Race against time in 'Snow Country'

Yoshiaki Kawata, The Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo

How much reconstruction work can be done before the season's first snowfall? It's a race against time now in the quake- devastated regions of Niigata Prefecture.

To prevent a secondary disaster at quake-damaged homes, an emergency team of architects has begun assessing the sturdiness of those buildings and affixing stickers to them accordingly: "Danger," "Caution" or "Safe."

But the team includes many architects from outside the prefecture who are volunteering their services, and I would like to remind them to take into consideration the weight of the snow as it piles up on the roof in determining the sturdiness of each home.

In remote mountain villages, it is common sense to eschew civil engineering work in the dead of winter. If water turns slushy while being mixed with concrete, the end structure will loose strength. Work on underground pipes and sewage systems becomes nearly impossible once the ground has frozen. Work must start at once, or reconstruction will be delayed by months.

This is particularly the case with villages that have been cut off. Though a law exists concerning "special national fiscal measures for promoting group relocations to prevent disasters," it is hardly helpful, as it cannot even be applied to stores.

In the case of Tottori Prefecture, there are subsidies for housing reconstruction. But for Niigata to follow Tottori's example would only prolong the former's already serious problems of depopulation in areas where the majority of residents are elderly. A better solution would be for the Niigata governor to take advantage of the current trend toward municipal and village mergers and come up with some bold, innovative policy for creating new towns.

The Niigata temblors have exposed potential problems that have always lurked in isolated mountain villages -- namely, the absence of information and disaster relief.

In the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, about 70 percent of those pulled from the rubble were rescued by their neighbors. This was a lesson in the importance of community ties.

However, in sparsely populated areas where most residents are elderly, few people are capable of rescuing their neighbors. No matter what wonderful disaster prevention plans may be in place, they are nothing but pie in the sky for these people.

Meantime, the arrival of convenience stores in rural and mountain villages has lessened the need for people to keep their pantries well stocked. After the tremors started on Oct. 23, many people ran out of supplies in two or three days.

But at the end of the day, their plight could be shared by anyone. Just imagine killer quakes striking the Tokai, Tonankai and Nankai regions in succession. Survivors would be left to fend for themselves. All the way from the Kanto region to Kyushu, mountain villages would be cut off, and serious food shortages occur. This is a spine-chilling scenario.

Self-Defense Forces helicopters are airlifting Niigata survivors to safety. But this sort of rescue operation would not be viable in the event of killer earthquakes devastating a far broader area populated by an incomparably greater number of people.

Seismologists continue to study active faults and disaster reduction experts are refining their plans, but what has happened in Niigata can happen anywhere, anytime. Each person must prepare for it in his or her daily life.

The writer is a professor at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute of Kyoto University and the director of the Research Center for Disaster Reduction Systems.