Reducing 80 percent of Victims

Central Disaster Management Council of the government of Japan revised its basic plan of preparing for Nankai Trough megaquake, which is highly likely to occur within next 30 years. The plan demands the government to take measures to reduce victims of the earthquake by 80 percent and broken houses by 50 percent within next 10 years. The government added 16 cities in Japan to which it would exercise intensive measures to reduce possible damages.

The government estimated 332 thousand victims and 2.5 million destructions of houses by Nankai Trough megaquake, which would cause a huge tsunami on the coast of southwest Japan, in the previous basic plan formulated in 2014, three years after East Japan Great Earthquake. The plan was revised in March 2025, adding lessons from Noto Peninsula Great Earthquake in 2024, indicating possibility of 298 deaths and 2.35 million destructions of houses.

 

Although 2014 plan could not fulfill the target of reducing deaths by 80 percent and destruction of houses by 50 percent as the new estimation in this March showed, the new plan maintained the same target of damage reduction. The government decided to advocate a high target to deal with one of the most imminent natural disasters striking Japan in coming decades.

 

The new plan focuses on “maintenance of lives” to prevent disaster-related death as well as “protection of lives” to avoid direct damages from quakes and tsunami. It upholds specific target with numbers for the preventive measures. Those targets increased from 48 in the last plan in 2014 to 205 in the new one. They include 100 percent of quake-proof houses, 50 percent of reinforcement of levees in the coastline, 100 percent of local governments which have appropriate shelters.

 

The government designated over seven hundred cities for intensive measures to prevent damages. In the new plan, those cities are increased by 16 to 723 cities. New cities included Nagasaki, Ayase (in Kanagawa) or Shiojiri (in Nagano). Those designated cities need to update their own disaster management plan to meet the target set in the new disaster management plan of the national government.

 

While the national government demands a lot of measures to implement high national target for disaster prevention, it is hard for the local governments to meet the requirement imposed from Tokyo. There is no financial guarantee to fulfill the demands from the national government.

 

After the great earthquake in Eastern Japan in 2011, the government of Japan has been reviewing its plan to protect the people from possible disasters, including Tokyo Metropolitan Earthquake. However, there is no credible plan to overcome future natural disaster. The biggest hurdle is financial efficiency. As long as the governments, regardless national or local, persist in fiscal balance between economic growth and disaster management, it is not easy to create a plan for the people to feel secured.

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