Thread: Strong quake prompts tsunami warning Japan

• Oldest Existing Wajima-nuri Lacquerware Partly Damaged by Earthquake

The oldest existing Wajima-nuri lacquerware — a shrine double door in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture — was partly damaged by the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, it has been learned.

A small protrusion on the double door kept at Juzo Shrine was found broken, though it escaped any major damage on its lacquered surface.

According to the shrine, the pair of doors for its honden main shrine was daubed with a lacquer mixture of Wajima-nuri, the famous traditional craft of Wajima, in 1524. Regularly re-daubed with lacquer since then, the doors also survived a large fire in 1910 that burned down the main shrine. The double door is designated by the city of Wajima as a tangible cultural property.

Shrine officials visiting the site about a week after the quake found the doors on the ground of the haiden oratory where it was installed, with the protrusion fixing them to a wooden frame for display broken. They plan to repair the doors after assessing the damage, which are now kept in the shrine’s warehouse.

• Ishikawa moves quake evacuees into temporary units in Wajima

Evacuees from the Noto Peninsula earthquake began moving into temporary housing here Feb. 3.

Eighteen units constructed near a tourism facility called Wajima Kiriko Kaikan are expected to house around 55 evacuees.

Wajima was one of the areas hardest hit by the magnitude-7.6 earthquake on New Year’s Day.

Sumiko Oshita, one of those who moved in Feb. 3, used to live near the popular Wajima morning market facility that burned to the ground in the aftermath of the Jan. 1 quake and had been staying at an evacuation center ever since.

Each unit is equipped with triple-glazed window panes to keep out the frigid cold. The wooden interior adds some warmth to the abodes.

Oshita, 76, received the key to her unit at the Wajima city government building.

“I am relieved to be able to enter temporary housing,” she said. “I am happy that I will be able to use water because I had difficulties doing my laundry.”

She was accompanied by her daughter, Naomi, 53, who said, “I am relieved because I was worried my mother might come down with an infectious disease at the evacuation center.”

Close to 50,000 homes in Ishikawa Prefecture were damaged by the quake, according to official figures, and about 14,000 residents are still at evacuation centers.

The prefectural government plans to construct around 1,300 housing units by the end of March. It will also lease another 4,300 or so apartments to provide alternate temporary housing to evacuees. Another 900 units from public housing will also be provided.

The prefectural government believes that 9,000 temporary housing units will be needed in total.

It plans to lease another 3,700 apartments outside of Ishikawa Prefecture as well as provide 8,400 or so public housing units outside the prefecture.

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• A Closer Look / 1,000s of Homes Still Without Running Water After Quake; Prior Tremors Had Taken a Cumulative Toll on Aging Pipes

Nearly all of the approximately 10,000 households in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, have been without running water since the Noto Peninsula Earthquake. An 83-year-old woman in the city’s Monzenmachi district, which is pressed between the mountains and the sea, puts two 10-liter plastic tanks in a wheelbarrow and goes to get spring water near her home several times a day. Running water has been cut off in the district since the Jan. 1 earthquake.

The woman suffered burns to her leg when hot water spilled on her due to the tremors of the earthquake. She cannot rely on her husband, 87, because his weak eyesight makes it difficult for him to walk outside. By herself, she can only manage to carry water for cooking and laundry, so they have been unable to bathe.

“I wonder how long this will continue,” she said in an exhausted tone.

In Wajima, small villages are dispersed in the mountains and the total length of water pipes extends to about 600 kilometers. Many parts of the underground water pipes are damaged. An official at the Wajima municipal government bitterly said, “There are more than 200 places that need to be repaired.”

Even if they try to lay new pipes, rocks shifted by the earthquake get in the way. It is only possible to fix several meters of water pipes on some days, according to the government.

The quake cut off running water to about 55,000 households in six municipalities in the Noto Peninsula. Even a month after the earthquake, about 40,000 households still had no running water. Water service has been restored for only 30% of them.

In the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake, up to 450,000 households did not have running water, but service was largely restored about one month later. The Ishikawa prefectural government aims to carry out at least temporary measures to restore water supply by the end of March, but progress has been conspicuously slow.

“The water pipes are severely damaged. The disaster shed fresh light on the vulnerability of the infrastructure of the Noto region,” Ishikawa Gov. Hiroshi Hase said.

In Shika, just 10.4% of the water pipes had been deemed earthquake-resistant. In Nanao, it was 21.6%. In six heavily damaged municipalities, the figure was below the national average of 41.2%. Moreover, a series of earthquakes that have occurred in the Noto Peninsula since December 2020 have caused cumulative damage to the water pipes.

To maintain infrastructure in increasingly depopulated areas, fees need to be raised. In the mountainous terrain of the Noto Peninsula, it costs a lot to build pump stations to move water to higher levels. The average household water bill in the four municipalities at the northern end of the peninsula, including Wajima and Suzu, is ¥4,000 to ¥5,500 a month, about twice as expensive as in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture’s capital.

Infrastructure is rapidly aging across Japan, posing risks when a disaster occurs. Much of today’s infrastructure was built during the high growth period in the 1960s and 1970s. The expected lifespan of most infrastructure is said to be about 50 years. By 2040, 75% of bridges, 66% of ports and 53% of tunnels will have reached that age.

• Quake imperils future medical care services on Noto Peninsula

The Suzu General Hospital in the early afternoon of Jan. 25 was eerily quiet, given that it is the only public hospital in a city hard hit by the Noto Peninsula earthquake.

The waiting lobby was empty, and the lights were off at the checkout counter, where no one was working.

“I can only assume that the decrease in patients is due to the decrease in the number of people living here,” Kazukimi Ishii, 58, director general of the hospital, said as he sat in a chair in the lobby. “Before the earthquake, the population in Suzu was around 12,000, but now it is sensibly less than half.”

Suzu, located at the northern tip of the peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, was already an aging and shrinking city before the Jan. 1 earthquake. The disaster appears to have hastened an exodus from the municipality, threatening to end local medical care.

Suzu General Hospital has 13 departments, including internal medicine, surgery, orthopedics and neurosurgery.

The quake cut off the water supply to the hospital, and surgeries, which used to be performed 200-300 times a year, were suspended.

In the aftermath of the quake, hospital staff were busy dealing with emergency patients and people in need of drug prescriptions. But from mid- to late-January, the number of those patients drastically decreased.

As of 2020, 52 percent of Suzu’s population was aged 65 and over. It was the highest “aging rate” among cities on Japan’s main island of Honshu.

Suzu was also Honshu’s smallest city, based on population.

When the New Year’s Day quake hit, Suzu was home to about 6,000 households.

More than 5,500 homes in the city were damaged or destroyed in the disaster.

The hospital’s lobby was overflowing with injured patients and evacuees. Almost every hospital worker was personally affected by the earthquake.

Within three days, the hospital was walking a tightrope in securing drinking water and food.

The Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) arrived on the evening of Jan. 3, and began transporting patients to other hospitals and facilities the following day.

Overall, DMAT took about 1,000 people from hospitals and elderly care facilities out of the Noto Peninsula.

In addition, nearly 5,000 people who were staying in evacuation centers and other emergency facilities had been taken to “secondary” evacuation centers in Kanazawa and other cities as of the end of January.

Some have left their quake-hit hometowns, including Suzu, apparently for good.

The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research predicted that Suzu’s population would shrink to 5,000 by 2050.

“It looks like we have warped there just in three weeks,” Ishii said.

Ninety percent of the hospital’s approximately 250 employees, including part-time workers, have continued to work.

But Ishii is concerned about the future.

“If the number of people leaving the workforce is going to increase, it will be from here on out,” he said.

“Damaged homes, children’s education, caring for parents … what will happen to this city?” Ishii said. “I never had time to think about the future, but now I have to think about many things.”

What is worrisome is a possible negative cycle.

If the number of residents continues to fall, patient levels will decline and staff will leave the hospital. If medical care in Suzu cannot be provided due to labor shortages, the population outflow will accelerate. And those who have left Suzu on a temporary basis may be unable to return.

On Feb. 1, the hospital resumed some outpatient services, such as internal medicine, surgery and pediatrics.

“We have made some progress,” Ishii said. “It is precisely because of this situation that the medical field must be firm.”

Like Suzu, many other municipalities in the disaster-stricken area are aging and shrinking.

The demographics on the Noto Peninsula are different from those in other areas of Japan that have experienced devastating earthquakes.

In the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, the aging rate in seven hard-hit cities and towns was about 13 percent. The aging rate in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures was about 24 percent in 2010, a year before the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami hammered the Tohoku region.

The aging rate in Suzu, Wajima, Noto and Anamizu in the northern part of the Noto Peninsula was 49 percent as of 2020.

The combined area is about 1.8 times the size of Tokyo’s 23 wards, but there are only five hospitals with 20 or more beds.

Each of the four municipalities has at least one public general hospital, and they have been the focal point of local medical care.

According to the Ishikawa prefectural government, as of late 2020, 72 percent of doctors working at clinics in the four municipalities were over 60 years old.

Therefore, general hospitals have also played a central role in the function of family doctors in these communities. And yet, there were talks about reorganizing care facilities before the quake.

“There was a shortage of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, laboratory technicians, and all other personnel,” a prefectural government official said.

“Even if we have facilities, we cannot maintain them if we don’t have people who can work there.”

Compared with the Great East Japan Earthquake, the number of victims of the Noto Peninsula quake has been small.

However, with half of residents on Noto being elderly, the earthquake has greatly disrupted the balance of supply and demand for medical care.

Older people with pre-existing medical conditions are more likely to become ill in the harsh post-disaster environment. Remaining in the disaster area itself increases demand for medical services and care.

But there is an overwhelming shortage of medical workers and care takers in the region.

Relocating people from disaster areas is expected to prevent disaster-related deaths. And local officials and DMAT teams have worked to bring this to the forefront of their activities.

However, exclusive devotion to relocation could worsen the problem.

Teruhiro Sejima, 55, a director of a clinic in Noto who has provided medical treatment since the quake struck, is increasingly concerned about the effects from wide-area transport and secondary evacuations.

“How will we provide medical care to those who live here and need it now?” he said. “If medical care is withdrawn, the town itself will disappear.”

The Noto Peninsula disaster and its effects on medical care will be probably not be considered “unique” in the future.

Wajima’s aging rate as of 2020 was 46 percent.

By 2035, a quarter of Japan’s municipalities will have the same aging rate, and by 2050, half of them, according to an estimate of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

• Japan companies see opportunity in aging public infrastructure

Local governments across Japan all face a similar challenge in needing to upgrade roads, bridges and other aging infrastructure.

This challenge is also an opportunity for the private sector. NHK has learned that five companies and a government-backed bank are forming a consortium to help with such projects.

The companies include West Japan Railway and NTT Communications. MUFG Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Mizuho Bank and the state-linked Development Bank of Japan are also partners in the plan.

The government estimates it will cost about 1.9 trillion dollars over the 30 years through fiscal 2048 to maintain and renovate bridges, tunnels, waterworks and other infrastructure nationwide.

Many of these structures were built during Japan's rapid economic growth from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s.

The business group plans to offer services in obtaining funding for rebuilding projects as well as use of digital technologies for safety inspections of current facilities.

The six firms plan to start the new business at the end of this month.

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• Noto quake survivors show necessity of taking quick action

When Nobuo Sakamoto was informed of the tsunami warning by a neighbor, he thought, “I still have time,” and he started to collect his valuables, a warm coat and other necessary items with little sense of urgency. “Even if a tsunami comes, it will only get my feet wet.”

