2020 January

Disaster Prevention Promotion Specialist, Disaster Prevention Crisis Management Section, Co-Creation Strategy Office, Beppu City
Junko Murano

The Beppu City Disability-Inclusive Disaster Prevention project is based on Article 12 of the "Beppu City Ordinance for Safe and Secure Living for People with or without Disabilities" established in Beppu City on April 1, 2014: "reasonable accommodation related to disaster prevention.” In line with this, people with disabilities who require special care (The Welfare Forum in Bekki and Hayami Executive Committee [hereinafter referred to as the Welfare Forum] is a civic activity group whose work revolves around the theme “living alongside disabled persons in the community”) have, of their own accord, worked together with the local government, local residents' associations, and welfare personnel for three years since 2016 to run this project. They have worked to create a system to protect lives and livelihoods by preparing individual support plans, sharing information, and conducting drills for evacuation and evacuation shelter management.

As a way of preparing individual support plans for persons requiring special care to protect their lives and livelihoods in times of disaster, it is important to first have the persons with disabilities or their family confirm the extent of the expected damage to their homes, etc., and then prepare for it. To this end, in Beppu City, the Make Your Own Disaster Prevention Notebook for Peace of Mind created by the Research Institute of the National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities is used by specialists in charge of consultation and support for people with disabilities (hereinafter “consultation and support counselors”) to work with people with disabilities and their families to take scope of issues. Based on this, the consultation and support counselors draw up individual support plans, attend coordination meetings with persons with disabilities (or their family if they are unable to participate) and residents (residents' association), and convey the contents of the support needed. Various opinions are given as to whether the community can take on this responsibility and if so, what kind of support is possible. After that, persons with disabilities participate in actual evacuation drills and evaluate the content of the individual support plan. Ideas confirmed to be effective included the use of bicycle-drawn carts covered with blankets to prevent people with intellectual disabilities who cannot recognize danger from putting their hand in the tire, and ropes to pull wheelchairs, which are designed to make it easier for supporters to handle. With these measures, it was confirmed that evacuation with the support of local residents was possible. People with disabilities who participated made comments such as "I was wondering what to do in the case of a sudden disaster, so I am glad to learn that I am able to evacuate," "the slope of the evacuation route is steep and we are a family of two persons with disabilities, so I would like to know how to get support and who we should contact," (comment from a wheelchair user) and "the evacuation route was steep, but it was good to know how to evacuate" (person with visual disability).

The residents' association who conducted the drill said: "We realized that it is important for both people with and without disabilities to participate in the evacuation drill together. It was a drill to prepare for disasters. I hope this kind of drill will be rolled out throughout Beppu City.”

Next, prior to holding the evacuation shelter management training, a coordination meeting was held between local residents and children with intellectual disabilities and their parents. The local residents, who had learned about the problems and current situation of the parties involved through their communication, proposed specific support ideas such as providing private rooms and following up with family members, enabling smooth guidance and response during the training.

This series of activities—preparation of individual support plans, evacuation drills, and evacuation shelter management drills—revealed the importance of having disabled people participate of their own accord, and enabling them to speak freely, think and work together with other attendees. I believe that the understanding and acceptance of these issues by the local government and residents has made it possible to share the issues at hand and work together to resolve them.

As the three-year program progresses, the goals of empowering concerned parties and their communities manifested in the form of small but concrete achievements and results. By sharing with the community the individual support plans created with the support of the local government and welfare professionals, approaches have been established to enhance understanding, preparedness, and ability to act through repeated evacuation drills and evacuation shelter management drills with the participation of persons with disabilities.

A key challenge is that the role of welfare professionals in disaster support activities has not been clearly defined based on laws, contracts, etc., and the information they possess has not been organized into a shared system based on the Act on the Protection of Personal Information.

However, what supporters in the local area need are to evacuate those who require special care to a safe place, to provide necessary equipment and environmental considerations for life after evacuation, and information that links to service providers in ordinary times. Appropriately limiting the information provided will lower the resistance people with disabilities feel with regard to providing their information to the community in which they live, which will also take a load off the minds of the local residents receiving this information.

The Beppu City project was started after I realized that there were no people with disabilities in evacuation shelters when I visited areas affected by disasters around the country. When I started working on disaster prevention for people with disabilities, I realized that the communities that should support people requiring special care during disasters, including people with disabilities, have aging populations and are losing the energy to support the vulnerable. The reality of the situation was such that I had to say that if things continued as they were, it would not only affect people with disabilities, but many communities themselves could fall into decline.

However, when I entered the communities along with people with disabilities, I could feel the warmth and enthusiasm of the people leading the aging communities and a strong desire to protect people and the community. It has become clear that disaster prevention efforts to protect the lives and livelihoods of people with disabilities are inseparable from efforts to preserve and sustain the entire community. By meeting people with disabilities for the first time, local residents learned the joy of bonding with them. People with disabilities have also come to know the warmth of their local communities, as symbolized by a comment from one of the participants: "this is the first time I realized that I live in a community with such warm-hearted people." I think that both people with disabilities and other members of the local community can now feel that they are inspiring each other. I then realized that changing how disaster prevention is run means changing the community itself.

I had the opportunity to hear from the chairman and vice chairman of the residents' association of the community where the project was first started, and learn about the situation in the community had subsequently progressed. I was very happy to learn that the residents' association decide on a theme and conduct training every year, and that the spouses with visual disabilities and the spouses in wheelchairs who participated in the drills always attended meetings and events held in the community afterwards. I was also glad to hear those participants thank me for reaching out at that time. I felt that mutual connections and support to protect lives and livelihoods, including for those who face various challenges within the community, are enriching daily life.

In addition to protecting lives and livelihoods in the event of a disaster, the Beppu City Inclusive Disaster Prevention initiative aims to convey to as many people as possible the fact that daily life can be made easier by carefully developing personal qualities and communities in the process.

In preparation for the anticipated large-scale disaster: there is an urgent need to work on initiatives together.