Back home, Saito's family received the order to evacuate as fast as they could, abandoning the farm where they grew spinach in tidy rows of greenhouses.
The urgency was such that Saito's wife left their dog Maru tied to a pole near the home.
"She thought maybe they'd have to evacuate for a couple days at most." (Maru was rescued by animal protection workers and, months later, reunited with his family.)
But what Saito's family, along with the rest of Japan, didn't realize, was that the situation in the Fukushima plant was quickly becoming a disaster of its own, one that would shock the country as much as the earthquake itself.
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Poster Comment:
Much more info at source. Fukushima is more than a disaster.