Less than 10 minutes after a massive earthquake struck the Noto Peninsula on New Year’s Day, the first tsunami wave hit Sakamoto’s house 80 meters from the coast in the Shiromaru district of Noto, Ishikawa Prefecture.

The district, located on the east side of the peninsula, was quickly inundated and suffered extensive damage, including a woman’s house that was swept away by the rushing waters. The lack of time would nearly cost Sakamoto’s family far beyond mere possessions, and others shared their experiences of how quick action could mean the difference.

Sakamoto, 67, had been enjoying the day with his daughter and her family who had returned home for the New Year holiday. Including his son-in-law and grandchildren, about 10 people were gathered in the house when the earthquake struck at around 4:10 p.m. The tsunami was expected to hit around 5 p.m., a neighbor told him.

Minutes later, Sakamoto had just got his three grandchildren settled in his car with a plan to get to higher ground when the waters of the tsunami rushed into his garage. “Even if we try to escape by car, we would surely be swallowed up along the way,” he thought.

He got the grandchildren out of the car and the four of them headed to a storage shed in the back of the garage. By clutching a pillar of the shed, they would be able to withstand the surge, he thought. But it was far more powerful than he imagined, and they were soon engulfed by the muddy waters.

The heads of Sakamoto and two of his grandchildren — a second-year junior high school student and a sixth-grade elementary school student — emerged above the surface. But his granddaughter, a second-grader, was nowhere to be seen. He desperately thrashed around the coal-black waters in search of her when his left hand hit something. It was the girl, who was unconscious. Without thinking, he began artificial respiration, and after a short time, her eyelids fluttered open.

“I took the speed and power of the tsunami too lightly,” Sakamoto said with a tense look. “We should have evacuated immediately.”

‘The sea is terrifying’

“This was where the living room was. The sofa was here.”

Yumiko Sunayama speaks in a dazed way as she stares at a house that is no longer there. Only the foundation remains of the home located about 30 meters from the shore. She and her mother-in-law managed to escape by car to higher ground. When they returned the next day, they found a chest of drawers, the washing machine and the sofa amid a swath of debris that had been swept about 200 meters inland.

Sunayama, 66, used to have a panoramic view of the ocean from the second floor of the house, and she loved watching the sunrise in the morning. Now, all she can feel is: “The sea is terrifying.”

Quick thinking

Immediately after the first quake hit, Yuta Sekikawa wasted no time taking action, compelling the 13 family members and relatives gathered in his home to get moving.

“Whether there will be a tsunami or not, let’s get out of here,” shouted Sekikawa, 38.

His house is about 200 meters from the shore. Scenes of the tsunami from the Great East Japan Earthquake that were replayed constantly on the news were firmly embedded in his mind, and he had decided he would evacuate right after a big quake even if the situation was still unclear.

The group reached high ground a kilometer away, where they could hear the rumbling sound of the tsunami approaching the area. The living room and kitchen of his house were left with seas of mud. “It terrifies me to think what would have happened if we didn’t get out of there,” he said.

The intensity of the Noto Peninsula Earthquake reached upper 6 in Noto on the Japanese seismic scale, and a study by the Meteorological Agency found that the tsunami that swept over land reached as high as 4.7 meters in the Shiromaru district.

An analysis by specialists showed that the first wave of the tsunami may have reached Suzu, which borders the northern part of Noto town, one minute after the quake, and Nanao in the southern part of the peninsula two minutes later.

Town records show there were 139 buildings in the Shiromaru district. Although the full extent of the damage is not yet known, a walk through the district shows that more than a dozen houses on the coast were washed away, and about half of the houses suffered flooding above floor level. It could also be seen that the tsunami reached as far as 400 meters inland from the sea.

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• Quake evacuees get trailer homes

Ten trailer houses for people whose homes were damaged by the Noto Peninsula earthquake arrived in Shika Town, Ishikawa Prefecture, on February 4. They were provided by the Japan RV Trailer House Association.

The 37-square-meter one-bedroom units have a bathroom, toilet, and kitchen, and come equipped with an air conditioner.

"We brought the trailer houses from Nagano City, hoping they would be useful," said Harada Hideyo, director of the Japan RV Trailer House Association. "I think people should be able to lead a normal life, so I hope they will make use of the trailers."

Town authorities are also preparing 77 prefabricated houses for residents. More than 4,900 houses in Shika were either totally or partially destroyed in the earthquake.

Applications for temporary housing in Shika are being accepted every day from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the main building of the town hall and the main hall of the Togi Revitalization Center.

The town says residents will be able to move into temporary housing as early as the end of the month.

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• LIMELIGHT makes donation to support earthquake recovery efforts in Japan

On February 5th, it was reported by News1 that the group LimeLight has donated 1 million yen (approximately 7,300 US dollars) through the Japanese Red Cross to support the recovery efforts following an earthquake in the Noto Peninsula, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan.

LimeLight, particularly popular in Japan with member Ito Miyu at the forefront, had previously expressed intentions to donate a portion of their album sales revenue to charity. This commitment materialized with a donation of 1 million yen from their sales proceeds.

The group stated, "All artists under 143 Entertainment, including us, have received immense happiness and smiles from our activities in Japan. We hope to give back and provide some assistance to those affected by the disaster, wishing for their swift return to daily life."

The donation comes in the wake of a magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck the Noto Peninsula on the 1st of last month, resulting in 238 deaths and 14,643 displaced individuals.

LimeLight, debuted as a trio in September 2022, is currently seeing a high possibility of welcoming members Kang Yeseo and Mashiro, who are active in the project group Kep1er, following the end of their contracts.

• Products from Quake-Hit Hokuriku Popular at Dept. Stores

Events at Japanese department stores to sell products from the country’s Hokuriku central region, hit hard by the Jan. 1 powerful earthquake, are attracting a flurry of shoppers.

Many people are visiting the events to support reconstruction, as part of the sales revenue will be delivered to areas affected by the 7.6-magnitude temblor, which measured up to 7, the highest level on Japan’s seismic intensity scale.

Keio Department Store Co.’s outlet in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district held a sales event for products from Ishikawa and Fukui prefectures, both in Hokuriku, for six days through last Monday.

The event was planned last year to celebrate the opening of a new section on the Hokuriku Shinkansen bullet train line, slated for March this year. Four business operators from the Noto region in Ishikawa, including a shop selling famous “Wajima-nuri” lacquerware, canceled their participation in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Still, the number of visitors was “more than expected,” a public relations official at Keio Department Store said.

Taiga Chida, 28, who sold “shishigashira” wooden lion masks at the event, said, “At a time when people related to Wajima-nuri are in a difficult situation, I want to help them as a fellow traditional craftsman.”

Hankyu Hanshin Department Stores Inc.’s flagship Hankyu Umeda store in the western city of Osaka held an annual event featuring products from Ishikawa from Jan. 11.

The store considered the possibility of canceling the event in the wake of the disaster, but eventually opted to hold it as scheduled, an official indicated.

“Customers cheered us up,” an official of a participating shop said.

Takashimaya Co.’s outlet in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, has decided hurriedly to sell traditional Japanese sweets using the “Notodainagon” red bean from the Noto region at a Valentine’s Day event from Thursday.

Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings Ltd.’s Isetan store in Shinjuku will launch an event from Feb. 21 to sell Wajima-nuri products that escaped damage from the earthquake.

“I hope this event will be a first step for reconstruction,” said Haruhiko Daiku, 36, who will participate in the event. “I want many people to see the lacquerware that survived the disaster.”

• Japan calls for more community firefighters for disaster response

Japan's internal affairs minister is calling on local municipalities to recruit enough community firefighters to strengthen disaster response capabilities. Matsumoto Takeaki sent letters to municipalities across Japan on Tuesday.

The Fire and Disaster Management Agency, which falls under the ministry's jurisdiction, says the part-time firefighters played a significant role after the powerful earthquake on New Year's Day in central Japan.

It says roughly 600 community firefighters helped people in Wajima and Suzu cities in Ishikawa Prefecture, where a major tsunami warning was issued.

They guided people who were evacuating and rescued others trapped in destroyed homes.

The firefighters also carried out duties that they usually do not engage in, such as making emergency repairs to roads and patrolling in fire trucks to prevent crime.

The agency says the number of community firefighters across Japan has been declining since it peaked at 2.02 million in 1954. As of April 2023, there were just over 760,000.

Officials say they will draw up a list of cases where local governments have successfully secured the firefighters and ensure the information is widely used.

They say they will also support efforts by more actively recognizing community fire units for outstanding work.

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• All public elementary and junior high schools in Wajima reopen

Seven schools in Wajima City, Ishikawa Prefecture, reopened on Tuesday following the powerful New Year's Day earthquake.

As many as 65 public schools in 9 cities and towns in the prefecture closed at one point, but all have now resumed classes.

The six elementary schools and one junior high school in Wajima are using a prefectural senior high school in the city center.

Children and their guardians appeared from around 8:30 in the morning and greeted their teachers. A third-grader said she's happy to see her friends and wants to play with them.

The girl's mother said her daughter was frightened after the earthquake, but is calm now and happy to finally see her friends.

The city's board of education said the children will be shown around the high school on their first day and receive mental care from the school counselor.

Officials say they plan to provide online classes using tablets for children who have evacuated outside the city and others who are unable to commute.

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• Temporary Workshops for Traditional Crafts to Be Fully Subsidized; Aims for Swift Recovery of Quake Damaged Industry

The Organization for Small & Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation, Japan, an independent administrative agency, is considering fully subsidizing the construction cost of temporary workshops for traditional crafts industries affected by the Noto Peninsula Earthquake. In Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, many Wajima-nuri lacquerware workshops were damaged by the Jan. 1 quake, and the agency intends to support production to ensure the swift recovery of the industry.

The agency is currently planning to apply one of its subsidy mechanisms for temporary facilities to the four prefectures affected by the quake, including Ishikawa Prefecture. This mechanism has been used for shopping streets in the past.

Under the mechanism, the agency will cover the entire construction cost of temporary facilities built by the local municipalities which small and medium-sized businesses will be able to move into the facilities at no cost. Since the traditional craft workshops may require special equipment, the agency will take requests from the local governments.

Meanwhile, the central government has decided to subsidize up to ¥10 million of the cost of securing the tools and materials necessary for the continuation of business in the traditional craft industry.

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• Earthquake evacuees urged to register details

Authorities in Ishikawa Prefecture are urging all Noto Peninsula earthquake evacuees to register their details in a bid to gain an accurate picture of how locals are faring. They want to ensure that those affected by the New Year's Day disaster can access services that will help in the recovery.

In addition to people living in official evacuation centers, some have moved in with friends or family, and others are sleeping in cars. Officials want to ensure they have an accurate number of evacuees so they can keep them informed.

In January, the prefecture set up a counter to deliver support services information. Flyers are also available at the post office at the prefectural government office.

LINE

People can add "Ishikawa Prefecture" as a friend on the LINE messaging app and enter their evacuation information on a dedicated form. As of February 1, more than 8,200 people had registered.

Telephone

Registrations can be made by calling 0120-247-001 between 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.

According to official figures, as of February 2, the number of known evacuees stood at approximately 21,000. That is more than 10,000 fewer than at the peak in early January.

Banjo Keisuke, Ishikawa Prefecture's digital promotion chief, explains why authorities are urging all evacuees to register: "We want to prevent disaster-related deaths by having evacuees register their information so that we can get an overall picture of the evacuation, and ensure that the government is keeping a close eye on them."

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• A Closer Look / Lack of Information, Damaged Roads Hampered Quake Response; Insufficient Preparations Questioned

Flying over the Noto Peninsula, the 11 crew members of a Maritime Self-Defense Force P-1 patrol aircraft saw a strange sight. Urban areas that should have been visible directly below were shrouded in darkness.

