the earthquake and tsunami hit japan. rescue crews and reporters are just now getting to some of the worst-hit areas. cnn s paula hancock was the first international journalist to reach a fishing community where half the community remains unaccounted for. when the tsunami alert sounds, everyone sprints to higher ground. police abandon their cars, rescue workers rush people to safety. one man shouts at us, it s your life, run. everyone does, including us. running far higher than any tsunami could ever reach. not surprising when you see what the last tsunami did. this was the town of minamisanriku, there s little left. house, shops and offices reduced to mangled rubble. the loss of life here thought to be among the worst along the
they re now saying any may have to release some of the steam from the reactor and that may increase the radiation level. as a result, they ve put this 20-kilometer exclusion zone around the area, more than 200,000 residents have been evacuated. a number of people have tested positive in over coming into contact with radiation and that number, according to officials, could in fact, rise. iodine is being handed out to people to guard against contact with radiation. all of this very much a race against time. these officials now working around the clock, trying to get this reactor to cool down. thus far, they haven t been able to. but also, working with the international atomic energy agency, to do that as well. this is having a knock-on effect on power supply. we know that japan relies on the reactors for a big part of its electricity supply. they re now talking about having
to learn more. we ll get back to our extensive coverage of the disaster in japan. but first, plenty of questions about a tour bus crash that killed 14 people in new york this weekend. investigators are looking into the history of the company that operates the bus involved. our susan candiotti is sorting through the conflicting theories about what happened. susan? well there s a lot to be done here, fred, that s for sure. at this point, nothing is being ruled out as a cause. but among the possibilities, was the bus going too fast. did it get clipped by a passing truck? was the bus driver impaired in any way? did he fall asleep? was there something wrong with the bus? well, the national transportation safety board visited the crash scene today. where in the wee hours of the morning on saturday, a tour bus on its way back to new york from a casino trip in connecticut lost control, hit a thick sign
just thought this wasn t a very likely occurrence. but then the unlikely happened. so the japanese government is saying that there may have been a minor meltdown that took place already. define for us what a minor meltdown is. and comparison to a meltdown. and that surely, universally worries everybody. right. and in some ways, it s captured in the difference between three mile island and chernobyl. in three mile island, you did have a partial meltdown. but meltdown was contained within the containment vessel. it never escaped to the outside environment. whereas, chernobyl had no containment vessel and so when you had full-blown meltdown in chernobyl, it buried down, went critical and blew up and disbursed into the atmosphere around the globe. these japanese reactors to have containment vessels, they re the line of last defense and the hope is if there was a full-blown meltdown, that whatever happened inside the reactor would be contained within the reactor and would not
over 60 years of independent thinking, and it has all brought us to this. the all-new 9-5 sports sedan, the most advanced saab ever. visit your local saab dealer to take advantage of these special offers and test-drive a saab today. japanese officials say it s posh a minor healthdown has already happened at a nuclear plant in northeast japan. monitors detected what may have been the melting of a fuel rod at the plant, but they say there s no sign of dangerous radiation levels in the area. the japanese ambassador to the u.s. says that was a minor event. cnn s candy crowley asked about the possibility of a bigger meltdown. as for the meltdown, yes,