– an initiative aiming for disaster prevention which leaves no-one behind 
and a society of harmonious co-existence within communities

Jun Umemura
Head, Social Welfare Division
Health and Welfare Department, Takashima City

1. The history of the initiative in Takashima City

Moves towards drawing up individual evacuation plans in Takashima City go back to 2008. When a “meeting to discuss disaster prevention for disabled residents” was held in the city, the family of a person with severe motor and intellectual disabilities and a high degree of reliance on medical care raised their concerns about evacuation in a disaster, leading to the formation of a liaison meeting and project team by the local government, home-visit nursing providers, advice and support centres for disabled people, and so on. Over the course of around ten years, a committee of constituent organisations was launched to act as a working group, and drew up individual evacuation plans as one aspect of their planning and advice work. The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 prompted a revision of the Basic Act on Disaster prevention, requiring municipalities to make lists of people who needed support with evacuating, but I feel that the fact that this initiative was already moving ahead before that is a striking feature of Takashima City. This initiative, aimed at people with severe disabilities living at home, uses a checklist to prioritize whose plans should be drawn up first, and has worked to compile the plans with great care, with specialists in advice and support playing the central role.

From FY 2021, the city has partnered with the “Shiga Model”, guidelines for initiatives related to the drawing up of individual evacuation plans in Shiga Prefecture. A model project for plan creation was carried out, focusing on methods for drawing up the plans and the viability of actual evacuation behaviours, with the aim of expanding the initiative into the fields of aging and of children and adults who need constant medical care. From FY 2022, we are moving to roll out the initiative across the entire city and to enable full-scale implementation.

2. The establishment of the Takashima City Committee to Promote the Creation of Individual Evacuation Plans Through a Partnership between Disaster Prevention and Health and Welfare

The Takashima City Committee to Promote the Creation of Individual Evacuation Plans Through a Partnership between Disaster Prevention and Health and Welfare (hereinafter, “the Committee”) was set up in FY 2021 in the course of implementing the model project. Various groups from within and outside the government in the fields of disaster prevention and of health and welfare, which act as the nucleus in the partnership and the promotion of this initiative, participate in this Committee. At practitioner level, working groups have been established on “disabled people and children and adults who need constant medical care” and on “the elderly”; a checklist to determine the order of priority for the creation of plans has been compiled and revised, and a format for the creation of individual evacuation plans drawn up; and discussions have taken place about the overall schema of this initiative and so on.

3. Introduction of the model case study and its results

I would like to introduce an initiative from the FY 2021 model project in the area of disability. The disaster risks in the area in which the subject of the plan lived were flooding of 1 – 2 metres in the area around their home due to rivers breaking their banks or inundations inside levees, earthquakes with a seismic intensity of as much as upper 6 (on the Japanese 7-level scale), and living within the UPZ[1] for a nuclear power plant disaster. This person had trunk impairment and held a level 1 physical disability certificate. Not only did they live alone, they had not joined the neighbourhood association, and had previously stated, “In case of an emergency, I will abandon any hope of saving my life.” However, through watching TV reports of the damage caused by the large-scale natural disasters which occur in various parts of the country almost every year and through conversations with the advice and support professional and the welfare commissioner with whom the person had regular contact, they started to think once more about the value of their life, leading them to agree to the creation of a plan. This is a case which made me reflect on the vital role of repetition and continuity, given that repeated communication of the importance of disaster prevention by the people involved and the media appears to have led to a change of heart for the person concerned.

A plan was drawn up after training for the person concerned and local residents to deepen their understanding of the necessity and importance of such plans, assessments of the person and the local area, and a community coordination meeting (case meeting) where all the people involved with this case met together to consider evacuation methods and so on; then an evacuation drill was carried out to verify the effectiveness of the plan. The evacuation drill included a rehearsal of moving the person from their home to a temporary evacuation centre and getting them into a passenger vehicle. The exchange of opinions after the drill was over allowed the people involved to add supplementary points which could not have been known simply by drawing up a plan on paper, reminding us of the importance of such evacuation drills.

By carrying out this model initiative, we understood three important elements in carrying out such initiatives. The first is to “Respect the opinions of the person concerned (or of their family) to the greatest extent possible.” By respecting the opinions of the person concerned (or of their family) in the process of considering evacuation methods and so on, we can expect their awareness of disaster prevention to improve, and hope that this promotes self-help initiatives. Moreover, by creating an environment which facilitates conversation through training sessions, community coordination meetings (case meetings), and evacuation drills, the person concerned (or their family) can talk openly without concealing their state of mind, which can be expected to lead to lively discussions in various situations involving local residents in the course of drawing up the plan. The second is that “The key persons in this initiative are health and welfare professionals.” Through their everyday involvement with the situation, these professionals are familiar not only with the state of mind of the person concerned but also with various other points, including their relationships with their family and their neighbours. Making the most of these advantages, it can be expected that they will play the role of explaining the importance of the initiative to the person concerned and obtaining their consent, and of supporting them and acting as their advocate in various situations during the initiative. The third is to “Tie it in with community-wide initiatives.” Since the health and welfare professions who are usually involved with the person generally cannot rush to their side when a disaster occurs, it is important to tie it in with the “community-wide” evacuation support in the area where the person lives. Furthermore, this initiative is to prepare for an emergency, but by creating contact points between the person concerned and the other people involved with them, we hope that it will pave the way for the resolution of issues in everyday life and in the local community.

4. Conclusion

I consider this initiative to be one which is called for by society. In Japan, where disasters are frequent and often become far-reaching and intense, the importance of supporting people who need support with evacuating was already understood by local governments, communities, and professionals. However, it can be thought that this did not extend to clearly laying out and setting up concrete support methods due to the complexity and difficulty of the situation. This issue is a pressing one for contemporary society, and I hope to obtain the collaboration of the health and welfare professionals who will become key figures as we move ahead with this initiative in order to safeguard precious lives from disasters.

It is often said that initiatives combining both “soft measures” and “hard measures” are important when it comes to disaster prevention policy, but I am convinced that this initiative is a third type, a “ ‘heart’ measure (an initiative in which the person concerned; their family; the community and neighbourhood associations; voluntary disaster prevention organisations; health, welfare, medical, and nursing professionals; the local authority; and so on bring their hearts and minds together to form a “scrum”)”. I believe that it will be important to link and collaborate between these three types when taking future disaster prevention policies forward. I would like this initiative to prompt us to continue working not only to improve community disaster prevention capacity, but also to bring about a society of harmonious co-existence within these communities.

Returning to the starting point, this initiative is carried out to protect the lives of the people concerned in case of disaster. I hope that it will be an initiative which aims to create communities here in Takashima City in which no-one is left behind, in which the community does not leave anyone behind, and in which society does not allow anyone to be left behind.

Photograph: the community coordination meeting (case meeting)