“There aren’t any lights. Is there a blackout?” a 29-year-old lieutenant junior grade muttered to himself.

The nose of the plane was equipped with a thermal imaging camera for nighttime use. When the magnification was increased, collapsed buildings appeared on the screen, as well as dirt and sand blocking roads.

The crew members could see a red sky in the city of Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, even from the opposite side of a mountain. During their six-hour reconnaissance operation, they twice confirmed fires in the city.

“There could be substantial damage,” said the 44-year-old captain of the plane, an MSDF lieutenant commander, while staring out the window.

“Send in Self-Defense Forces personnel and police tonight, no matter what,” Kishida said.

When a disaster strikes, the SDF conduct search and rescue operations based on information provided by local governments. This time, however, this approach did not work because transportation and communication networks were cut off.

It was most difficult to assess the damage in Wajima, which had the largest number of cut-off communities. Of about 280 Wajima city employees, only about 50 were able to get to their office on Jan. 1.

The only information available was that provided by SDF personnel.

SDF personnel rushed around the city, climbing over collapsed earth and sand. The number of isolated communities was almost fully determined by the morning of Jan. 4. It was nearly 72 hours after the disaster, a point at which the survival rate is said to drop sharply.

The lack of preparedness for an emergency is also being questioned. The regional disaster prevention plan drawn up by the Ishikawa prefectural government estimated that in the event of an “earthquake off the northern coast of the Noto Peninsula,” damage would be “very localized and of low severity.”

“We’re facing challenges not seen in past disasters. It’s essential to examine the current situation at some point and draw lessons from it,” a senior central government official said.

Nobuo Fukuwa, a professor emeritus at Nagoya University, said: “In the event of a Nankai Trough earthquake, SDF personnel, police and firefighters may not be able to reach the tips of the Kii Peninsula or Izu Peninsula by land.”

In the worst case scenario, about 230,000 people are expected to die or go missing in such a massive earthquake, which could cause tsunami in the peninsula regions, start fires and destroy gas, water and other infrastructure there.

“Compared to the gravity of the disaster, there will be insufficient resources for rescue, including the SDF,” Fukuwa warned. “We need to remind ourselves once again to protect our own lives through such steps as making our homes earthquake-resistant and stockpiling food and portable toilets.”

The SDF continues to work in the quake-hit region, with about 4,000 personnel there as of Sunday. It will review its activities after all its operations are completed, in the belief that lessons from the Noto quake can be applied to a future Nankai Trough earthquake.

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• Couple serves Ukrainian soup to central Japan quake victims

A woman from Ukraine and her husband on Feb. 5 served Ukrainian food to quake victims in front of city hall here. In the bitter cold and rain, the survivors warmed up with soup.

Takashi Kikuchi, 30, and his wife Kateryna Yavorska, 33, came from Hikone, Shiga Prefecture, in a food truck. Kateryna is from Ukraine and her mother and grandmother fled to Hikone in 2022 following the Russian invasion of their homeland. Since then, she has been running a Ukrainian restaurant with her family, receiving much support from the people around her.

Upon learning of the damage caused by the Jan. 1 Noto Peninsula earthquake, she decided to organize a soup kitchen as a way of returning the favor. On Feb. 5, about 300 servings of borsch, a stew containing about 30 different ingredients including beets and beans, were distributed. A 72-year-old woman who is staying in an evacuation center said, "The hot food is very helpful and it tastes good."

The couple commented that they hope their activities will encourage people in the quake-stricken areas to take even one step forward.

• Indonesian technical trainees in quake-hit Japan town determined to stay

Indonesian technical intern trainees in this central Japan town hit hard by the Jan. 1 Noto Peninsula earthquake and tsunami are determined to hang in there despite the difficulties of living in a disaster zone and worries that another calamity could strike.

About 20 trainees from Indonesia who came to Japan to work on squid fishing boats are living in Garuda House 2, an accommodation near Ogi Port in the town of Noto. January is off-season for fishing, and the trainees were affected by the quake during their time off.

The temblor struck while the trainees were watching TV or playing video games in their dormitories on New Year's Day. They had no idea what the breaking news on TV was saying and finally understood what was going on when they saw the news flashes on their smartphones. A tsunami warning was issued, and after gathering at the fishing port, they evacuated to higher ground.

One of the two dormitories was rendered uninhabitable by damage to the interior walls and shelves, so everyone now lives in the less damaged of the pair. A 22-year-old trainee said, "We're managing to get by because our neighbors tell us to 'hang in there' when we go to the evacuation center to pick up relief supplies." He also explained that in addition to the water they get at the town hall, they use seawater to wash their dishes.

They are also careful about relief supplies. Since they cannot eat cup noodles that contain pork products, they choose rice and bread, or cook instant noodles brought from their home country.

Indonesia was severely damaged by the 2004 earthquake off Sumatra. A 19-year-old trainee who came to Japan in May 2023 said, "I'm very afraid of tsunami." Even so, and even after going through an earthquake plus the cold and snow on his first New Year holiday in Japan, he said he has never once wanted to return home.

Although there are many things he has not got used to, he said, looking at the fishing port, "I've just started working. I came here to save money to make my parents comfortable and to be happy. I want to work hard here until I get enough money."

• Facing 2.4 million tons of wreckage, Japan's Noto quake victims wonder where to begin

"Where do we even start?"

That was the sentiment of a resident of Japan's quake-struck Noto Peninsula as they faced the debris from collapsed houses -- walls, furniture, electronics -- left untouched since the Jan. 1 temblor.

On Feb. 6, the government of Ishikawa Prefecture announced that there was an estimated 2.44 million metric tons of wreckage across its entire jurisdiction, of which 1.51 million tons was in the Okunoto area at the tip of the peninsula -- an amount equivalent to 59 years of local garbage collection.

Looking at the ocean of debris covering the areas, disaster victims simply have no idea how it will all get cleared away.

Earthquake damage rendered the two-story home of a 68-year-old woman from the Fugeshi neighborhood of Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, uninhabitable, and her family of six is now scattered at relatives' homes. During the day, they return to clean up shattered glass and debris.

"It's beyond our family's capabilities alone. We'd greatly appreciate volunteers coming to help," she said. A woman in her 80s nearby added, "Appliances like refrigerators are buried under the ruins. We can only hope heavy machinery will be used to remove them when demolishing the house."

In the city's Kawaimachi district, a 58-year-old caregiver lives alone in a house marked with a red "unsafe" notice. Although the city has contractors collecting disaster waste, progress seems slow. "They're not coming to collect it promptly. I understand it's tough to deal with this amount of waste, but it's unsettling," she said.

The Ishikawa Prefecture municipalities of Suzu, Noto and Anamizu are accepting disaster waste at temporary storage sites. In Suzu's Horyumachi area, the ground floor of 81-year-old Tonao Dogan's two-story house was crushed. "We haven't even been able to begin to deal with it. Since our house is set back from the road, we can't do anything until the roads blocked with debris are cleared," he told the Mainichi Shimbun.

Thirty-six-year-old Yuya Mita from the Ogi area of Noto lives with his mother and grandmother. Each district has designated days to bring in disaster waste, but it's challenging to go on the assigned days due to work commitments, though he is thinking about renting a light truck to carry the waste.

"If we don't clean up the debris, people who want to return from evacuation facilities won't be able. We want the authorities to respond promptly," he said.

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• Japan Police to Add 1,000 Security Cameras in Quake-Hit Ishikawa Pref.; Move to Soothe Worries of Damaged House Owners

The National Police Agency plans to install about 1,000 security cameras at evacuation centers and other places in quake-stricken Ishikawa Prefecture to prevent crimes such as sexual assaults and burglaries of empty homes.

Also, the webcast of videos taken by patrol cars while making the rounds in the areas also has started to help alleviate the fears and concerns of evacuees who live away from their homes after they were hit by the Noto Peninsula Earthquake.

Government-funded efforts
On Jan. 23, the operation of a police security camera, installed at the entrance of municipal Takojima Elementary School in Suzu in the prefecture, started. About 100 people are sheltering at the school in the earthquake-battered city.

“Evacuation centers are visited by many people at all hours of the day and night. Partly because some evacuees have brought valuables with them, people feel easier when a security camera is used,” said city assembly member Kenji Sakai, 67, who is in charge of the evacuation center.

Thefts of property at evacuation centers and burglaries of empty homes have been reported in disaster-stricken areas. On Jan. 5, a university student in his 20s from Aichi Prefecture was arrested at the scene for breaking into the home of a man in his 70s and stealing six mikan tangerines in Wajima in the prefecture.

On Jan. 16, the NPA announced its plan to install about 100 security cameras in the prefecture, provided by other prefectures’ police forces. About 60 of the cameras had been installed in seven municipalities, including Wajima, Suzu and Noto, by Jan. 24.

On Jan. 26, the NPA announced a plan to increase the number of cameras to about 1,000. The NPA will use ¥135 million from the government’s reserve funds for this fiscal year to lease or purchase the cameras. This is the first time for security cameras to be purchased with government funds for installation in disaster-stricken areas.

Helping to alleviate worries

The reason for the measures is not only to alleviate anxiety among disaster victims but also to prevent disaster-related deaths by encouraging the elderly in particular to move to secondary evacuation centers, such as hotels and ryokan inns, without worry.

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• Sumo Star Visits Quake-Hit Hometown to Encourage Evacuees

Sumo wrestler and Ishikawa Prefecture native Endo returned to his earthquake-devastated hometown of Anamizu on Tuesday, where he and three others from the sumo world encouraged evacuees staying in a local shelter.

“I believe things will surely return to normal,” Endo told the 120 people staying in the municipal community center serving as a shelter. “I’ll keep fighting in the ring, so I want everyone to keep fighting, too.”

Endo is currently ranked as No. 13 maegashira in the uppermost makuuchi division. He was accompanied by No. 15 maegashira Onosato, who comes from the town of Tsubata in the prefecture; second-tier juryo wrestler Kagayaki, from the city of Nanao; and sumo elder Takenawa, also from Nanao.

“He swept my fatigue away and boosted my spirits,” said a 75-year-old man from Anamizu, after having a commemorative photo taken with Endo.

The four also visited shelters in Nanao and the town of Uchinada on Tuesday.

• ANA slashes fares for quake-affected region

All Nippon Airways has cut fares for flights between Noto Airport and Haneda Airport to a flat rate of 10,000 yen until March 28 to assist people affected by the New Year's Day earthquake.

The airline says the discount will make it easier for residents moving to temporary lodgings outside the region, and also help people who are traveling to the region to contribute to the recovery effort.

ANA is requesting that people not use the discounted fares for holiday purposes.

The airline says the flat rate represents a cut of up to 70 percent on regular prices.

To qualify for the 10,000-yen fare, flyers have to choose the ANA VALUE option, which requires purchasing tickets at least one day in advance on the ANA website.

The airline is currently operating three round-trip flights per week between the two airports and will continue to do so until March 28.

• Quake damage spells the end for food maker after 90 years

Businesses continue to struggle to regain their footing following the Noto Peninsula earthquake on New Year's Day. Damage from the disaster has forced a long-standing maker of a traditional food to call it quits after about 90 years in operation.

83-year-old Nakamura Kazunari has been producing steamed kamaboko fish paste for over 60 years for his store in Toyama Prefecture's Himi City.

His father established the shop in the 1930s. It became a popular tourist spot.

The quake badly damaged Nakamura's store, shattering the entrance door glass and creating cracks in the floor.

The special kamaboko products he made for New Year's are still sitting in the shop, with their best-by dates long expired.

