one story we heard where a gentleman is in his 60s, only a couple months away from retirement, and he volunteered to go back in and try to keep things under control. his wife saying, go back in, do what you can to help ease everyone s concerns. we were told a story today of a relative of one of the workers who was at that plant doing the very same thing. she had the opportunity to leave, she turned it down. she s a nurse. she wanted to stay at the hospital nearby to help in any way she could. you re starting to hear these stories all the time. the people realize this is the focus of attention, and that really is only a handful of people in there willing to do the work. what about the people in the country? we re hearing all kinds of degrees of americans 50 miles away, the tourists can go 50 miles away, the japanese people told to go 19 miles away or else stay in your house and our own colleague lester holt. this radiation danger, how is it permeating the country? reporter: well, it
situation, that s what we re talking about. here s the scale, the international scale of nuclear events. this is where many people believe we are now. at number six here, we re up very close to where chernobyl was. there s almost no doubt at this point, no matter what else happens, we ll be talking about fukushima well into the future in the same breath as three-mile island and chernobyl. the question is how far will it go. to stay on the topic, the u.s. is keeping military personnel 50 miles now from the damaged reactors and wants american citizens to do the same. now keep in mind, that s a much greater radius than the japanese government has suggested for its own people. so to dig deeper into how great the radiation danger is now and potentially in the future, let s bring in cnn s chief medical correspondent, dr. sanjay gupta, who is now on the line with us from tokyo. sanjay, you ve been doing some amazing reporting. they have expanded the
it a good idea to start popping those pills? some folks may be panicking but that may not be what you should be doing at this point. conflicting reports from medical experts. make sure you listen for that. what may be going on inside that crumbling nuclear plant. what can be done to put an end to all the radiation danger. that s also coming up. we begin with the strong aftershock sending new ripples of fear for the survivors of the japanese earthquake and tsunami. take a look at the shaky images from nhk. this is as a 6.0 quake hit a few hours ago. which in and of itself would be scary. yes, by itself, let alone just an aftershock. as you can imagine, work has been suspended at the crippled nuclear reactor after a surge of radiation made it too dangerous to continue. meanwhile this morning, there is a mass exodus as thousands try to leave japan. david muir has that story from tokyo. reporter: the line of cars stretched for miles, a race to get out of the danger zone. 200,000
to go back in and try to keep things under control. his wife saying, go back in, do what you can to help ease everyone s concerns. we were told a story today of a relative of one of the workers who was at that plant doing the very same thing. she had the opportunity to leave, she turned it down. she s a nurse.รง she wanted to stay at the hospital nearby to help in any way she could. you re starting to hear these stories all the time. the people realize this is the focus of attention, and that really is only a handful of people in there willing to do the work. what about the people in the country? we re hearing all kinds of degrees of americans 50 miles away, the tourists can go 50 miles away, the japanese people told to go 19 miles away or else stay in your house and our own colleague lester holt. this radiation danger, how is it permeating the country? reporter: well, it s different, depending on where you are in the country. if you re up in the north, where so much of the damage
fukushima when the earthquake hit and shared this astonishing footage. because of the radiation danger, he vak wait ee va evacuated. how you are doing? i m doing 100% better. tell us why. you ve been evacuated and have food and shelter and water. where are you and how are you doing and what the government is able to do there for you? well, at sunday morning at about 1:00 a.m. japan time, a friend of ours heard from one of her friends, a japanese friend, that evacuations are probable and if we were to get on the road at that time, sunday morning at 1:00 a.m., if we were to get on the road that time and drive west, that would be pretty