After checking out, I drove the lead SUV to the main fire hall, and everything was suspiciously still. As an ex-rescue specialist, I was a little shocked not to rescuers milling about getting ready for armageddon. My team and I got out of our vehicles, and we talked to the fire/rescue chief head of Nikko's FDMA, Fire, and Disaster Management Agency and his team, and I asked, "So, what do you recommend we do?" They were overwhelmed and more than helpful because someone had the good sense to ask about the correct course of action. The chief showed me the weather charts and the course of the Super Typhoon approaching.
We could see that there was only a small window of time to get from Nikko to Tokyo before people would be stranded in transit. The highways were soon to be clogged with hundreds of thousands of tourists who were all going in the wrong direction. The Aerial photo below shows only one small section of highway and region and where the river water had overflowed the roads, making them impassible. In fact, there were now 10 km lakes in many areas where there hadn't been before. Over 50% of those who had fled Nikko in the morning were stranded in vehicles; the lucky ones were stranded at roadside rest stops. It took three days for the waters to recede. Military helicopters plucked stranded residents from roofs after waters surged over a wide area when the raging Kinugawa river burst its banks in Joso, north of Tokyo, swamping the city of 65,000 people. Dramatic aerial footage showed whole houses being swept away by raging torrents, in scenes eerily reminiscent of the devastating tsunami that crushed Japan's northeast coast in 2011.