By Samuel Lovett
By dawn’s break, after a night of lashing rain and violent winds, the full scale of destruction was laid bare. For Koriyama, an industrial hub in Fukushima Prefecture, the flooding had been extensive.
In the east of the city, whole neighbourhoods were left submerged. All that could be seen, as rescuers began their recovery efforts last weekend, were the rooftops – islands of grey and iron-brown beneath a subdued sky.
Typhoon Hagibis, one of the strongest storms to hit in decades, has left its mark on Japan. Five lives were lost in Koriyama. In the Suimoncho neighbourhood, a compact network of worn, wooden homes that sits on the city’s river banks, one of their own was among that count....
