News Snippets in Fukushima

May 7, 2016

On May 4, 2016, a head-on collision between a car and a bus on the Joban Expressway in Fukushima killed a mother and her daughter on the passeger car.

The designated area has been exposed to more than 50 millisieverts per year of radiation from the melted-down power plant. It is considered difficult for local residents to return possibly for the next several decades.

40 passengers including the bus driver had to wait for the ambulance for two hours on the side of the road. No face masks were provided. (Cars and buses are allowed around this section of Joban Expressway, but not motorcycles due to the extreme level of radioactive contamination.)

Background radiation level in Okuma town as of March 24, 25 of 2016, measured by Okuma town.

The accident happened in Okuma town which is within "Difficult-to-return" zones, due the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

Since the entire area has been evacuated, the injured passengers on the crashed bus had be transported as far as 37Miles.

*Photo of the Japanese newspaper article courtesy of Facebook group, "NPO法人チェルノブイリへのかけはし