Death toll rises, stocks plunge, foreigners flee as nuclear crisis escalates - The Washington Post

TOKYO — Torn up and terrified by a disaster that keeps on getting worse, Japan has transformed in just four days from one of the world’s most comfortable countries into one of its most distressed.

Thousands of people along the northeastern coast of Asia’s richest country are dead, and tens of thousands have gone days with little food, little water and almost no heat. Their towns have been demolished into soggy fields.

And Tuesday, amid an escalating nuclear emergency, a dangerous plume of radioactive material leaked from a coastal power plant, causing panic among stock traders, triggering evacuation orders from foreign companies and generating a deep sense of unease among millions of residents concerned about radiation exposure.

One catastrophe alone would have been overwhelming. But Japan, since Friday, has been hit by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, a shoreline-crushing tsunami and an evolving crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

via washingtonpost.com