Entering Reconstruction Phase

Three weeks have passed since M7.6 earthquake hit Noto Peninsula on the new year’s day in 2024. The phase of disaster management is shifting from searching the victims and missing people to recovery and reconstruction. While the amount of victims in shelters increases with unexpected hardships and severe climate of mid-winter, the national and local governments accelerate their measures to help the people in suffered area.

According to the report of Ishikawa prefectural government as of afternoon January 28, the deaths by the earthquake amounted 236, including 15 of disaster related deaths which means the victims who died with exacerbation of injury or disease. Injured people marked 1,178 and broken houses exceeded 43 thousand. Around 10 thousand of people evacuated and staying in 300 shelters in cities and towns in Ishikawa prefecture.

 

The crucial uneasiness for the sufferers is scarcity of water. Waterworks system underground was mostly broken by the earthquake all around the peninsula. Although governmental helps, including self-defense force’s vehicles for water supply, are reaching some communities, shortage of water harms health of the people, especially with disease. Thousands of houses in cities of Wajima and Suzu are still suffering from blackout.

 

One phenomenon that indicates intensity of the earthquake is upheaval of underground. Experts estimate that the northern coast of Noto Peninsula swelled up by four meters and the shoreline moved some hundred meters toward the sea. Some fishery ports show breathtaking appearance of being dried up, denying approaches of ships for transporting reliefs for the victims.

 

Local governments could not predict these hard impacts on the area. Mainichi Shimbun reported that Ishikawa prefectural government failed in reviewing the estimation for intensity of possible great earthquake for a quarter century. While the government reviewed the estimation for possible tsunami after East Japan Great Earthquake in 2011, it maintained old estimation for land quake, which assumed 120 broken houses, 7 deaths and 2,800 of evacuees. Ishikawa government argues that they were waiting for estimation of national government.

 

Urgent requirement is houses to live. Ishikawa government is preparing 139 thousand of temporary houses in and outside of its prefectural area by the end of March. It is going to build three thousand temporary houses in the cites, and to take advantage of empty rooms of public or private houses. Every other prefectures in Japan offered housings in their regions.

 

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made his first visit to Noto Peninsula two weeks after the earthquake. Though it was later than Shinzo Abe’s visit to Kumamoto in 2016, which was nine days after, 45 percent of responders positively evaluated Kishida administration’s handling of disaster measures in Yomiuri Shimbun poll. The role of national government in reconstruction measures is more important than local government.