Google releases street view images from Japanese nuclear ghost town
SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc. released images taken by its Street View service from the town of Namie, Japan, inside the zone that was evacuated after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011.
Google, operator of the world’s biggest web search engine, entered Namie this month at the invitation of the town’s mayor, Tamotsu Baba, and produced the 360-degree imagery for the Google Maps and Google Earth services, it said in an email.
All of Namie’s 21,000 residents were forced to flee after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, about eight kilometres from the town, the world’s worst nuclear accident after Chornobyl. Baba asked Mountain View, Calif.based Google to map the town to create a permanent record of its state two years after the evacuation, he said in a Google blog post.
“Many of the displaced townspeople have asked to see the current state of their city, and there are surely many people around the world who want a better sense of how the nuclear incident affected surrounding communities,” Baba said. “It has become our generation’s duty to make sure future generations understand the city’s history and culture.”
Three reactors melted down at the Dai-Ichi plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co., after the earthquake and tsunami. About 160,000 people were forced to evacuate and a 20-kilometre no go zone was set up because of radiation fallout.
Street View images show a city frozen in time with abandoned cars and CocaCola Co. vending machines still full of drinks.
At the “Friend Shop” near highway 6, weeds were growing in the parking lot and the windows still had clothing hanging on display. In another scene, a building facade is shown falling apart with rubble in the street.
Google gathered the Street View images this month in a process that took about two weeks in a single car, Google said. Once completed, company staff worked all weekend to stitch the images together digitally.
By providing a memento of the past, the images can facilitate residents’ healing, said Mary Comerio, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.