Land of the Rising Water: January 2013

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Radio Japan Focus

The Lively People in Their 70s Supporting Japan
Last year, for the first time in Japan, the population aged 65 or over exceeded 30 million, and roughly 1 in every 4 people is now elderly. Now, attention is turning to people in their 70s. People in this age group supported Japan's post-war economic boom. Many of them are full of physical and mental energy, and want to continue being a help to society even now. We take a look at these Japanese people in their 70s, who continue stimulating the younger generation in both regional and leisure activities.

January 17, Thursday on http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/radio/program/index.html

Monday, January 21, 2013

Some food for thought (or hippos)

"Despite the government establishing resettlement areas and providing construction material, people who had lived in the risk zones preferred to return there after the flood waters receded because these areas had fertile soils, their ancestors were buried there and rituals took place in these localities. Earlier studies in the Rufiji River delta of Tanzania during the period of government-mandated resettlement found that people had difficulty farming in their new environment and would return to distant farms, and they suffered economic loss because at night the unguarded farms were ravaged by hippos."

- Chapter 21, Floods, by Hanna Schmuck, page 252 in the Handbook of Hazards and Disaster Risk Reduction (2012)

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Disaster Education Lessons from Japan - 2

It is important to understand why one school succeeded in evacuating children during the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (GEJET), where another school failed. The reasons could lie beyond pure school policy, in other areas such as school buildings or shelters constructed to withstand earthquakes but not tsunamis, parents picking their children up from school in spite of teacher’s warnings, and people getting stuck in traffic.

The ministry of education of Japan has conducted a survey to determine how students died and what types of evacuation plans were used [1]. It was found that 50.3% of the schools in the three most affected prefectures had evacuation plans, and most students died after being sent home. Some policy changes to school disaster plans afterwards include not sending students home with parents, or discussing with parents beforehand whether or not to take students home.

The survey also showed differences in student responses during the disaster. The results are that “among primary schools that had conducted evacuation drills, 11.4 percent said students panicked due to fear and anxiety (…) Among primary schools that had not conducted such drills, 28.6 percent said students panicked.” This means that performing drills at primary schools can lead to a decrease of panic of 60%, thus showing the important of drills even for young children.

Obviously, having an evacuation plan and practicing the plan regularly will prepare students for disasters. However, drills, evacuation plans, hazard maps and shelters are not enough to guarantee lived are saved. Looking at the example of the Kamaishi East School [2], the disaster plan was that teachers gather students to count them and afterwards evacuate together. The microphones at the school to instruct the students had become unusable due to power failure, but the students started to gather and evacuate by themselves. A neighboring elementary school had followed their own disaster plan and had evacuated all the students to the third floor of their building. After seeing the students from Kamaishi East School flee, they decided to follow them. Both of these school buildings were completely destroyed in the tsunami. Upon reaching a first and second evacuation site uphill, students fled higher both times, as the sites were judged to not be safe enough. The water reportedly stopped a few meter away from the second evacuation site.

This ability to apply flexible thinking and to judge the situation at hand is what saved their lives. While it is certainly beneficent to have disaster drills and plans, or to decide whether to send children home or not beforehand, it is not enough. Every disaster is different and the best way to be prepared for this is to be trained to think adaptively. An effective education policy treats children not as merely as a potentially vulnerable group of people that require protection and should be moved to safety, but instructs them and teaches them strategies to be more capable, self-reliant and protect themselves. The example of Kamaishi shows that children are perfectly capable of saving themselves if they are taught the necessary skills. This way, even if the situation is unexpected or the disaster plan, shelters or evacuation sites prove inadequate, children will have the sense of mind to make a good decision to act on behalf of their own protection.

Aside from lessons increasing self-reliance, other areas also require attention. It has become evident that a backup system of schools, teachers and administration can greatly assist response and recovery after a disaster. Backup lists available elsewhere with all the students and staff names, ages, home addresses and pictures could greatly assist in locating missing people and identifying victims. Emergency schools or substitute teachers could assist in recreating a sense of belonging and continuation of education after a disaster. If it is already known beforehand how to arrange these backup systems, a more speedy response and recovery is possible.

[1] Only 50% of schools were ready for tsunami, Yomiuri Shimbun, May 31 2012, Retrieved from http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120530005277.htm

[2] Students credit survival to disaster-preparedness drills, S. Kamiya, The Japan Times, 4 June 2011. Retrieved from http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20110604f1.html

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Disaster Education Lessons from Japan

There are methods of disaster education taught in Japan, specifically for tsunamis that could be expanded upon to include other disasters and be applied in other locations worldwide. These methods have led to the most successful evacuations of school children during the GEJET at Kamaishi, where Toshitaka Katada [1] had been teaching tsunami evacuations at 14 schools since 2005. As he describes in his article, his methods focused on involving not only the children and their teachers, but their parents as well. He was able to transform the love family members have for one another into trust, meaning that family members would trust each other to be capable to escape by themselves rather than go look for each other before escaping. Parents were also involved in extracurricular activities, such as drills and creating personal hazard maps. Key points in the lessons were that the dangers were real, and should be acted upon by choosing the best possible method, by saving yourself (tsunami tendenko) and not thinking about others as they should also save themselves. During the tsunami, the children were able to judge situations and evacuate themselves, using the knowledge they learned at school, even when they were not at school but at extracurricular activities. The UNISDR also lauds the education and performance of the children. A documentary of the Kamaishi 'miracle' can be viewed here.

Another source [2] explains how this disaster education was incorporated into the regular classes at Kamaishi East School. The local tsunami history was taught in social studies, the physics of tsunami in science class, and an essay about the 1896 tsunami had to be written for reading class. Other special classes included first aid and running a soup kitchen.

The core of these methods teaches children they can save themselves, which can be applied to a multitude of disasters. The successful elements of these methods are clearly the involvement of the parents, regular drills, incorporation of disaster science and disaster behavior in regular classes and creating a personal hazard map, as these actions lead to awareness of dangers and confidence in how to react to them for the children, as well as trust between family members in their capabilities. Both of these beliefs, the knowledge you can save yourself and the knowledge your loved ones can save themselves, are necessary to start to act to save yourself first. To gain this confidence, schools education can play a vital part not just teaching the necessary actions through drills and the science behind disasters, but also acting as an instigator to increase the bonds and trust between parents and children. It is important to repeat the drills and keep the knowledge active in the minds of the participants, both children and their parents (or other caretakers), especially when no disaster has occurred for some time. It would be very effective to implement the teaching methods of Katada worldwide and expand them to include different types of disasters, in locations where the same amount of parental involvement can be reached.

[1] No miracle that 99.8% of the schoolkids survived. How the children of Kamaishi got through the tsunami, T. Katada, Wedge Infinity, 10 October 2011. Retrieved from

http://wedge.ismedia.jp/articles/-/1334