Nakamura struggled to raise funds for repairs. Given his advanced age, he decided to make this the end of the store's long run.

"I'm now done," he says. "I wanted to make kamaboko for the rest of my life. I got a lot of joy from it, and from running the business."

He added if he were 10 years younger, he would have rebuilt the store. He said it will now be demolished.

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• Expert team leaves for quake-hit city in Ishikawa to restore water supplies

An expert team has left for a quake-hit city in Ishikawa Prefecture to help restore water supplies.

Some 37,500 households and businesses in Ishikawa were without running water as of 2 p.m. on Wednesday.

In the city of Nanao, about 13,300 of them still have no access to tap water.

Officials from the city of Tonami in Toyama Prefecture decided to send an eight-member team of experts to Nanao.

Tonami Mayor Natsuno Osamu encouraged the team at a departure ceremony on Thursday.

He said he wants them to contribute to restoring water supplies as soon as possible for people affected by the disaster, although the weather is cold and tremors are continuing.

Tonami city officials say the eight will travel between the two cities daily until running water is restored in Nanao. Their tasks include identifying where water is leaking and carrying out repairs.

A team member says he wants to do his utmost to help people in Nanao to quickly resume their normal lives.

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• Sparks, Smoke from Turbine Building at Nuclear Power Plant in Tsuruga, Fukui Pref.; No Injuries, No Unusual Radiation At Monitoring Posts Reported

suruga Power Station in Fukui Prefecture reported to the local fire department on 6:20 a.m. Thursday that sparks and smoke had been observed at a turbine building of its nuclear power plant, where decommissioning work is currently underway. There was no report of injuries.

According to the plant’s operator, the Japan Atomic Power Co., no abnormal radiation has been measured at monitoring posts around the site.

The power plant’s operator and the fire department are investigating.

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• Man arrested over thefts from houses in quake-hit area

Ishikawa Prefectural Police have arrested a 37-year-old man on suspicion of stealing items from two houses in the quake-hit area between Jan 1 and Jan 17.

Police said Ryota Takeda, who claims to be self-employed and is from Osaka, is accused of stealing three items including a watch and a silver cup from a house in Suzu, that had been vacant since before the Jan 1 earthquake, Kyodo News reported.

Police said Takeda also targeted another damaged house on Jan 17 and stole imitation swords and other items after the resident had moved to an evacuation shelter.

Officers on alert for looters apprehended Takeda after receiving a tip from a local resident that there was a stranger coming out of the house.

Police said Takeda told them he was a volunteer worker and that he had taken the items to give to the man in his 70s who lived in the house.

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• Japan's workers assess economy less favorably after Jan. 1 quake

A government survey has found that business sentiment among workers was down in January for the first time in four months. The fall comes in the wake of the powerful earthquake that hit central Japan on New Year's Day.

The Cabinet Office's Economy Watchers Survey shows that sentiment in January stood at 50.2, down 1.6 points from December.

It asked 2,000 working people how they feel about current economic conditions compared to three months before.

The Hokuriku region, which was severely affected by the quake, marked the sharpest decline among Japan's 12 regions, falling 9.1 points to 41.3.

One department store employee who was surveyed said consumer sentiment has weakened substantially since the quake.

Meanwhile, a hotel worker pointed out that the disaster has severely dented the number of bookings, with most people canceling and no new reservations coming in.

• Missing Cat Reunited with Owner over 1 Month after Noto Quake

"Kotaro, you're alive!" A male cat was found safe and reunited with his owner more than a month after he went missing in the Jan. 1 major earthquake that hit the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, central Japan.

"I thought I'd never see him again. I can't believe it," said the cat's owner, Eriko Matsuda, a 44-year-old public worker in Kanazawa, the capital of Ishikawa.

Matsuda had raised Kotaro lovingly since the day she took him in, just after she married. He had been abandoned several months after his birth.

During the New Year holiday, 11-year-old Kotaro was staying with Matsuda and her family at her parents' home in the city of Suzu in Ishikawa.

On New Year's Day, Matsuda and her family were visiting Mitsukejima, an island in Suzu and a major sightseeing spot, leaving Kotaro at home.

• Govt. to boost financial support for public housing in quake-hit Noto region

The Japanese government plans to provide more financial assistance for public housing projects in areas in central Japan that were hit by the massive earthquake on January 1.

The Noto Peninsula earthquake, which struck Ishikawa Prefecture, was designated as a "disaster of extreme severity" last month.

The designation has enabled the government to increase state subsidies aimed at restoring public facilities and farmland. It has also made it easier for small and medium size businesses to get credit.

On Friday, the government decided to provide additional assistance after it was determined that the number of completely destroyed or severely damaged homes exceeded the threshold required to take further measures.

State subsidies for municipalities to build public housing will be provided for 50 percent of the number of destroyed homes instead of the current 30 percent. The subsidy rates will be raised to cover three-quarters of the construction costs. The current subsidies cover two-thirds of the expenses.

Disaster Management Minister Matsumura Yoshifumi said he wants municipalities to use the subsidies to help the affected people secure permanent housing.

The new measures will take effect on February 15.

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• Evacuees in quake-hit Suzu City move into temporary housing

Evacuees in Suzu City, Ishikawa Prefecture, have started moving into temporary housing after many homes were severely damaged in the Noto Peninsula earthquake that struck central Japan on New Year's Day.

In Suzu City, 456 temporary homes are being built at five locations. The first 40 were completed in the schoolyard of Shoin Elementary School.

People started arriving with their families shortly after 8 a.m. on Friday. They brought bedding and daily necessities from evacuation centers.

A woman in her 80s came to see the temporary residence with her daughter. Their house in the same district was destroyed by the quake.

They brought clothes with them and checked the electricity and water supplies.

The mother said she was glad when she was informed that she could move in. She said there was only a curtain for privacy at the evacuation center but she can now live in peace and quiet. She added that her room is more spacious and warmer than she had expected.

Her daughter said the future is still uncertain but she is grateful to have electricity and running water.

A total of 8,280 homes were destroyed or partially damaged in Suzu. The city plans to build about 2,500 temporary houses.

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• Japan quake evacuees urged to leave secondary sites soon; hotels want to free up rooms for tourist surge

The Ishikawa prefectural government has begun briefings for people taking shelter at secondary evacuation sites, such as hotels and inns, in the aftermath of the major earthquake that hit the Noto Peninsula on New Year’s Day.

In the briefing, the prefecture presented evacuees with four options, including moving into temporary housing units. Evacuees were also told that their stays at the current secondary evacuation sites will end in February or March.

However, the prefecture has yet to secure enough units of temporary housing, the option in greatest demand among evacuees.

The prefectural government plans to interview more than 5,000 people at secondary evacuation centres to learn their wishes.

On the first day of the briefings on Feb 7, participants expressed anxiety and confusion.

“You’ll be able to stay here until early March,” a prefectural government official told a group of 210 evacuees at a luxury hotel in the Yamashiro hot spring resort in Kaga, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the prefecture. The hotel is accommodating more than 300 evacuees, the largest number among secondary evacuation sites.

The prefectural government presented the following four options in the briefing session:

• Temporary housing in their hometowns
• Private-sector rental accommodation funded by the prefectural government
• Public housing
• Repairing their houses and returning home

An overwhelming number of evacuees wish to move into temporary housing. The prefectural government plans to have started construction on 3,000 units of such housing by the end of March, but this is far short of the more than 7,000 applications received.

Many of the available private-sector rental accommodations and public housing facilities are located outside the prefecture, so evacuees who wish to stay near their hometowns are likely to not prefer such accommodations.

Questionnaires were distributed to the participants at the briefing session, and evacuees were asked to submit them in about a week.

Some evacuees looked perplexed after the meeting.

“I’ve just settled down here,” said a 65-year-old self-employed man from Suzu in the prefecture, who finally came to the hotel after staying in three different shelters. “It’ll be difficult to find a job if I have to move to somewhere away from my hometown. I feel like crying.”

A 60-year-old hospital office worker from Wajima in the prefecture also expressed anxiety. “I want to repair our damaged house and live there with my father. But there are no prospects as to when a disaster victim certificate will be issued,” she said. “I cannot make a decision in just a week.”

The prefectural government has been calling on people to move from local government-run shelters to secondary evacuation sites to prevent disaster-related deaths.

The number of people staying at secondary evacuation centers totaled 5,209 as of Feb 7, according to the prefecture. While there are 243 such secondary evacuation centers, many of them plan to stop housing evacuees in February and March.

The prefecture needs to urge evacuees to move out of hotels and inns partly because of the scheduled opening of an extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line between Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture’s capital, and Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, on March 16.

The hotel industry’s expectations for the new Shinkansen service are high, as tourism was hard hit during the coronavirus pandemic.

Hotels and inns apparently wish to start preparations for an expected increase in the number of tourists as soon as possible. If they must house evacuees longer, their business might be affected.

“We are concerned whether tourists, who will come here to refresh themselves, can feel relaxed in a place with evacuees,” said a source close to a ryokan operator in the prefecture. “Of course, we cannot tell evacuees, who managed to arrive here with [nothing but] hand luggage, to leave.”

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Video in the link

• Regrets, sorrow: Residents had little time to escape tsunami

The Ukai district of Suzu city in Ishikawa Prefecture faces Toyama Bay, where the waves are usually calm.

But on Jan. 1, over the course of mere minutes, an earthquake struck under these waters off the Noto Peninsula, churning a tsunami more than 4 meters high that sped toward shore.

The prefectural government said two people were confirmed killed by the waves as of Feb. 8.

The low death toll has been attributed partly to community preparations honed in disaster drills.

The tsunami, the first wave of which hit shore less than a minute after the earthquake, shows once again that every second counts when fleeing to safety in a disaster.

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Parts of this video have been shown on this thread.

• Car's dashcam records Japan quake's violent shaking, collapsing houses, tsunami

The dashcam of a car belonging to a social welfare corporation that operates nursing homes for the elderly in Suzu, Ishikawa Prefecture, captured a clear record of the damage caused by the Jan. 1. Noto Peninsula earthquake, including collapsing houses and the tsunami.

The social welfare corporation Choujukai is calling for the footage to be used as a lesson for future disaster prevention measures.

A transportation service vehicle carrying a corporation employee and six male and female senior day care users left a facility in Suzu at around 4:10 p.m. on New Year's Day to take the users home, and was hit by a violent tremor shortly after. The shaking lasted for more than 50 seconds and users screamed, while houses in the immediate vicinity cracked and collapsed one after another, sending up clouds of dust.

Immediately after the quake, residents began evacuating to higher ground where the Choujukai welfare facility was located. The shuttle van was stuck among collapsed houses and damaged roads, but local residents and family members helped the users escape amid the sirens warning of a major tsunami. People carried those with weak legs and backs on their shoulders as they fled.

At about 4:47 p.m., roughly 35 minutes after the shaking ceased, the dashcam detected another impact and the recording resumed. It showed the tsunami's muddy waters washing away the wreckage of houses and vehicles.

According to Yasutaka Takado, 49, deputy secretary-general of the corporation, all the users were evacuated safely. He commented that if the time for driving day care users home had been even a bit different, they could have been caught in the building collapse. "We want to thank the people in the community for helping people evacuate," he said.

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• Sumo's lone Yokozuna makes long-awaited comeback

Offering encouragement and hope

A deadly earthquake struck central Japan's Noto Peninsula on New Year's Day. More than 200 people lost their lives, and many of those who survived have had to make do in evacuation shelters. Full restoration is expected to take months or even years.

The Japan Sumo Association conducted fundraising throughout the entire two-week competition to offer support. In addition, wrestlers from the affected regions went all out to put on their best performances in hopes of offering energy and encouragement to the survivors.

