(Credit: Google)
Namie-machi was a small bustling city that used to sit near the Fukushima nuclear plant. But on March 11, 2011, that changed. After a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami destroyed the town and the plant's infrastructure, causing hazardous waste to leak into the surrounding land, every single one of Namie-Machi's 21,000 residents had to abandon their homes.
Working with Google Maps and its Street View imagery, the mayor of Namie-machi is now providing the city's previous residents, and anyone else who wants to see, a glimpse of what the town currently looks like.
"Two years have passed since the disaster, but people still aren't allowed to enter Namie-machi," Namie-machi's mayor Tamotsu Baba said in a 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."
Collapsed buildings, empty streets, and fishing boats washed inland during the tsunami dot the landscape. Google's Street View camera also captured interactive panoramic scenes of the ghost town, so people can zoom in to study the details. All told, Google captured thousands of miles of Street View imagery in this desolate location.
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