Natural disaster or man-made disaster?
Several heavy rainstorms have been falling in western Japan, causing the worst floods in more than 30 years. The Japanese Police Department announced on July 13 that the heavy rain in Western Japan has caused 204 deaths in 14 prefectures across Japan.
According to the Chinese Consulate General in Osaka on July 12, there are currently no reports of casualties from Chinese citizens in .
Extremely heavy rainstorms caused geological disasters and river flooding from July 6 to 7, mainly in China and four countries, and the disaster situation expanded. More than half of the victims were concentrated in the two prefectures of Hiroshima and Okayama . still has at least 62 people missing. This is the worst disaster since the Nagasaki flood that killed 299 people and disappeared in 1982.
Japan is a country with frequent natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, mudslides, and volcanic eruptions. The Japanese have a strong sense of disaster prevention, and the Japanese government has also formulated and introduced strict disaster relief measures. Although encountered a severe rainstorm that was "once a few decades", it happened in Japan, which is famous for its disaster reduction ability, and caused such a large-scale disaster. It still makes people sigh and think deeply about the reasons behind the disaster.
Rainfall hits record floods hike
Japan has expectations for heavy rainstorms. According to statistics from the Japan Meteorological Agency, heavy rainstorms in Japan caused more than 10,000 buildings to be flooded due to river flooding and other reasons since 2004, have occurred 11 times in Japan.
After the heavy rain alert was issued on July 6, it has been a week since the heavy rain alarm was issued in western Japan, but there are still about 7,000 residents in the affected areas being taken refuge, and the police are still conducting continuous searches for those who are missing. In the disaster areas where buildings collapsed and flooded one after another, the police, Self-Defense Forces, Fire Department and other departments sent more than 70,000 people to continue searching for the lost people and launching rescue activities in the scorching heat.
Railways and expressways were broken, and the traffic networks in various places were paralyzed after the disaster occurred. Mainly in China and the four countries, many routes are still in a state of suspension or prohibition, which has had a great impact on logistics and regional economy.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said it was designated as an extremely serious disaster. The three prefectures of Hiroshima, Ehime and Okayama, which were the worst disasters caused by heavy rains in Western Japan, have caused a total of 254,084 households to be cut off, and more than half of the local governments are unable to restore water supply. It is estimated that for a long time, it will have an impact on the normal lives of citizens.
Media from Okayama Prefecture, one of the hardest-hit areas, said that this was mainly because the disaster was much more serious than originally thought, and the rainfall for three or four months was hit within a day.
This heavy rainfall started on July 5. As of July 8, the 72-hour rainfall at 93 observation points in 14 prefectures and prefectures broke the historical record. Among them, the rainfall in one of the capital Kobe City is 2.8 times the rainfall of the whole year in the whole year; in Iwakuni City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, as of about 5:00 p.m. on July 7, the rainfall in 24 hours reached 343 mm, the highest since the observation record; a village in Kochi Prefecture had a three-day rainfall of 1,091 mm, reaching one quarter of the annual average rainfall. The Japan Meteorological Agency said that the cause of this heavy rainfall was the confrontation between two high pressures, which caused the rainfall belt to stay above the area for several consecutive days.
The Japan Meteorological Agency once issued a special warning for heavy rain to one prefecture and eight counties, which means that the above-mentioned areas are facing once in a decades of rainfall and should enter the highest level of alert. According to media reports, this is the worst rainfall in Japan since the heavy rainstorm disaster in Shimane Prefecture and other places in 1983, and it is also the worst rainfall in Japan since Emperor Akihito ascended the throne. On July 9, the Japan Meteorological Agency named it "Heisei 30th Heavy Rain".
In Okayama Prefecture, one of the hardest hit areas, there were three broken river embankments in a river in Kurashiki City. One third of the area was flooded, and thousands of people were once trapped on the roof, waiting for boats and helicopters to rescue. The Kurashiki city government estimates that about 4,600 houses were flooded, forcing 3,000 to 5,000 people to leave their homes to take refuge. Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said it may take two weeks to drain the local water.
Although Japan is not too late to predict the possible disasters caused by heavy rains, it is regrettable that the response is slow, so the heavy rain in July was able to rage Western Japan, causing significant losses to the lives and property of the people. The lessons are worth pondering.
Ineffective warning, residents do not pay enough attention to it
According to data released by the Japanese Police Department, as of 4:45 am on July 13, including those who confirmed that the heart and lungs were stopped and the rescue was invalid, the heavy rain had killed 204 people. Among them, the death toll in Hiroshima Prefecture was 91, 58 in Okayama Prefecture, and 526 in Ehime Prefecture.
In addition, according to statistics from Asahi Shimbun as of July 12, among the 141 deceased who have confirmed their age, about 70% of the elderly over 60 years old account for about 100. Judging from the cause of death, 71 of them encountered mudslides, 59 were involved in the water due to the flooding of rivers, and 11 were unknown.
The Japanese government’s ineffective early warning and the public’s lack of awareness of flood prevention are another important reason for the serious disaster.
According to Japanese media reports, the Japanese meteorological department issued an alarm on July 5 that heavy rain may have serious impacts, but some people did not pay enough attention to this at the beginning. Many people still stay at home to take refuge as they are used to, so many people die from landslides and mudslides.
