Noto earthquake in Japan: Thousands of survivors struggle as accusations of neglect grow | Japan

Seven weeks after a 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck the isolated Noto Peninsula in western Japan, Koji Aizawa and his family still have to travel nearly 100 kilometers to shower weekly.

The house that Aizawa, 61, shared with his wife and sister was still standing after the quake, but a lack of running water meant they struggled to make ends meet, with cleanliness at the top of the list. “We have to go to Kanazawa every weekend to shower and do laundry,” he says. “We have electricity, but we don't have running water. Getting water so we can flush the toilet is the hardest part.

The earthquake, the worst Japan has witnessed since the Kumamoto disaster eight years ago, occurred while families were celebrating New Year's, killing 230 people and severely damaging or destroying 49,000 homes. The repair bill could reach 2.6 trillion yen ($17.6 billion), according to government estimates.

However, weeks have passed and work has yet to begin to remove nearly 2.5 million tons of debris, and the lives of about 14,000 people affected by the disaster remain in limbo. Many of them are elderly, still living in hundreds of school gyms, community halls and other makeshift evacuation centers, where a lack of running water has increased the risk of illnesses such as stomach flu and Covid-19.

Some buildings in Wajima City were destroyed by fire following the 7.5 magnitude earthquake. Photograph: Gigi Press/AFP/Getty Images

About 40,000 homes on the Noto Peninsula, an isolated area overlooking the Sea of ​​Japan, remain 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 saw as a slow response to the disaster, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was accused in parliament of waiting too long to send members of the Self-Defense Forces to the worst-hit areas. An initial force of 1,000 SDF personnel was sent to help, and that number rose to about 7,000 by mid-January, but is still small compared to the 26,000 troops deployed following the Kumamoto earthquakes in 2016.

The Prime Minister, already suffering from record lows in his approval ratings, has promised that his government will do everything it can to help the region recover.

Kishida, whose government approved more than $700 million in relief funds, said he was speechless when he saw the devastation from a helicopter last month. “We will do everything we can for that [residents] “I can have hope for the future,” he said.

“Evacuation centers are not the best places.” A man prays for the victims in Wajima. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was accused of being too slow to respond to the disaster. Photograph: Gigi Press/AFP/Getty Images

Many shelters lack flushable toilets, said Naoto Yamanaka, a Mainichi Shimbun reporter who returned to his hometown of Wajima two days after the quake. “Sanitary conditions were poor, excrement overflowed, and the risk of infectious disease was a concern,” he wrote. “Although food and water are essential for survival, some people seem to abstain from eating or drinking so that they do not have to use the toilet as often.”

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

“Evacuation centers are not the best places, especially for the elderly, and my mother said she wanted to go home,” he says. His mother was transferred to a care center in Kanazawa because she could not be properly cared for at home.

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Wajima is one of the worst-hit communities, where dozens died while trapped under buildings. The authorities there have received 4,000 requests to move into temporary housing units equipped with heating and bathrooms, but have so far only built 550 of them. In Suzhou, another hard-hit town, only 40 of the 456 temporary homes planned were built. Local authorities said nearly 14,000 housing units will be provided for displaced people across Ishikawa Prefecture, but not before the end of next month.

Workers build temporary housing units at a site in Suzu, Ishikawa Prefecture. Photography: Frank Robichon/EPA

Yui Michibata is unsure when she will be able to return to her home in Wajima. “I don't think we've completely forgotten – the earthquake is still in the news – but it seems the government isn't helping people get back on their feet quickly enough,” says Michibata, who lives with her parents. In temporary housing in Kanazawa, a city three hours away by car. “Parts of my city look like a war zone.”

“We can only think about how we will live today.”

While officials are planning for major earthquakes that seismologists believe will hit densely populated areas — including Tokyo — in the coming decades, the New Year's Day quake exposed a lack of preparedness in remote, elderly communities like those on the Noto Peninsula, where rescue efforts are underway. . It is hampered by damaged roads and a large number of homes built before stricter earthquake regulations were implemented in 1981.

Hideki Murai, Japan's Deputy Prime Minister, recently said that the Japanese government was doing “everything in its power” to repair infrastructure in affected areas and return people to their homes.

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

She has since moved to a pet-friendly evacuation centre, where she has had the luxury of sleeping lying down for the first time in weeks. “If I had not been able to reach this center, I would have felt like I would have collapsed” under the psychological pressure, she says.

At an evacuation center in the town of Shika, Fumio Hirano says he struggles to sleep surrounded by other people and can only think about how to stay warm and avoid getting sick.

“Right now, we can only think about how we will 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 earthquake forced Chisa Terashita, her husband, and their three children to move from their destroyed home to an evacuation center, the couple found themselves rationing their drinking water.

“The only thing that cannot be negotiated is washing and sanitizing our hands after going to the toilet, since it is the season when infections can spread quickly,” says Terashita, whose family lives in the town of Suzhou. “This life has become the norm – I think we can get through it. We have no choice.”

Criticism of the response after the quake was leveled at the highest levels, including Kishida, who waited two weeks before visiting the evacuation center. “He should have come earlier and stayed longer,” Michibata says. “But he made a short visit and returned to Tokyo.”

“We will be lucky if the population reaches half what it was before.”

Some locals fear the region could suffer a fate similar to what happened to Japan's northeastern coast, where a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 killed more than 18,000 people and caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Nearly 13 years later, many towns and villages in that region — including those not affected by the nuclear accident — are struggling to attract residents and rebuild their already fragile economies.

Residents fill bottles from a shared water tank for Noto earthquake survivors in Suzu, Ishikawa Prefecture, on January 30. Photography: Sakura Murakami – Reuters

“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, it will affect the local economy… We'll be lucky if the population gets to half of what it was before the disaster,” he says, adding that he has no idea how many of his nine employees will return. Be able to return to work.

He is also concerned that the region's culture, including other arts and crafts, has met a fate similar to the tens of thousands of collapsed and burned buildings.

“I realize we need prefabricated homes in the short term, but local and central governments need to think carefully about long-term recovery and preserving local culture and customs. Otherwise, Wajima will lose its lifeline. It will no longer be the place where I was born and raised.”

Agencies contributed to the preparation of reports.

Sources 1/ https://Google.com/ 2/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/14/japans-noto-earthquake-thousands-of-survivors-struggle-as-accusations-of-neglect-grow The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article

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