Deirdre Langeland - Meltdown: Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima

Fukushima. To people all around the world, the name has come to mean one thing: nuclear disaster. They remember several long weeks in March 2011 when they turned on the news every day and saw thick smoke billowing from nuclear reactors, carrying potentially deadly radiation into the environment.

In reality, Fukushima is a prefecture in Japana government district similar to a state in America. Its the southernmost prefecture in the Tohoku region, an area of about 25,000 square miles that is famous for its remote beauty. Dense forests and volcanic peaks define the landscape. Fog drifting in from the northern Pacific Ocean blankets its rice paddies, apple orchards, and cattle farms. Before the disaster, Fukushima was known as a lush farming area that supplied produce, dairy products, and seafood to the rest of Japan. But in the space of a few days, all of that changed.

Roughly midway along the Fukushima coast, six nuclear reactors were lined up in a neat row along the shore. Owned by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, they were part of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. (Dai-ichi means one in Japanese. A second power plant, called Fukushima Daini, meaning two, was located about 6 miles down the shore.)

On March 11, 2011, the plants were hit by a one-two punch: First, there was the earthquake, the strongest ever measured in Japan. Then came the tsunami, an inescapable wall of water that killed tens of thousands. Together, they crippled the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, setting off a chain of events that threatened the safety of millions.

Like most disasters, the Great Tohoku Earthquake and tsunami came with little warning. There had been foreshocks, smaller earthquakes that shook the countryside for days before the main event, but theres nothing unusual about earthquakes in Japan. On average, Japan experiences about two thousand earthquakes that are strong enough to be felt every year. In real time, its impossible to know whether an earthquake is its own event or a precursor of something bigger on the way. Only afterward, once the Big One has come and gone, can seismologists go back and see the pattern that led up to it. And so, the millions of residents of Tohoku went about their business that afternoon in March as they had on all of the others before.

That was certainly true for Ryoichi Usuzawa, a sixty-two-year-old grandfather with salt-and-pepper hair who was working from his home in the town of Otsuchi. He was pleased with himself because he had just finished writing a report and was binding it into a folder and adding tabs. His wife was downstairs with the family dog, a Shiba Inu named Taro. It seemed like a pretty ordinary Friday afternoon, and Ryoichi was happy to be wrapping up the weeks work.

But what happened next was anything but ordinary. Suddenly, there was a[n] enormous earthquake, he later told a journalist. Nothing like what wed experienced in the pasta truly terrifying quake. It made me wonder if our house would collapse; if I might die. The printer, computer, bookshelf, recordseverything came tumbling down. I couldnt move a step.

When the shaking stopped, just a little past 2:50 P.M., Ryoichi did what he had probably done after the hundreds of smaller earthquakes that had shaken his house in the past: He began to clean up the mess. Even when his wife told him there was a tsunami warning, he didnt think it was a serious threat. After all, his family had lived there for decades and the water had never reached their land. For the next half hour, he straightened up and tried to fix the television as his sons, his daughter-in-law, and a grandchild gathered outside the house. He tried to calm his nerves, which had been jangled by the unusually strong earthquake.

Then he heard his wife shouting: Oto-San, run from the tsunami!

Like hundreds of thousands of others who lived along the coast of Tohoku, Ryoichi was at the start of what would be a long, terrifying ordeal. By nightfall, much of his hometown, including his own house, would be swallowed by waves.

But Ryoichi had no way of knowing that. He only knew that his wifes last words as she ran for safety were Look after Taro! So he headed up the stairs, in the direction he had last seen the dog going.

Moments later, muddy water surged up the stairs after him.