Clean-up starts after Japan tornado

Bicycles remain twisted around a children's climbing frame yesterday, showing the force of the winds endured by residents of Tsukuba, near Tokyo, when a tornado hit the town on Sunday. A teenage boy died and about 40 people were injured. Nearly 900 houses were wrecked as a series of twisters cut a 15km swath 500 metres wide through Ibaraki, Gunmi and Tochigi prefectures. The tornado struck a complex where 20 people from Fukushima had been evacuated after last year's crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant caused by the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. One of them, Seiichi Okawa, 33, told the Mainichi news agency: "I never thought I'd be affected by so many disasters – but I'm happy to be alive."