Daily room-leader meetings sustained
community initiative and consensus building
At the time of
the earthquake, I was director of the town's art performing center, named Kokusai-mura (or, in English, International
Village). It was turned into an evacuation center
immediately after the quake. During the emergency meeting organized by the town administration
immediately after the quake, the mayor asked us to be
careful of disaster-related deaths, and ordered the Central Public Hall and Kokusai-mura to be the final destinations for allevacuees. Since then,
my main concern was to prevent evacuees from dying in
the evacuation center.
One
hour after the disaster, about 250 people ran into the entrance hall. I
prepared a register promptly in order to find missing people and count heads
for meal preparation. A power generator was also installed so that we couldcollect information through a TV. This made the evacuees calm down as they could now get some sense of
what was going on.
One
week later, the number of evacuees rose up to 389. People who required special support, such as wheelchair users, intellectually-disabled people, mothers with
infants and pregnant women were included among them. I allocated
the rooms by neighborhood
district for the general evacuees, but
prepared special welfare
rooms for those who needed extra care, and also made special arrangements for their toilets and meals.
The
room leader and monitors for meals, garbage, clean-up and health, respectively, were
designated in each room. This led to involving everyone in managing the
evacuation center. Daily room-leader meetings were organized to share the
updates about the town administration, external support and difficulties and
inquiries from the residents. The room-leaders tried to build the residents'
consensus on house rules and solutions for problems. Repeating this day after day helped strengthen communication, promote mutual help among the evacuees, and sustain smooth operations.
Various initiatives
It
took 7 to 10 days
to get blankets delivered because the emergency supplies warehouse in Shobuta-hama was
damaged, and the cargo trucks at the Self-Defense Force base in Tagajo were
inundated. I provided the blankets to the vulnerable evacuees first since the
number was limited to 50. Thanks to Kansai Electric Power, who brought a power
generating vehicle, electricity was provided for three days until the power by
Tohoku Electric Power was resumed. The evacuees were not inconvenienced too
much from the shortage of blankets because the heaters worked well. I heard in
other evacuation centers, the evacuees' cars blocked the power generating
vehicle, causing further delays in the power supply.
The
medical teams, including from Shimane Prefecture, kept supporting us
around-the-clock all the way until two weeks before the center was closed. They
were divided into 15 groups, and each group was on duty on a 4-day rotation. In order to
prevent the spread of influenza and norovirus, we set up isolationrooms using the backstage area, and established a direct approach from those
rooms to the toilets.
Since
the day after the quake, a "welfare evacuation room" was designated
close to the toilets which were for people with disabilities. The room was
allocated to wheelchair users and intellectually disabled evacuees prior to
others. The evacuees with different disabilities stayed in the same room
without any trouble because many of them knew each other since before the
disaster. The caretakers accompanied the evacuees with intellectual
disabilities. It took 10 to 15 days to complete the room allocation.
Five
days after the disaster, the fatigue and stress of mothers with infants peaked, and both mothers and infants
began developing fevers. They had caught a cold while
mothers cared for their babies in the cold outside. The mothers were hesitant to stay
inside with crying babies at night. After 15 days, I set up a special
room for families with
babies. It released their stress because even if the babies cried,
they understood and could help each other. Actually,
nurseries in the
community were designated as evacuation centers as
well. Therefore, the nursery
staff were forced to manage the shelters and could not fulfill their primary role as caregivers for children and mothers. After
closing the evacuation center, I
thought in hindsight that nurseries should be used as secondary evacuation centers for the special purpose to care for families with
infants, and not be used
as general evacuation centers, as much as possible.
The
room-leaders reached an
agreement to also allocate special rooms for children. It was a
response to the request from students and their parents preparing for school
entrance exams.
The
meals were basically provided room by room, but as it tended to get very crowded, we gave
priority to the older evacuees and the
children. We also handled special requests, such as to make porridge for someone with weak
biting force.
One
day, we were forced to manage a massive amount of supplies at Kokusai-mura, such as drinking water,
socks and incontinence pads, as there was no other place for a 14-ton delivery truck
to park late at night. Clothes and shoes were laid out on shelves by size, separately for males and females, for distribution. We did not place the supplies out in boxes for
people to freely take from in order to prevent queue jumping and other troubles
which could lead to degrading the situation at the center. With regards to the underwear
distribution, the health monitors took specific requests from the residents and
distributed them accordingly.
198
tons of water were secured from the pond for the toilets. The
toilet rule of filling the tank with a bucket of water to flush, penetrated very quickly.
Temporary toilets outside were inaccessible for wheelchair users, even if there were steps or handrails. So, we prohibited the general
evacuees to use the existing toilets inside the facility which were appropriate
for people with disabilities. We asked the people with disabilities to wear a
badge so that they could be distinguished.
Pets
were treated as family members by some evacuees. Given the limited number of rooms
in the facility, the warehouse was provided instead as the special room for
families with pets.
Mr. Katsuaki Hoshi, 59-year-old
Director of Kokusai-mura
Address as of the earthquake: Shobuta-hama
Current address: the same as above