On December 24^th, 2020, the Cabinet Office announced, “A Paradigm for the Evacuation of Elderly People – Based on the Experience of Typhoon Hagibis in 2019 (Final summary)”. Based on the lessons learned from the experience of Typhoon Hagibis, the Cabinet Office encourages local governments to take measures to ensure effective and efficient evacuation of the elderly and persons with disabilities, such as the introduction of a list of people requiring evacuation assistance and the promotion of district disaster prevention plans, etc. The Office has been considering this issue through the establishment of two working groups, both based on the Hagibis experience: “Sub-working group to promote evacuation information and open area evacuation" and "Sub-working group to improve evacuation of the elderly, etc." This announcement was created by the latter group.

The following noteworthy points are contained in the announcement.

• In order to ensure that no one is omitted from the list of people requiring evacuation assistance, local governments are encouraged to collaborate with welfare professionals, family doctors, key persons and organizations in the community.
• Each local government is to endeavor to formulate an evacuation support plan and is encouraged to further promote it.
• It is recommended that local governments consider and decide in advance who can be accepted in which special-needs shelters so that those concerned can directly evacuate to their designated shelters.
• Local governments are encouraged to raise residents’ awareness in the development of district disaster prevention plans by disseminating pamphlets containing examples of best practice, etc. Fostering local human resources is also vital for disaster prevention.

For further information, please visit the following link (Japanese Only):http://www.bousai.go.jp/fusuigai/koreisubtyphoonworking/index.html