Kazushige Takahashi was not worried about radiation when the central and local governments started issuing evacuation orders after the March 11 tsunami knocked out power at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Kazushige Takahashi was not worried about radiation when the central and local governments started issuing evacuation orders after the March 11 tsunami knocked out power at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
But his concerns were heightened after he learned that those evacuation orders had put him and his family in the direction in which radioactive materials were spewing from the plant.
"I always thought evacuation instructions would naturally be issued if there was any danger," Takahashi, 52, said.
According to the interim report issued Dec. 26 by a government panel looking into the nuclear accident, such confusion in evacuating areas around the crippled plant could have been prevented if the central government used calculations made by the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI).
Instead of using SPEEDI, which forecasts the spread of radiation from a nuclear accident, the government in effect simply told residents to flee, according to the report.
According to the report, Namie moved its local government functions to the Tsushima district in the northwestern part of the town following evacuation instructions from the central government early on March 12.
Namie officials then instructed residents to evacuate to the Tsushima district or at least to a radius between 10 and 20 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 plant.
That morning, when Takahashi went into Namie to check on the tsunami damage, he heard firefighting and police vehicles sounding their sirens and calling on residents within a 10-km radius of the plant to evacuate.
Takahashi's apartment was located about 10 km from the plant.
The residents were told to use National Road No. 114 to go to Tsushima. Passengers in those vehicles wore protective clothing against radiation.
When Takahashi, his wife, Kinko, 51, and their 17-year-old son arrived at his family home in Tsushima, it was already overflowing with evacuees.
Takahashi went to an acquaintance's home in the same district. A nearby community center was packed with about 80 evacuees.
On the afternoon of March 12, an explosion occurred at the No. 1 reactor. Although Takahashi was disturbed by the TV reports, the general mood among the evacuees was there was not much to worry about, he said.
The central government widened the evacuation zone to a radius of 20 km, forcing Namie town officials to guide evacuees further away, according to the interim report.
Takahashi said he still wasn't too worried since the Tsushima district was several kilometers outside that radius. The fact that the wind was blowing in the direction of the Fukushima plant also eased concerns.
But the SPEEDI calculations would have shown that the Tsushima district was susceptible to high levels of radiation from the plant.
On the morning of March 14, an explosion rocked the No. 3 reactor. Takahashi told his son to remain indoors as much as possible. But food for the evacuees continued to be prepared outdoors. Children were also playing outside.
Takahashi said that at that time most residents were only thinking about how far away they were from the plant.
On March 15, the Namie mayor decided to evacuate residents to Nihonmatsu, according to the interim report.
But that northwesterly route also ended up putting residents in the direction where radioactive materials were spewing from the plant, the report said.
Because the central government did not release the forecast data from SPEEDI, many residents fled without knowing that information.
"Unless we know the differences in the level of radiation, there is no way we can make a decision," Takahashi said. He is still concerned about how much radiation his son was exposed to.
Similar problems concerning evacuations occurred in the city of Minami-Soma, according to the report
Minami-Soma evacuated residents from a 20-kilometer radius of the plant, including the southern part of the city, to the Haramachi district in the central part of the municipality.
On March 15, Haramachi became part of the zone in which residents were told to remain indoors.
But the many residents who decided to leave the city evacuated via Iitate and Kawamata to avoid areas close to the Fukushima plant as well as areas devastated by the quake and tsunami.
That route also put them in the path of the released radioactive materials, according to the interim report.
Yoshinobu Hayashi, 73, was in the Haramachi district when the second explosion at the Fukushima plant occurred on March 14. He drove from the evacuation center set up at a junior high school with his wife, Chieko, 65, and headed to Iitate, where her younger brother lived.
"I thought that was the safest place," Chieko said.
Later that evening, Yoshinobu watched the snow fall.
"Thinking about that now, the snow was probably dropping the cesium that had been blown in the air by the wind," he said.
The next morning, Chieko walked their pet dog they had brought with them.
At one time, 20 relatives and others who had evacuated from Minami-Soma gathered at that home.
Five to six days after their arrival, evacuees pieced together various media reports and learned that radiation levels in Iitate were also high.
On April 22, residents from all parts of Iitate were told to evacuate after it was designated as a zone for planned evacuation, according to the interim report. At a preliminary explanation meeting for residents, some asked, "Why do we have to evacuate now?"
Hiroshi Kanno, 63, of Iitate, learned about the explosion at the No. 1 reactor from TV reports on the afternoon of March 12. On the morning of March 14, the explosion occurred at the No. 3 reactor.
Worried about radiation levels, he called someone at the village government office where he used to work until three years ago.
The former colleague said, "The radiation levels are incredibly high."
When Kanno suggested that residents be evacuated immediately, the request was rejected because the figure was not official data.
The day after the March 15 explosion at the nuclear plant, Kanno went to the village accident response headquarters and demanded that residents be evacuated.
However, the village government official in charge only said, "There have been no instructions (from the central government)."
The data from SPEEDI predicted that large amounts of radioactive materials would reach Iitate.
"The central government hid the data to avoid responsibility by limiting the area of damage," Kanno said. "Because of the delay in the evacuation instruction, we were forced to face radiation exposure that could have been avoided."
(This article was written by Naoki Ogawa, Takayuki Kihara and Kosuke So.)