Although the crisis level at Fukushima has been risen to match that of Chernobyl at the time, the current situation seems less severe both on a local as an international scale.

From the article, Lois Beckett wrote:

The town would not be evacuated until the next day. And it was only after heightened levels of radioactivity set off alarms at a nuclear plant in Sweden that the Soviet government finally admitted publicly that something had gone wrong.

In the same article the Britain’s Chief Scientific Officer stated:

when Chernobyl had a massive fire at the graphite core, material was going up not just 500 metres but to 30,000 feet [about 9144 metres]. It was lasting not for the odd hour or so but lasted months, and that was putting nuclear radioactive material up into the upper atmosphere for a very long period of time.

In the same article a nuclear safety expert, Shan Nair, stated:

Fukushima's BWRs are designed in such a way that the hotter it gets the less radioactive the core gets so there is a self-shutdown type of mechanism.

If i understand correctly, a better power plant design and a more responsive and more responsible government prevented Fukushima turning into Chernobyl.