Long-term support needed for disaster
About 1,200 people who were evacuated to the Saitama Super Arena from Futabamachi, Fukushima Prefecture, have been relocated to a new evacuation shelter along with their town government.
They may well feel very uncertain about life as evacuees far from their hometown. We strongly hope the local government that has accepted them will provide well-considered support.
Residents of Futabamachi, where the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is located, were first moved to Kawamatamachi in the prefecture after an evacuation notice was issued shortly after the outbreak of the nuclear crisis. They later relocated to the Saitama arena, and this time to a building of the now-defunct prefectural Kisai High School in Kazo, Saitama Prefecture.
Town government functions also have been established in the school, with the principal's office converted into the office of the Futabamachi mayor.
As the Futabamachi community has been relocated en masse, residents are expected to maintain their local ties during their time as evacuees.
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Keep community ties intact
They can alleviate their anxiety by encouraging each other as they live in the evacuation center. The town's primary and middle school children also should be allowed to transfer together to schools in their new neighborhood.
There are, however, many problems facing the evacuees.
Many Futabamachi residents have lost their jobs and will need to find new sources of income. It is urgent for all parties concerned to help the evacuees find employment as quickly as possible. It is also imperative to provide elderly evacuees with sufficient medical and welfare services.
Another top priority is to secure housing. As efforts to handle the nuclear crisis will certainly be prolonged, there is no knowing when the evacuees can return home. No time should be wasted in building temporary housing for them.
After the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, elderly evacuees were given priority in the assignment of temporary housing units, irrespective of where their homes had been located. As a result, elderly people in the temporary facilities were hard put to develop community ties among each other.
In the five years after the earthquake, more than 200 elderly people died solitary deaths in temporary housing.
After the 2004 Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu earthquake, about 2,000 residents of the village of Yamakoshimura were evacuated along with the village government. In this case, shelters and temporary housing were allocated by district, thereby preserving community ties among the victims.
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Extensive support a must
To ensure a similar outcome in the aftermath of the massive earthquake and tsunami of March 11, the city of Kazo, the surrounding cities, towns and villages, Saitama and other prefectures, and the national government should cooperate with each other.
In Fukushima Prefecture, seven towns and villages in addition to the town of Futabamachi have moved their government functions to other municipalities because of the nuclear power plant accident.
The government of Okumamachi will soon move its functions to Aizu-Wakamatsu. Okumamachi's residents, who number about 1,800, will be relocated to various shelters in Aizu-Wakamatsu.
Children among the evacuees are scheduled to attend primary and middle school in the city in school buildings not currently in use. This means they plan to relocate Okumamachi students and teachers by school.
In Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, moves have been spreading among tsunami-battered coastal communities to move en masse to inland districts.
However, many people cannot join these relocations because of their work or domestic circumstances.
We urge local governments to keep in contact with such people.
Given the urgency of an extensive response to the crisis, all related municipalities should offer prolonged support that responds to disaster victims' needs.
Ensure communication lines can withstand disaster
After a disaster, people desperately want to confirm their families are safe as soon as possible. They want to let others know they are fine as well. Accordingly, many people felt frustrated that they could not contact their loved ones soon after last month's massive earthquake because phone lines were down.
Last month's earthquake smashed communication networks in the Tohoku region. But in the event of a disaster, it is essential to ensure communication lines still operate so people's safety can be confirmed and the extent of the damage gauged. Communication infrastructure is a vital lifeline--just like supplies of water and food; it must be further strengthened.
The Tohoku Pacific Offshore Earthquake disrupted about 1.5 million fixed-line telephones, five times more than the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake did.
Cell phones, which had previously been trumpeted as reliable during a disaster, were practically useless after the Tohoku earthquake because 14,000 base stations became unusable and cell phone companies limited connections to prevent system overloads due to the flood of calls.
We hope telecommunications companies will develop facilities and provide services that can better withstand disasters. Base stations supporting cell phone networks will quickly run out of power and grind to a halt if an outage occurs. Their power systems must be strengthened, and priority should be given to ensuring cell phones remain operable at administrative bodies, hospitals and evacuation facilities.
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Public phones to the fore
The importance of public phones must also be recognized again. In a disaster, communication via public phones is given priority over ordinary phones. The number of public phones, however, has halved in the past decade. Operators of public phones should examine where the phones are, and install however many more are necessary.
During the latest disaster, text messages, disaster bulletin boards and new information services such as Twitter were more effective for sharing and passing on information than voice messages were. Text information can be sent instantly, unlike spoken messages, and is easy to access. We hope people will prepare various means of communication even during normal times.
Local governments will need to consider how to best provide disaster-related information in the Internet age.
The earthquake alert system sends instant text messages to cell phones located within a certain range when a quake is detected. It may be worth considering expanding this service and offering tsunami alerts and evacuation advisories as well.
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Internet a valuable tool
The Iwate and Miyagi prefectural governments developed a system to help search for the names of people who had been forced to take shelter across their prefectures. This was set up to help the many people--even those in evacuation centers--who had no way to tell others where they were.
Local governments would be wise to actively use the Internet to provide disaster victims with more detailed information about available services and matters that have an impact on daily life. The Internet also is a useful tool for people who travel to many evacuation centers to search for family members. We hope local governments will expand these efforts.
However, if the Internet and cell phone text messages play major roles in the event of a disaster, an "information gap" could open between people with access to them and those without. This "disparity of connectivity," which likely will disadvantage the elderly, will need to be addressed.
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