Minamisōma is about 25 kilometres (16 miles) north of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, the site of the nuclear accident that followed the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Much of the city lies within the mandated evacuation zone near the plant, and thus most of the residents were forced to leave. Approximately a week after the earthquake Minamisōma was in the news again as the town's mayor Katsunobu Sakarai asserts his people have been ‘abandoned’, in the wake of orders for all remaining residents to stay in their homes inside the exclusion zone around the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.