• Zenkoji Temple in Nagano Illuminated Green, Yellow for Peace; Noto Quake Victims Kept in Mind

Nagano Tomyo Festival, which illuminates Zenkoji temple in Nagano City, started on Friday. This year is the 21st time for the festival to be held. The main hall, a national treasure, is illuminated in green, red, yellow, and other colors, as the areas affected by the Noto Peninsula Earthquake are kept in mind alongside prayers for peace. The festival will be held until Monday.

The main hall is decorated with five colors, of which the longest glowing color is green. World-renowned lighting designer Motoko Ishii, 85, was in charge of the production. She chose green, the color of nature and the earth, to pray for an end to the prolonged fighting in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip.

Ishii said, “I would like people to view the illuminations while appreciating how happy their peaceful lives are.”

With so much death and destruction, I thought I would share just a few of my daughters recent photos of a more beautiful Japan

^Some other nice pictures: Following Cherry Blossoms in Japan

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• Cardboard ‘Instant Houses’ Being Used at Noto Evacuation Shelters; Built to Provide Privacy, Prevent Spread of Disease

Cardboard “instant houses” are being widely used in the areas affected by the Noto Peninsula Earthquake. The houses can be easily set up and help provide privacy and prevent the spread of infectious disease at evacuation centers where about 8,000 people are still staying.

The gymnasium of a municipal junior high school, which now serves as an evacuation center in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, is filled with instant cardboard houses that accommodate 30 households — about 60 people. Each house is 2 meters long, 2 meters wide and 2.7 meters high. The 16 cardboard and plastic components that make up an instant house can be assembled by two adults in only about 15 minutes. The houses can be connected together to make a larger house, and the floors are covered with insulation.

Anri Miyashita, 32, and her three family members now sleep in three cardboard houses joined together. She says, “When I slept on the floor, the sound of people’s footsteps bothered me, but now I can sleep well.”

The design of the instant house was conceived by Keisuke Kitagawa, 49, a professor at Nagoya Institute of Technology who specializes in architecture. Kitagawa arrived at Noto Peninsula the day after the earthquake and has been installing the houses. The production cost of an indoor instant house is ¥10,000, and the waterproof outdoor version costs ¥150,000.

Kitagawa has been soliciting donations to cover production and transportation costs on the university’s website and shipping the houses free of charge to affected areas. So far, a total of 700 of these houses have been shipped to 12 evacuation centers in six cities and towns, including Wajima. He has currently received additional orders for about 3,500 houses, including those for outdoor use.

The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 triggered Kitagawa’s development of the instant house. An elementary school student in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, where he visited for research, asked him: “Why does it take so long to build a house? If you are a university teacher, build it next week.” Kitagawa felt helpless.

Kitagawa then began development of a house that is lightweight, easy to transport, and can be built quickly with few materials. The design for the instant house was finalized in December. Noto is the first disaster-stricken area where these instant houses have been installed.

He aims to install them at all evacuation centers where they have been requested, and said, “We want to make evacuation life as comfortable as possible and reduce disaster-related deaths to zero.”

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• Wajima Finally Welcomes Volunteers More Than a Month After Devastating Quake; About 40 People Participated in the Effort to Support Victims

Volunteers were finally allowed to start working in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, on Saturday, more than a month after the Jan. 1 earthquake devastated the city and its nearby areas on the Noto Peninsula.

Wajima became the last of the four municipalities in the Okunoto region — or the area on the northern tip of the peninsula — that has welcomed members of the public from across the nation as volunteers.

About 40 people participated in a program initiated by the prefectural government. They arrived in Wajima at around 11 a.m. after departing from Kanazawa aboard a bus earlier that morning. Some helped clean ryokan inns in the central part of Wajima, while others helped sorting out supplies delivered from across the nation.

Volunteers, however, had to come back to Kanazawa the same day, as there are few facilities in and around the city that can accommodate them. Local roads are still severely damaged, which means that they could only work for three hours in Wajima.

“I want to help elderly residents who have difficulties to clean up on their own,” said one volunteer, a vocational school student from Hyogo Prefecture.

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Video in the link

• Nikkei Film: After Japan earthquake, fishermen in Noto fear the future -

More than 14,000 people remain evacuated from homes and businesses in the Noto Peninsula as of Feb. 1, one month after a magnitude-7.6 earthquake struck the area in central Japan. Survivors of the quake, which killed 240 people, are struggling to rebuild their lives while facing problems finding fresh food due to supply chain disruptions, as roads remain cut off.

The force of the earthquake caused the seabed to rise near Noto, stranding port facilities on new land far from the ocean. Fishermen are worried that the port may be permanently closed and that they will have to give up fishing.

The tragedy has highlighted the challenges of reconstruction and disaster prevention in depopulated areas with aging populations. Nikkei went to the affected area one month after the earthquake to view the devastation and recovery efforts.

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• Wajima’s beloved ‘Totoro’ rock lost its left ear in Noto earthquake

The left ear of “Totoro-iwa” (Totoro rock), a hugely popular sightseeing spot here, has gone missing.

But vandalism is not suspected.

Officials say the most likely culprit is the Noto Peninsula earthquake that struck Jan. 1 and had a magnitude of 7.6.

The official name of the rock is “Tsurugiji-gongen-iwa.” The rock is popular because of its resemblance to the titular character in Studio Ghibli’s animated film “My Neighbor Totoro."

Around 15 years ago, city officials decorated the rock with eyeballs made of rough rope to mimic Totoro’s expression, according to the Wajima city tourism division.

Located on the coast along Route 249, the parking lot maintained by the city used to be packed with cars and motorcycles before the quake as tourists snapped photos of the icon.

A tourism division official said: “Damage caused by disasters is inevitable, but it is unfortunate that part of ‘Totoro-iwa’ collapsed. Our priority now is to support the quake victims, but we will consider restoration once the situation has settled down.”

• First haul of red snow crabs since quake lands in central Japan

A red snow crab fisher in central Japan has landed his first haul since the New Year's day earthquake left his equipment devastated.

Shiotani Hisao has worked as a crab fisher for 45 years and operates out of a port in Imizu City, Toyama Prefecture. Three boats that catch the local winter delicacy are based at the port.

The quake caused heavy damage to crab traps on the seabed, with many of them buried or swept away.

Shiotani lost all of his traps. But he worked hard to resume fishing and placed new ones in the sea in late January.

On Saturday, he checked and found that he had a good catch.

The more than 450 crabs that he put up for auction at the fishing port were sold briskly.

Shiotani said the 40-day break from fishing passed quickly, because he and his crew were busy preparing to resume operations, while trying to forget about the lost traps. He added that he can only move forward step by step.

• Many Cultural Properties Damaged in Japan’s Noto Peninsula Earthquake; Full Extent of Quake Damage Yet to be Assessed

The Noto Peninsula Earthquake caused major damage to cultural properties in Ishikawa Prefecture, including historical buildings and castle ruins. More than a month has passed since the disaster, but detailed surveys of the damage have yet to be conducted as local government officials in charge of cultural properties are busy helping residents who have been affected by the Jan. 1 earthquake.

To determine the full extent of the damage, the prefectural board of education is working with the Cultural Affairs Agency and the Cultural Heritage Disaster Risk Management Center, Japan, a national organization based in Nara City.

The Nanao Castle Ruins in Nanao, Ishikawa Prefecture, is a national historical site and is listed as one of the top 100 castles in Japan.

The quake severely damaged the castle’s stone foundation, and cracks appeared throughout the grounds of the ruins.

The large mountain castle has an area of about 250 hectares and was built in the 16th century during the Sengoku period (late 15th century to late 16th century) by the Hatakeyama clan that ruled Noto area. It was known as an impregnable fortress.

At least 11 sections have been damaged as a result of the earthquake, including areas where the keep was located. Some of the sections were then further damaged by aftershocks. According to the Nanao municipal board of education, a plan has not yet been made to restore it.

“At the moment, we have only managed to survey the main parts,” said an official from the board of education. “Some of the areas are difficult or unsafe to access, so we have yet to see the full extent of the damage.”

At the Kamitokikuni Family Residence, a national important cultural property in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, the building collapsed and the traditional thatched roof is now on the ground.

A wealthy family that ruled the villages in the northern Noto Peninsula used to live in the house, which is believed to have been built in 1831 during the Edo period (1603-1867). It was one of the largest houses in the Hokuriku region at the time, measuring 29 meters wide and 18 meters high. It had survived many earthquakes but was unable to withstand the Noto Peninsula Earthquake.

“I’m at a loss for words as it happened so suddenly,” said Kentaro Tokikuni, 73, a member of the family. “It’ll be difficult to restore and rebuild it on our own. I want to think about how to deal with the situation while taking into account the support measures from the central government.”

The Sojiji Soin, an old temple in Wajima, was also severely damaged. The 33-meter-long Zenetsuro corridor, a nationally registered tangible cultural property, was completely destroyed.

The Kamogaura Saltwater Pool, a nationally registered tangible cultural property on the Kamogaura coast near the city center, had been a popular swimming pool, which was filled with seawater that flowed in. However, after the earthquake, the pool completely dried up. The University of Tokyo’s Earthquake Research Institute investigated the site and reported that it was caused by land uplift.

According to Wajima municipal government, the pool was built about 75 years ago by excavating a 25-meter long, 13-meter wide hole in a rocky reef. At the time, there were no swimming pools at schools, so it was used for students’ swim lessons.

“Elementary school children came here often to have fun,” said Yugo Kawaguchi, 37, head priest at the nearby Shokoji temple, as he looked at the empty pool.

According to the prefectural board of education’s cultural properties department, there are 679 cultural properties, including national treasures and national important tangible cultural properties, in the prefecture. As of Feb. 2, about 100 of them have been damaged.

The Cultural Affairs Agency dispatched specialists to inspect the damage to nationally designated cultural properties, starting in areas that were ready to be checked. The agency began surveying the Wajima area on Feb. 1.

It is thought that cultural properties designated by local authorities and non-designated cultural properties have also suffered extensive damage. As a result, the Cultural Heritage Disaster Risk Management Center, Japan, has started collecting information about them.

“First, I hope that local authorities will take the lead in quickly establishing a system to protect local cultural properties,” said Ryusuke Kotani, who heads the center’s cultural heritage disaster risk management. “After that, we will provide support using our expertise.”

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• People still without water in Wajima take shuttle to baths

A shuttle bus service to a bathing facility has begun for Wajima City's citizens who remain without water after the New Year's day earthquake.

In the city in Ishikawa Prefecture, central Japan, about 10,000 households and businesses remain without water more than one month after the quake.

The Self-Defense Forces are providing bath services in the city, but there is a limited opportunity to soak in a hot tub.

The prefecture began the day trip operation on Sunday to carry Wajima residents to a facility in Hakui City, where they can soak in a large bath tub.

Four people who had applied in advance got on the bus in the morning at a junior high school in Wajima. They were carrying clean clothes to change into after a good soak.

A resident in his 80s said he will use a bath tub for the first time in four days. He added that he was looking forward to the opportunity and that he was happy about the good weather.

A woman in her 50s said she has been told that it will take some more time for her home water supply to be turned back on. She said she took a bath every day before the quake, and that she felt the importance of water.

The prefecture says the shuttle bus will run once a day on every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday through February 22.

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• Wall Falls on Worker at Quake-Damaged Building in Ishikawa; Victim Reported to be in Cardiopulmonary Arrest

NANAO, Ishikawa — A man in his 60s suffered cardiorespiratory arrest in Nanao, Ishikawa Prefecture, on Saturday after a concrete wall fell on him while he was cleaning up around a building that had been damaged by the devastating Jan. 1 earthquake, according to police.

