Typhoon Etau has hit Japan, bringing with it torrential downpours and severe flooding across vast parts of the country.
Over the past two days, more than 100,000 people have been ordered to evacuate their homes after up 60 centimeters (2 feet) of rain fell in under 48 hours, AFP reports.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a meeting of ministers the rain was "unprecedented,"according to Reuters, which said it was a 50-year flood, or a flood that has a 2% chance of happening in any given year.
Towns and villages are being destroyed as houses are ripped out of their foundations and carried away. But that's not the only danger. Drainage pumps at the Fukushima nuclear plant have been unable to handle hundreds of tons of contaminated water, which is flowing into the ocean.
Reuters has documented the disaster with these devastating images of the scenes.
The floods have devastated parts of Japan. More than 100,000 people across the country have been told to leave their homes, but the prefecture of Tochigi has been one of the worst hit areas, with more than 60,000 people being evacuated.
One of the biggest dangers is the displacement of water contaminated by the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in 2011, the largest nuclear disaster since the one at Chernobyl in 1986.
Hundreds of tons of radiation-rich waters are flowing toward the ocean as the site's drainage pumps have become overwhelmed by the downpour. The water was used to cool the nuclear reactors when they went into nuclear meltdown after the tsunami in 2011, which damaged the plant and similarly devastated large areas of the country.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider