On October 21, 2018, Assistant Professor Kazuya Sugiyasu of IRIDeS and his research group jointly conducted a disaster drill for potential earthquakes and tsunamis in Tairausuiso District (hereinafter Usuiso District) of the city of Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture. I, a PR staff from IRIDeS, also attended this drill. The below is an account of my experience at the drill exercises.

Usuiso District faces the sea. During the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, a 8.51 m tall wave crashed against the district and destroyed 87% of its buildings, killing 115 people 1). The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was also a great blow to the district’s fishing industry. In 2010, the population of the Usuiso District was 766 people 2), but it had dropped to 156 people 3) by 2018.

 

Usuiso District was greatly damaged by the disaster, but it has been rebuilding. The newly built houses are situated on higher ground, and trees have been planted to help defend against future tsunamis, to reduce the waves’ impact. In summer 2018, the beaches of the district were reopened for swimming for the first time since the 2011 disaster.

After the disaster, Sugiyasu and his group put in great efforts to support the recovery of Usuiso District. Starting in 2014, researchers both within and outside IRIDeS have collaborated with disaster risk reduction experts to hold a drill in the district. This drill takes place once a year and is managed by the townspeople themselves, with additional support from the research group, who also supervise the content of the exercises. Furthermore, the drills use technology to study the training scientifically. For example, a GPS logger is used to keep a record of all movements in space and time performed by the evacuees, and drones capture aerial footage of the evacuation.

 

Sugiyasu and his group, who are experts in disaster risk reduction, together with the local residents, hold in-depth discussions every year to refine the planning of the training exercises. For instance, during the last iteration of the drill, exercises were conducted to inform residents how to evacuate from the town by car. That drill was based on the experiences of the 2016 earthquake, which had an epicenter in the open sea of Fukushima. If everyone attempts to escape a disaster by car at the same time, chaos ensues. As a general rule, if it is possible to escape by foot, this should be done to avoid obstacles en route more easily. However, there are always some who cannot escape without a car, so Usuiso District does allow some residents to evacuate by car whenever it is required. Special evacuation routes are given to those cars to avoid creating traffic jams.

 

This was the fifth drill to take place since the 2011 disaster, and it was the first to be held after the physical reconstruction was almost finished in the district. In fact, it is the fist to have been performed where all necessary material structures are in place. This time, Sugiyasu and his research group added new types of evacuation to the drill, such as evacuating people in wheelchairs and evacuating tourists from the beach. They spent the last minutes before the drill ensuring all the preparations were in place. I joined in the drill, playing a tourist.

The day was clear, and there were no clouds in sight. At 8:30 am, a major tsunami warning was given, and the exercises finally began. The residents were divided into groups and went to their evacuation sites. But before they left, they placed a sign on their door saying “We have evacuated.” The group leaders track these signs to ensure no one is left behind and flee themselves as well. The residents of the southern part of the district went to Toyoma Junior High School, their designated evacuation site. Other residents went to the Usuiso Meeting Hall, located on higher ground in the north of the district. Those playing the tourists on the beach went to the Usuiso Meeting Hall through the areas specifically planted for disaster risk reduction. The path toward the Meeting Hall is steep, but it took us around six minutes, running at top speed, to reach the evacuation site. A team of drone experts from Sugiyasu’s collaborative telecommunications research lab and the company Soramusubi used aerial cameras to ensure no tourists were left behind. After everyone arrived at their evacuation sites, each group informed the ward head how many were in the group and the situation of the route they took to reach the meeting place. The first people arrived at 8:41 am, and the last came at 8:53 am. All 126 participants, from infants to the elderly, reached the meeting place in just a little over twenty minutes.

 

Sugiyasu addressed the crowd of evacuees to end the drill with the following words: “With this drill we have seen that it is possible, even for people who are in wheelchairs, to evacuate the district in roughly 10 minutes from any location in the area. A tsunami might take only 15 minutes to reach Usuiso District, but in this drill, we have clearly seen that it is possible to evacuate everyone safely if you leave your homes within 5 minutes of the start of an earthquake. So, please remember that.”

What left the deepest impression on me from the drill was just how quick and agile all the participants were. Fifteen minutes after the alarm had rung, nearly everyone had reached the meeting points. Even the tidying up following the drill was conducted efficiedntly, and the entire event ended well ahead of schedule.

I heard someone say, “Now that I’ve actually performed the evacuation procedure, I found some problems in the designated evacuation route to be solved.” This comment and others like it showed that the participants gained something from the experience. More than seven years have passed since the 2011 earthquake, and in areas affected by the disaster, a steady decline in the numbers of people taking part in disaster drills has been evident. However, in Usuiso District, the same number of people took part in last year’s drill and in this one, around 80% of the total residents of the district. Those involved in the drill, beginning with the ward head for Usuiso District, all judged that this year’s exercises were a great success, and they immediately began planning the drill for next year.

One strong point of this drill is that it makes use of tightly knit human relationships together with advanced technology. The researchers regularly share their results with the townspeople. Sugiyasu commented that “The drills we perform here at Usuiso District always introduce pioneering ideas, but those ideas can only come into play because of the relationship of trust that exists between the researchers and the residents of the district. Now, many of the ideas for the drills have almost reached full maturation. However, some elements still must be revised. We hope to keep improving.” Drone implementation is still in its experimental phase, but the goal is to eventually use drones in real evacuations.
 

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