The man was taken to a hospital following the incident at around 1:25 p.m. at a soy sauce manufacturer. The man was cleaning up with several other of the manufacturer’s workers when he was trapped under the concrete wall, which was 1.3 meters high and 3.3 meters wide, according to police.

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• Logistics challenges hinder volunteering in quake-hit Ishikawa

Volunteer work in central Japan has been stalling over a month since the Noto Peninsula was hit by a 7.6-magnitude earthquake, with few people permitted to assist each day amid insufficient accommodation facilities and poor road conditions.

While approximately 23,000 people have registered to volunteer in Ishikawa Prefecture, only around 250 are currently permitted to help in the hardest-hit northern region of the peninsula each day, according to the local government.

The New Year's Day earthquake on the Sea of Japan coast claimed over 240 lives, sparked fires and left a trail of destruction in its wake.

Wajima in Ishikawa began accepting volunteers on Saturday, with about 40 of them entering the city and clearing up rubble and debris, among other jobs.

"I wasn't able to do this alone, so it's helpful," said Koichi Tanaka, 60, who had water-damaged tatami mats carried out from an accommodation facility he runs.

But some who came to help noted the lack of volunteers in the area, with 47-year-old professional wrestler Kazutaka Hasegawa noting, "I have never heard of only 40 people allowed in on the first day. Reconstruction work will take a long time at this rate."

As of Saturday, eight municipalities in the region have solicited help from across the country. Registrations began on Jan. 6, but actual volunteer work started from Jan. 27.

While groups specializing in volunteer work were able to assist early on following the temblor, preparations for civilian volunteers have lagged behind.

Volunteer work is currently largely limited to day trips, with the prefecture shuttling people by bus from the capital city Kanazawa to designated areas, as water cuts make it difficult to stay overnight. Consequently, they are only able to assist about four hours per day.

"We are sending as many people as the municipalities require. They will struggle if we send more than the necessary number," an official from the prefecture said, asking people to refrain from individual volunteering to prevent confusion.

Limiting the scope of civilian volunteer work can not only lower the motivation of those coming to help but also make regions with limited assistance feel neglected, according to Takumi Miyamoto, associate professor at the Graduate School of Human Sciences in Osaka University who specializes in disaster volunteering.

"It will become necessary to have people come in to listen to what the victims need or have to say. There is a need to diversify means of soliciting help, such as municipalities asking for assistance themselves, in addition to the current registrations through the prefecture," he said.

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• Quake-hit Nanao shopping street holds impromptu festive market

NANAO, Ishikawa Prefecture--Despite much of a commercial street here lying in ruins due to the New Year’s Day earthquake, local merchants went ahead Feb. 11 with a makeshift reconstruction market.

Many establishments along the Ipponsugi-dori shopping street are still not sure if they will ever reopen their doors.

The reconstruction market was viewed as a way to bring local residents together again.

Hisashi Takazawa, who heads the shopping street promotion council, was inspired by reports of a tent market being set up in Minami-Sanriku, Miyagi Prefecture, a month after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake that claimed more than 6,000 lives.

Takazawa consulted with the business community in Minami-Sanriku to learn more about the market operation.

At 11 a.m. prompt on Feb. 11, Takazawa opened the market by stating, “This is the first step toward our reconstruction from the earthquake.”

About 10 outlets took part, including a traditional Japanese candle shop, a sushi restaurant and a lacquerware business.

A shopping district in Minami-Sanriku provided fish cakes for free to the Nanao market.

“I felt relieved to see familiar faces, such as business owners and neighbors,” said Miyu Matsumoto, 27, who lives nearby. “While the damage was huge, I hope this can serve as a catalyst for everyone to move forward.”

• NHK charity sumo event raises funds for 6 vehicles for quake-hit facilities

An NHK charity sumo event has raised funds to purchase six vehicles to be used by welfare organizations in the areas devastated by the New Year's Day earthquake.

The event, organized by NHK and an NHK-affiliated organization, was held on Saturday at Tokyo's Ryougoku Kokugikan arena. About 4,300 people attended.

At the event, sumo wrestler Endo handed the keys to the six vehicles to a representative of welfare organizations in Ishikawa Prefecture. The wrestler is from one of the towns in the prefecture that was hit hardest by the earthquake.

Among those on stage was sumo wrestler Kotonowaka, who was promoted to the second highest rank of Ozeki after his 13-2 result in the previous tourney.

Kotonowaka said his aspiration as an Ozeki is to win another tournament and build a foothold to strive for the highest rank of Yokozuna. He received a big round of applause from the spectators.

Later, sumo wrestlers and their stable masters showed off their singing voices. Veteran wrestler Takayasu and up-and-coming 21-year-old wrestler Atamifuji particularly excited fans.

• Six weeks on, recovery efforts continue

Recovery and reconstruction efforts are continuing six weeks after a devastating New Year's Day earthquake struck central Japan.

Volunteers are helping out in the Noto Peninsula where most of the damage occurred. But accommodation for them is scarce.

They need to travel by bus for the time being between their activity bases and Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture, which has better infrastructure.

Aid supplies from across the country are arriving in the hardest-hit city of Wajima.

Koyama Masaki is a traditional lacquerware chopstick craftsperson. His workshop was damaged as well as his home and he is unable to work.

He has been managing aid supplies since disaster struck.

Koyama said, "There are people who are having a much harder time than me, so I hope I can do something to help them."

Meanwhile, the Wajima city government has started offering individual consultations on publicly funded demolition of damaged buildings.

More than 60,000 houses in Ishikawa Prefecture have been completely or partially destroyed. City officials say they have received about 500 inquiries so far.

241 people have so far been confirmed dead and at least 23,000 are still living in shelters in the hardest-hit prefecture of Ishikawa.

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• Town employees exhausted, nurses look to quit 1.5 months since deadly Japan quake

Nearly a month and a half since the New Year's Day Noto Peninsula earthquake struck central Japan, some relief workers say they can't continue if conditions go on as they are. Many were themselves affected by the disaster, and measures are urgently needed to reduce their physical and mental burden.

About 5,000 houses in the town of Noto, Ishikawa Prefecture, were damaged in the temblor, and eight residents had died from the disaster as of Feb. 9.

At an inland gymnasium-turned-relief center on Feb. 8, 48-year-old municipal worker Toshihiro Tada was surrounded by deliveries of cardboard boxes of relief supplies. "In February, I started being able to take one day off a week. I don't feel like cleaning up when I go home, so it's still as messy as when the earthquake hit."

In principle, support staff are responsible for surveying damage to buildings, but Noto Municipal Government employees need to guide them. "There are some staffers who come to work from evacuation centers and stay overnight at the town hall. My situation is better than theirs," said Tada.

Another employee, 40, leaves her children at their grandparents' house and commutes to work from her home, where the cupboards have fallen over. While she was energetic immediately after the quake, recently she has been feeling depressed over the uncertain future.

"Considering the living environment and children's education," she said, "it may be better for the family to move out." Resigning has crossed her mind.

1 in 4 nurses 'to quit'

Some nurses are moving toward calling it quits. At the 175-bed Wajima Municipal Hospital, the only general hospital in the city, about 30 of the around 120 nurses have indicated they intend to leave their jobs soon.

According to general affairs manager Kuniyuki Kawasaki, many are in their 20s to 40s and raising children. The hospital has been busy with emergency treatments, transfers and other tasks.

Kawasaki reportedly worked around 200 hours of overtime in January, double the "karoshi line" -- 100 hours in a single month or about 80 hours averaged over the last two to six months -- where overwork can be legally recognized as a cause of death.

"We're holding our own now because many have evacuated outside the city and patients are few, but it's critical to maintain normal medical care functions," Kawasaki added.

As of Feb. 10, a campaign seeking to reduce the burden on public servants and others started by one of the evacuation center volunteers had garnered 32,000 signatures on Change.org. The campaign reportedly aims to ask Ishikawa Gov. Hiroshi Hase by mid-February to alleviate the situation.

In response to a string of past disasters that resulted in employees of stricken municipalities taking leave or developing mental illness, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in 2018 established a system of "counterpart support," in which a prefecture or major designated city is assigned to support disaster-struck municipalities. The system was put into use during the heavy rains and floods in west Japan that July. Following the Noto Peninsula earthquake, a total of 1,160 people have entered the affected areas under the system.

Saneyuki Udagawa, a special researcher familiar with support for disaster-stricken municipalities at the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience, said, "Local managers and certain other roles cannot be substituted, but other areas should be delegated to support staff as needed. We should also consider outsourcing work to the private sector, such as transportation companies and security firms."

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• Disproportionate Impact: Disabled Individuals in Japan'''s Earthquake Disasters

In the aftermath of Japan's devastating earthquakes during the 2010s, a grim pattern has emerged. A recent study by Kyodo News reveals that over 20% of deaths attributed to physical and mental stress following these natural disasters involved individuals with disabilities. This figure is significantly higher than the estimated proportion of disabled people in the population, which stands at 9%.

Unseen Disparities in Disaster's Wake

The survey of local governments indicated that 21% of fatalities linked to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster in northeastern Japan involved people with disability certificates. The corresponding figure for the 2016 quakes in Kumamoto Prefecture was even more alarming, with 28% of deaths involving individuals with disabilities.

These statistics underscore a stark reality: the vulnerability of disabled individuals in times of crisis. The study's findings highlight the urgent need for more comprehensive disaster response strategies that account for the unique needs and challenges of this community.

"We Were Forgotten": Stories from the Margins

"I felt like we were forgotten," says Hiroko Suzuki, a woman with a physical disability who survived the 2011 tsunami. Her story, like many others, paints a harrowing picture of the struggles faced by disabled individuals during and after these disasters.

Suzuki recounts her desperate attempts to evacuate, hampered by inaccessible emergency shelters and a lack of assistance. "There were stairs everywhere," she says, "and no one to help me."

Similar stories echo across the disability community in Japan. For those with mobility impairments, evacuation can be a daunting task. For those with sensory or cognitive disabilities, the chaos and confusion of a disaster can be overwhelming.

A Call to Action: Building a More Inclusive Future

The Kyodo News study serves as a sobering reminder of the disparities that exist in disaster situations. It underscores the critical importance of inclusive disaster management policies and practices.

Disability rights advocates are calling for sweeping changes, including improved accessibility in emergency shelters, better communication strategies for people with sensory impairments, and increased training for first responders on how to assist individuals with disabilities.

"This isn't just about statistics," says Takeshi Nakamura, a disability rights activist. "These are lives lost, families torn apart. We need to do better."

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• Vietnamese community welcome Tet in Japan's quake hit prefecture

The Vietnamese Business Association in Japan and nearly 100 Vietnamese apprentices and expats joined a program to welcome the Lunar New Year in Nanao city, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, Friday night.

The Association presented the participants gifts, which include lucky money, and Vietnamese traditional specialties for the Lunar New Year.

Le Thi Thuong, an apprentice at Sugiyo company specialized in food production and processing in Ishikawa, said that she had just come to Japan to work for 8 days before an earthquake occurred.

Thuong said she was looking forward to the program “Joy of New Year’s Eve” and rode a bicycle for 8 kilometers to the program venue.

“As a new comer here, I felt so panic due to repetitive earthquakes. After the earthquakes, we were allowed to return to work but only worked for 4 hours a day. We had to ask for meals at a school. There is still shortage of water after the earthquake,” according to Thuong.

Tong Thi Kim Giao, President of the Vietnamese Business Association in Japan and a representative of the Organizing Board, said the Association has called for support from its members and delivered all the money and aid packages to people in need among the Vietnamese community in Ishikawa.

