Japan has a lot to offer in disaster survival

Japan has a lot to offer in disaster survival

Katsuyuki Abe, The Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo

Immediately after a major earthquake struck off Indonesia's Flores Island in 1992, I went to the region to survey the damage. Here are my thoughts on how Japan can help other nations with disaster preparedness.

While experts may be able to quickly determine the scale of a temblor and send out tsunami warnings, that information is useless if there is no way to convey it immediately to threatened communities.

Determining a quake's magnitude and epicenter is vital to tsunami forecast. However, some nations do not have the capability to make tsunami forecasts. That applies even to those with monitoring networks in place to gather quake data.

Japan's tsunami forecasting capability is without peer in the world. We are also part of a pan-Pacific monitoring network. Thus, Japan is in a position to contribute, technologically and in other ways, to the creation of a similar network in the Indian Ocean basin and to tsunami warning systems in individual nations.

Japan has a fine track record of training engineers from other countries. However, it is also vital to ensure that these trainees are able to make effective use at home of what they learned in Japan, and that the systems built in their countries function properly.

Providing every household with a transistor radio is one way to alert people of an impending disaster. The problem is that not everyone in poorer regions can to afford to buy batteries.

An alternative may be a public address system, similar to ones set up in each local community in Japan that broadcast warning sirens and announcements. But this would be contingent on a stable power supply. In any event, we must find a realistic and inexpensive solution.

In remote regions, for instance, a system could be set up to alert each local administrative office, and then relay that warning from community to community by an audible signal such as the clanging of bells. There is much to be learned from Japanese communities that have perfected systems so that all residents are warned.

For areas close to the epicenter of an earthquake, the arrival of the first tsunami could be so swift as to render any warning system useless. But since a nearby earthquake would be felt by the populace, it is vital to educate the public thoroughly in the importance of fleeing to higher ground the moment they feel a jolt.

In the immediate aftermath of a catastrophe, people appreciate the enormity of what happened. But since such disasters do not occur frequently, the lessons are forgotten over time.

This is why disaster-preparedness education is necessary. In the case of the Dec. 26 tsunami, for instance, I would suggest that the heights to which the tsunami flood waters rose be clearly marked for posterity. It would also be worthwhile for community members to draw up their own hazard maps, in addition to similar efforts by local governments.

Disaster education should start early, preferably at primary school level. There is a movement now in Japan to use puppets and picture boards to tell children stories like the one about a villager who was on a hill when he saw the sea suddenly recede. Anticipating a tsunami, he set fire to bundles of newly cut rice plants to warn his people and thus saved everyone.

But being taught these things in not sufficient. People need to undergo repeated drills. All sorts of drills have been devised in Japan, and new ideas are being generated constantly to encourage greater public participation.

As for infrastructure, it is cheaper to install breakwater blocks than to build seawalls, and they are just as effective. Japan has ample experience in placing these blocks to stop coastlines eroding.

Also, nonprofit groups that specialize in desert greening projects could help with planting tide-water control forests, which dissipate a tsunami's force.

Both infrastructure and education are necessary when thinking about how to prepare for earthquakes and tsunami. Japan, with its experience and know-how, has much to offer the world.

The author is a professor at the University of Tokyo's Earthquake Research Institute.