Tsukuba City Disaster Drill

Tsukuba City is very progressive in its disaster drills, in that it specifically invites foreigners to join actively in the drill and provides interpreters for them as well. Of course we joined, and we even ended up on the local television broadcast.

Around 30 foreigners were invited to sign up in total. After gathering at the City Hall entrance where we were greeted by interpreters, 5 people were asked to be active volunteers during the drill. The area behind City Hall, also used for fireworks festivals and other events, is actually the scheduled disaster practice area. The edges of the terrain were littered with tents and fold-able chairs for participants to relax, whether they were the fire brigade or local families. On one side information tents had been set up as well. The center proved most interesting with 3 houses and a pile of wood. Enough space was left  between the center and the tents for the longest emergency vehicles to drive around.
The program was fully packed and after the mandatory greetings, the first demonstration was debris removal.  Next was emergency hospital set up, with active involvement. Our group was called in to carry a dummy to an emergency site for revival by medical specialists, and ACCS was filming the whole setup.
Then a very exciting activity took place, as the search dogs from three different prefectures, Tokyo, Chiba and Ibaraki, were trained to find people inside a pretend collapsed house. After all three dogs confirmed the locations, the rescue team responded by cutting the house open and calling out to the 'victims' inside. If you are removed by the roof, you get extracted vertically! As soon as the people were brought to safety, the rescue team removed the house. This is to clear the imaginary streets of collapsed houses.
Around this time people got served emergency food and water, which was quite nice given the outside temperatures. 6 of the 35 sponsors included food companies or supermarkets. The cooperation with local food suppliers was very interesting. Next up was fixing gas, electricity and water supply lines.
Another drill to actively participate in was firefighting. One house fire was to be put out with a bucket line, whereas foreigners were given fire extinguishers for a second house. It was nice to practice with a real fire and real extinguisher for once, as most companies prefer to have water filled containers spraying at plasticized pictures of fire. We obtained a disaster prevention bag with a thermal blanket and other useful items.
At the information stands, we watched the simulated effects of liquefaction swallow a windmill and observed the power tools the military used to clear the streets after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. Meanwhile, the roof of the city hall was being used as a helicopter drill site. We also took a look inside the mobile disaster unit, which had everything from a toilet to a fax machine, just in case city hall had to be abandoned. We can only hope more cities have such an active disaster prevention force, and interpreters as well.