• Baseball: Orix drawing record camp crowd, supporting quake-hit region

The Pacific League champion Orix Buffaloes have attracted a record number of spectators to their spring training, backed by strong results in recent years and popularity-boosting efforts.

On Sunday, the former team of new Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto had its largest-ever spring crowd of 29,196 and teamed up with Zweigen Kanazawa, a J-League football third-division club based in Ishikawa Prefecture, to collect donations for the earthquake-hit Noto Peninsula.

The two teams are holding their camps in the same sports park in Miyazaki, southwestern Japan, while recovery work is underway for the peninsula struck by a 7.6-magnitude quake on New Year's Day.

"We want to involve fans and do what people did for us, based on our experience," senior Orix official Yuichi Kohama said.

In 1995, Orix won the Pacific League title, inspired by fan support and led by Ichiro Suzuki after its then home, Kobe, was struck by a deadly earthquake just months before the start of the season.

The Orix camp had more than 20,000 visitors each day over the three-day weekend that ended Monday. Donations for the Noto Peninsula will continue to be collected at the venue until the end of February.

Now based in Osaka, Orix has long struggled to expand its fan base in the shadow of the hugely popular Hanshin Tigers, who share essentially the same market in western Japan's Kansai region.

But the Buffaloes have successfully brought fans closer to players at their camp in Miyazaki.

"Everyone on the Orix team interacts with fans nicely," said Satoyo Konoike, a 60-year-old from Higashiosaka, Osaka Prefecture. "I came to the camp for the first time. I never expected it to be this fun."

Fans are getting to see Orix's players up close and get a good look at potential future stars. The Buffaloes, with a solid track record for player development in recent years, have their share of promising young talent.

Shumpeita Yamashita, a 21-year-old right-hander, has drawn attention from Major League Baseball scouts, and was voted the PL's rookie of the year last season.

Outfielder Yutaro Sugimoto, looking at the big crowd, said, "This is like Universal Studios (Japan in Osaka)."

• Quake-hit Wajima residents learn from 2011 disaster recovery

People in parts of central Japan that were hit by the New Year's Day earthquake have been hearing from an official of a northeastern city about his experiences of rebuilding after the 2011 quake and tsunami there.

About 30 people in Ishikawa Prefecture's Wajima City and surrounding municipalities gathered on Monday for an online meeting with officials of Higashi Matsushima City in Miyagi Prefecture.

Ishigaki Toru was in charge of drawing up Higashi Matsushima's reconstruction plans after the 2011 disaster. He spoke about how the city built a new community where evacuees were taking shelter after the disaster.

Ishigaki explained how the city launched a consultation body led by residents after listening to the opinions of more than 2,000 people.

He said that decisions on issues such as how to allocate land lots were made after discussions among residents.

Ishigaki said that the city and its residents had differing views in the beginning, but there was a turning point when the residents said they would create a consensus by themselves.

He said town planning and development then advanced smoothly once the residents believed that the city would respect their opinions.

The owner of a restaurant in Wajima City said the experiences of people in Higashi Matsushima would be a useful reference point for those in Wajima. He added that he hopes his city and its residents can work as a unified team to rebuild a good community.

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• Service partially resumes on some bus routes in quake-hit Suzu City

A bus network in Suzu City, Ishikawa Prefecture, partially resumed service on Tuesday. Some of the buses are running again for the first time since a devastating earthquake hit central Japan on January 1.

The bus network has eight routes. Service on all the routes had to be suspended, as two of the operator's nine buses were damaged by a tsunami. The other buses could not be used, as many roads were closed.

The partial resumption of service came in response to growing requests from survivors, who rely on public transportation to get daily necessities. The resumption became possible after some roads were reopened.

On Tuesday, service on five routes started again. But some routes were altered, due to road conditions. Stops at schools and a general hospital were among those offered on the routes.

The operator is also providing special services between the municipal office and evacuation shelters on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Trips on all the resumed routes are free, as they were before the disaster.

An official representing the operator said most of the drivers are quake survivors themselves and are commuting from shelters.

But he added that they hope to fulfill their duties as public transit workers.

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• Rings found in the rubble

A man who lost his wife in the earthquake that rocked the Noto Peninsula on New Year's Day says he has found their wedding rings in the rubble of their home.

He spoke to NHK World about his memories of the woman he knew for 50 years.

Ogata Tesshin, 66, was at home with his family and a friend of his son on January 1 in Wajima City, Ishikawa Prefecture. Six people were in the living room preparing to eat dinner.

The first tremor came just as they had raised a toast with sake to celebrate the new year.

Then came a second tremor.

"When I looked up, the ceiling started shaking," says Ogata. Then it collapsed on top of them.

Ogata says it took him 30 seconds to a minute to find space around him and move his body so he could breathe.

He called out the names of his relatives in the dark but no-one responded.

Then he spotted his grandchild next to him. When he said "Hey," the grandchild replied. He waited to be rescued, holding his grandchild in his arms.

His son was nearby and responded later. The family was rescued one by one from a gap in the collapsed house. Ogata's daughter was outside at the moment of the tremor, and called people around her to help them out.

About three hours after the quake, Ogata finally made it outside and saw his family members there waiting. But his 65-year-old wife Akiko was motionless on a futon laid in the road.

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• Noto’s Cultural Industries: Keep Local Craft Traditions Alive as Driving Force for Reconstruction

The Noto Peninsula Earthquake dealt a heavy blow to the region’s traditional culture and industries. Detailed support for the affected areas is essential to protect long-held techniques and cherished townscapes.

Wajima lacquerware, a traditional craft of Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, which has been designated as an Important Intangible Cultural Property by the central government, suffered damage to its production and sales bases, which were destroyed and burned by the earthquake and a subsequent fire at the Wajima Morning Market.

Many artisans and related people lost their workshops, homes and stores, and continue to live as evacuees. The city is home to three artisans who are officially honored as living national treasures. One of them was seriously injured.

Wajima lacquerware, known for its high level of artistry, is one of the region’s leading industries. There are at least 100 processes involved, from the initial wood processing to the final decoration, with a high degree of division of labor by artisans.

Since every process is indispensable, it will be difficult to restart the business as long as the artisans and other workers remain scattered.

In the first place, demand for Wajima lacquerware had become sluggish due to changing lifestyles, and the aging of the artisans was also an issue. Their livelihoods and workplaces must be quickly rebuilt to restore the production system.

The government will reportedly begin subsidizing the costs necessary to continue the traditional craft businesses, including securing tools and raw materials. Depopulation is continuing in the affected areas. If nothing is done, more and more artisans could leave the business, which could accelerate the decline of the region. It is important to steadily implement support for restarting businesses.

Temporary joint workshops for traditional handicraft artisans were built in Fukushima Prefecture after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. In the case of Wajima lacquerware, where the division of labor is well established, it would be effective to provide such a place.

One idea would be to establish a facility that handles production, sales and information dissemination as a symbol of reconstruction from the earthquake. This should be considered broadly in conjunction with the reconstruction of the fire-razed Wajima Morning Market.

Encouraging people to buy local products will also support the affected areas.

In addition to Wajima lacquerware, other traditional craft businesses in the prefecture, such as stores selling Kutani ware porcelain, were also affected by the disaster. Many sake breweries in Wajima, long known as an excellent place for sake brewing, are reportedly facing difficulties in producing sake this season due to the disaster.

Fairs selling Noto crafts and sake have already been held in various locations and online. It is necessary to encourage such events.

Some of the damaged buildings and townscapes have high cultural value. Cultural assets are a source of emotional support for local residents and are also important tourism resources.

In order to protect local communities and restore civic vitality, the central and local governments should carefully listen to the affected people as to what they need and formulate concrete medium- to long-term support measures until recovery is completed.

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• Property insurers in Japan to maintain profitability in 2024 despite Noto Peninsula Earthquake, says GlobalData

The Japanese property insurers are likely to withstand losses and will not be negatively impacted by the 7.6 magnitude earthquake that struck the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, on 1 January 2024, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

The Noto Peninsula earthquake resulted in over 240 casualties and caused widespread property damage to over 4,000 properties, according to Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency

Sravani Ampabathina, Insurance Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Japanese property insurers have been able to maintain stable operations despite the recurring earthquakes, as majority of the residential insured losses are borne by the government. Also, insurers carry minimal net retention on corporate earthquake policies and cede most of the risks to reinsurers, which help in keeping a check on their profitability.”

The Noto Peninsula earthquake is estimated to result in economic losses of around JPY1.1–2.6 trillion ($8.6–$20.3 billion) and insured loss of around JPY792 billion ($6 billion). However, the government through the Japan Earthquake Reinsurance Company (JER) is likely to bear around 98% of insured residential earthquake claims, with a cap of JPY11.8 trillion ($91.7 billion) per earthquake.

Commercial policies in Japan are less popular due to their higher cost. Additionally, Japanese insurers often transfer a large portion of commercial earthquake risks to US and European reinsurers to reduce their retention.

According to GlobalData’s Insurance Database, earthquake insurance accounted for 18.2% share of the Japanese general reinsurance ceded premiums in the year ending 31 March 2023.

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• Information on pets missing after Noto Peninsula quake available on website

Japan's Environment Ministry and Ishikawa Prefecture have launched a website offering information on dogs and cats found in areas that were hit by the Noto Peninsula earthquake on New Year's Day.

Prefectural officials say they have been receiving numerous inquiries from people whose pets went missing during the evacuation.

Ishikawa prefectural public health centers and other facilities are taking care of dogs and cats that are believed to have been separated from their owners.

The new website displays photos of the animals taken into protective custody, their characteristics, where they were found, how to contact the facility where they are now and the cost of getting them back.

If the pet is being kept at a prefectural public health center, for example, a handover fee would be 4,000 yen, or about 27 dollars, plus nearly three dollars for each day spent there. The cost would be reduced for owners who suffered quake damage.

Environment Minister Ito Shintaro told reporters on Tuesday that his ministry has been supporting pet owners by offering temporary custody service and allowing pets to live at temporary housing facilities.

He added the ministry will step up efforts to send out information on missing pets, which is important to the survivors.

My daughter had a fair shake in Kyoto today

Ishikawa was also hit with another 4.5 today, poor people.

• Japan’s Noto earthquake: thousands of survivors struggle as accusations of neglect grow

The lives of 14,000 people affected by the New Year’s day disaster remain in limbo, living in evacuation shelters, and surviving hand to mouth

Seven weeks after a magnitude-7.6 earthquake struck the isolated Noto peninsula in western Japan, Koji Aizawa and his family must still travel almost 100km to take a weekly bath.

The house Aizawa, 61, now shares with his wife and sister was still standing after the quake, but the lack of running water means they are struggling with daily necessities, with hygiene top of the list. “We have to go to Kanazawa every weekend for a bath and to do our laundry,” he says. “We have electricity, but no running water. Fetching water so we can flush the toilet is the hardest part.”

The earthquake, Japan’s worst since the Kumamoto disaster eight years ago, struck as families were celebrating on New Year’s Day, killing 230 people and badly damaging or destroying 49,000 homes. The repair bill could be as high as ¥2.6tn ($17.6bn), according to government estimates.

Yet, the weeks pass by and work has yet to begin clearing almost 2.5m tonnes of wreckage, and the lives of around 14,000 people affected by the disaster remain in limbo. Many of them are elderly, and are still living in hundreds of school gymnasiums, community halls and other makeshift evacuation centres, where a lack of running water has raised the risk of infections such as stomach flu and Covid-19.

Around 40,000 homes on the Noto peninsula, an isolated region jutting into the Japan Sea, are still without water, and some residents have been warned that supplies may not be restored for another two months.

Amid growing public anger over what many perceived as a slow response to the disaster, the prime minister, Fumio Kishida, was accused in parliament of waiting too long to send members of the Self-Defence Forces (SDF) to the worst-hit areas. An initial force of 1,000 SDF members were sent to help and that number rose to about 7,000 by mid-January, but still pales next to the 26,000 troops deployed in the aftermath of the Kumamoto earthquakes in 2016.

The prime minister, who is already battling record-low approval ratings, has promised that his government would do everything possible to help the region recover.

Kishida, whose cabinet has approved more than $700m in relief funds, said he had been left “speechless” when he viewed the devastation from a helicopter last month. “We will do everything we can so that [residents] can have hope for the future,” he said.

‘Evacuation centres are not the best places’

Naoto Yamanaka, a Mainichi Shimbun reporter who returned to his home town of Wajima two days after the quake, said many shelters lacked flushable toilets. “Sanitary conditions were poor, as excrement overflowed, and the risk of infectious diseases was a concern,” he wrote. “Even though food and water are crucial for survival, some people seemed to have been refraining from eating or drinking so that they do not need to use the toilets too often.”

Aizawa and his family spent two nights in an evacuation centre before returning to their home in central Wajima, over concerns for the health of his 91-year-old mother, who is bedridden and requires nursing care.

“Evacuation centres are not the best places, especially for older people, and my mother said she wanted to go home,” he says. His mother has been moved to a care facility in Kanazawa because she can’t be properly cared for at home.

Wajima is one of the worst-hit communities, where dozens died while trapped beneath buildings. Authorities there have received 4,000 applications to move into temporary housing units equipped with heating and baths, but have so far built just 550. In Suzu, another badly affected town, just 40 of 456 planned temporary homes have been built. Almost 14,000 housing units will be available for displaced people across Ishikawa prefecture, but not until the end of next month, local authorities said.

Yui Michibata is not sure when she will be able to return to her home in Wajima. “I don’t think we’ve been completely forgotten – the quake is still in the news – but the government doesn’t seem to be helping people get back on their feet quickly enough,” says Michibata, who is living with her parents in temporary accommodation in Kanazawa, a city three hours’ drive away. “Parts of my home town look like a war zone.”

‘We can only think about how we’re going to live today’

While officials plan for major earthquakes that seismologists believe will strike densely populated areas – including Tokyo – in the coming decades, the New Year’s Day quake exposed a lack of readiness in remote, ageing communities such as those on the Noto peninsula, where the rescue effort was hampered by damaged roads and a large number of homes built before stricter earthquake regulations were introduced, in 1981.

Japan’s government is doing “everything it can” to repair infrastructure in the affected areas and return people to their homes, the deputy chief cabinet secretary, Hideki Murai, said recently.

That reassurance did little to encourage Yoshimi Tomita, a resident of Suzu, who spent a month sleeping upright in her car after her local evacuation centre refused to let her stay there with her cats.

She has since moved into a pet-friendly evacuation centre, where she had the luxury of sleeping lying down for the first time in weeks. “If I hadn’t made it to this centre, I feel I might have buckled” under the mental strain, she says.

At an evacuation centre in the town of Shika, Fumio Hirano says he has struggled to sleep surrounded by other people and could think only of how to stay warm and avoid becoming ill.

“Right now, we can only think about how we’re going to live today. Maybe in a month we can start thinking about tomorrow, and in three months we can start thinking about next week.”

After the quake forced Chisa Terashita, her husband and their three children to move from their wrecked home to an evacuation centre, the couple found themselves rationing drinking water.

“The one non-negotiable I have is washing and sanitising our hands after going to the toilet, given it’s the season when infections can spread quickly,” says Terashita, whose family lived in the town of Suzu. “This life is becoming the norm – I think we can get through it. We have no choice.”

Criticism of the post-quake response has been directed at the highest level, including Kishida, who waited two weeks before visiting an evacuation centre. “He should have come earlier and stayed longer,” Michibata says. “But he made a brief visit and and went back to Tokyo.”

‘We will be lucky if the population reaches half of what it was before’

Some local people fear the area will suffer a similar fate to Japan’s north-east coast, where a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 killed more than 18,000 people and triggered a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Almost 13 years on, many towns and villages in that region – including those unaffected by the nuclear accident – are struggling to attract residents and rebuild their already fragile economies.

“I don’t think the Noto peninsula will ever be the same again,” says Aizawa, a craftsman who runs a woodworking business. “If people don’t come back, that will affect the local economy … we will be lucky if the population reaches half of what it was before the disaster,” he says, adding that he had no idea how many of his nine employees would be able to return to work.

He is concerned too, that the area’s culture, including lacquerware and other arts and crafts, have met with a similar fate to the the tens of thousands of collapsed and burned out buildings.

“I realise that we need prefabricated homes in the short term, but the local and central governments need to think carefully about the long-term recovery and preserving local culture and customs. Otherwise Wajima will lose its lifeblood. It won’t be the place I was born and brought up in.”

• 93-Year-Old Woman Rescued 124 Hours After Noto Earthquake Dies; Sudden Change in Her Condition Earlier This Month

A 93-year-old woman from Suzu, Ishikawa Prefecture, who was rescued 124 hours after the Noto Peninsula Earthquake occurred, died at a hospital in Kanazawa on Thursday, it has been learned.

The woman was rescued in the evening of Jan. 6 by emergency personnel, who found her with her left leg trapped under a beam at her collapsed house in Suzu. She received intensive care at a hospital and was able to speak the next morning, but her condition suddenly changed around Feb. 5.

According to her eldest son, 72, she said she wanted to go home, if only for a day.

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• Manholes pop up from the streets, hamper Noto quake recovery

Underground manhole shafts are rising from the road by over a meter in some areas impacted by the Noto Peninsula earthquake, obstructing roads, hampering recovery efforts and vexing citizens.

The phenomenon of rising or “floating” manholes is believed to be caused by ground liquefaction due to the earthquake.

According to the water and sewerage bureau of Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, manholes are cylindrical structures that are connected to the sewage pipes several meters below the ground.

Although the central government has been working on countermeasures nationwide, Wajima and Suzu cities had not yet taken action to prevent their manholes from floating.

Both cities were hit by major tremors and manholes have been popping up all over the place. Cones have been placed to warn people about the obstructions and some roads have been closed to traffic.

“If the raised manholes are not removed, vehicles carrying disaster refuse will not be able to enter the area,” said an official of Wajima's public works department.

In late January, on a city street in central Wajima, manholes were found to have risen above ground at three locations within about 40 meters of one another. Some were protruding from the street by about 1.2 meters.

A man who owns a parking lot facing the street said, “I am having trouble getting my car in.”

On Jan, 31, the city cut the protruding sections of the manholes with a machine, covered the holes with steel plates and leveled them with soil. Now cars can drive through.

The city is removing these protruding manholes one by one, but their exact number has not yet been determined. This is because, in some places, manholes rose long after the earthquake.

However, removing these protrusions is merely an emergency measure for road restoration.

The connecting sewage pipes that were pulled up by the floating manholes are also damaged, so additional work is required to restore the water supply.

WHY DID THE QUAKE CAUSE MANHOLES TO RISE?

Toshihiro Noda, a professor in geotechnical engineering at Nagoya University’s Graduate School, said that this phenomenon was caused by “liquefaction of the ground.”

When earth rich in groundwater loosens and liquefies due to earthquake shaking, objects with a density greater than that of the ground will sink, while lighter objects will float, Noda said.

Manholes with hollow interiors will float because they are less dense than the ground is.

Noda believes that manholes began to surface a short time after the earthquake because of aftershocks. It is believed that the additional tremors accelerated the loosening of the ground, he said.

In Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, which suffered significant liquefaction damage in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the aftershocks also increased the damage.

The central government considers manhole lifting to be a “risk of transportation dysfunction.”

As part of the disaster prevention measures approved by the Cabinet in 2018 in response to the Hokkaido earthquake, the land ministry urgently implemented measures to prevent manholes from floating up in approximately 200 kilometers of sewage pipes in areas where liquefaction damage had occurred in the past.

The ministry had completed most installations of valves and weights by fiscal 2020.

However, there are still many areas in Japan where these measures have not yet been implemented.

According to the ministry, only 47,000 km of the 86,000 km of major sewage pipes in Japan have been earthquake-proofed, including measures to prevent manholes from rising.

Neither Wajima nor Suzu had taken these measures before the New Years’ Day earthquake struck.

“There are certain restrictions on construction work because it is necessary to proceed while ensuring that sewage pipes remain in working condition," a ministry official said. "Disaster prevention and mitigation measures vary widely, and each municipality has its own priorities.”

The official noted, “It will be difficult to complete the measures all at once throughout the country.”

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• Japan agency taps crowdfunding to help quake-hit businesses

Businesses in central Japan are struggling to recover from the Noto Peninsula earthquake that hit the region on New Year's Day.

The Organization for Small & Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation, Japan has teamed up with crowdfunding platforms to help them.

The agency, which is known as SME Support Japan, has joined hands with domestic crowdfunding platforms, Campfire, Makuake and Readyfor.

The crowdfunding companies typically charge fees of between 10 to 20 percent on funds raised. However, this will be reduced to 5 percent for companies in quake hit prefectures.

Businesses in Ishikawa, Toyama, Fukui and Niigata are eligible.

SME Support Japan will provide crowdfunding specialists to companies using the service to help them promote their businesses and attract investment.

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• False Information amid Disasters: Heinous Posts That Cause Confusion Unacceptable

The spread of false information during large-scale disasters, hampering relief and other operations, must be prevented. The government needs to consult with social media companies to take effective measures against such situations.

After the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, a social media post claimed that someone was trapped in a collapsed house. Police rushed to the scene — but the message turned out to be false. Rescue calls using nonexistent place names were also confirmed.

A video was posted showing a tsunami washing away many cars, but it appears to have been made by manipulating real video footage taken during the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. There were also false allegations about “the use of earthquake weapons.”

Posting false information is unacceptable even in normal circumstances, but it is worse in times of disaster. There is even concern that police and firefighters engaged in rescue operations could become confused, and as a result, lives that could have been saved may be lost.

On Jan. 2, the day after the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry asked the four social media operators to take appropriate action against false and misleading information.

The social media platform X Corp., formerly known as Twitter, Inc., has frozen accounts that have made suspicious solicitations for donations. LY Corp. and Meta Platforms, Inc., formerly known as Facebook, Inc., have deleted posts that were clearly found to be false.

Google LLC has reportedly put a system in place to intensively monitor its own video posting site for a certain period of time.

Even so, however, it was not possible to completely eliminate false information. The advent of generative artificial intelligence has made it easier to create fake video footage, increasing the risk of false information spreading.

There is a view that the system of sharing advertising revenue from social media services with posters encourages the posting of false information.

In summer last year, X introduced a system that allows posters to earn advertising revenue if they meet certain conditions, such as their number of views reaching a certain level. Since the more views the posters get, the more revenue they earn, it seems possible that the system is incentivizing people to post false information that easily attracts attention.

The government should move quickly to ascertain the situation, and demand that any problems be corrected.

A ministry expert panel has begun discussions on measures against false information in times of disasters, among other topics. The panel said it intends to compile a report after interviewing social media operators and conducting other surveys.

With the widespread use of social media services now, the companies operating such services have a great responsibility. It is hoped that the expert panel will examine the efforts of each operating company and make use of the findings in new measures.

During the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake disaster, a man who falsely posted that a lion had escaped was arrested on suspicion of fraudulent obstruction of business for interfering with the operation of a zoo. It will become important for the police to take strict action against heinous false posts.