Local governments have issued "refuge notices" to approximately 6 million residents. However, the asylum notice is not mandatory and many people do not take it seriously. Everyone still responded according to previous experience. For example, no matter how powerful the flood was in the past, the water level would not exceed any position at most. Everyone responded according to this standard, but they did not expect that the flood level this time greatly exceeded the previous level, which led to an increase in the number of people affected.
The 80-year-old grandmother who took refuge in the city's Liyuan Primary School in Kurashiki City said that because she still remembered the breaking of Oda River in the 1970s, she raised the height of her house's floor in consideration of the situation where water was not over the floor. On July 6, she heard the shelter instructions broadcast, and the neighbors also asked her to take refuge together, but "I didn't expect that such a large amount of water would be emitted", so she did not go, and was trapped on the second floor of her home. She was finally rescued by a firefighter on a boat. She reflected and said, "I was too careless."
Japanese disaster psychologist Hirotaki Hirose told AFP that humans may have a "normalization prejudice" mentality in the face of disasters, blindly thinking that they will be safe and despise dangers and threats. Once you encounter a disaster, you don’t have time to escape. "This nature of human beings prevents them from responding quickly when encountering landslides and floods, because they always happen suddenly," Hirose said.
On the other hand, Hirose determined that there are also problems with the Japanese government's disaster warning mechanism. In Japan, disaster prevention meteorological information such as special warnings for heavy rains are released by the Japan Meteorological Agency, which is a central department, and refuge information is released by local governments, who may not have sufficient experience in dealing with disasters.
Although the disaster prevention education in Japanese schools runs through the entire education stage, disaster prevention drills are mainly focused on preventing earthquakes and fires, and are lacking in responding to floods, mudslides, etc. When heavy rain comes, people's personal awareness of disaster prevention is not as good as when earthquakes occur, which can be said to be a secret.
Although the Japanese authorities issued evacuation orders to about 6 million people at the worst time of the rain, these orders were only suggestions and no coercive force, and many people ignored them. It is also a problem for Japan to hand over some authority to issue evacuation orders to local officials who have no experience in disaster management.
In addition, the population has dropped sharply and the aging has been severely aggravated, which has weakened the local ability to deal with major natural disasters. Hiroshima Prefecture and Okayama Prefecture, which were hit hard this time, lacked personnel for emergency rescue and disaster relief when disasters occurred, and lacked talent for disaster prevention and mitigation using scientific and technological means. The lack of ability to prevent major natural disasters has further increased people's sense of insecurity, which has increasingly led to population movement to central cities, forming a vicious cycle.
earthquake-proof wooden house is unsafe when floods are encountered
According to statistics from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of Japan, as of the morning of July 12, due to the heavy rain, there were 519 sand and soil disasters in 31 prefectures in Japan, of which 382 were mountain collapses, 119 were mudslides, and 18 were landslides.Among them, there were 70 sand and soil disasters in Hiroshima Prefecture, which was the worst hit this time.
Japan suffered heavy rainstorms. The media analyzed the reasons. In addition to the typhoon attack and geological reasons, Japan often uses wood to build houses. The wooden houses cannot withstand the impact of water or mudslides, which may also be one of the reasons for heavy casualties.
Many houses in Japan are built with wood, especially in rural areas, where traditional wooden houses are very popular. The wooden foundation of this type of house is more elastic and is ideal for shockproof, but it cannot bear the huge pressure of floods or soil and rock flow.
According to AFP, once the mudslide with amazing impact surges into the house, it will directly sweep the top floor of the wooden house, and some wooden houses will even be uprooted along with the foundation.
Statistical results released by the Fire Department of the General Affairs Department of Japan on the afternoon of July 10 showed that 51 houses were completely destroyed, 23 were half destroyed, 278 were partially damaged, 6,680 floors were flooded, and 11,662 buildings were soaked under the floor.
In particular, a large number of bridges, reservoirs, dams, tunnels and public buildings in various parts of Japan were built during the period of rapid economic growth. It has been more than half a century so far, and the problem of aging has begun to occur, which needs to be renovated and updated urgently.
Hiroshima Prefecture, which was the most victims of this disaster, has seen the inclined surface soil layer in many places, and a mudslide disaster caused by large-scale landslides have been swept down and even buried residential houses. According to Japanese media reports, similar landslides caused by huge disasters occurred in northern Hiroshima City in 2014. Since then, Hiroshima City has begun to build a sand-proof dam, but due to its vast territory, it has not been completed before it can be completed, and a new disaster has occurred again.
This disaster once again shows that Japan's local public infrastructure still has a considerable gap from the "resistible country" and its defense capabilities for major natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods are insufficient.
Abe A big banquet was criticized for the guests during heavy rainstorms
In fact, the Japanese meteorological department issued an alarm on July 5th that heavy rain may develop into heavy rainfall in Japan, but people have not taken it seriously at the beginning. Especially on social media, it was revealed that on the evening of July 5, when it was raining heavily in western Japan, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Minister of Justice Ukawa Yoko, Defense Minister Onode Gonomi and others held a dinner with young parliamentarians and exchanged feelings. This has triggered public criticism of the government's poor response. The
banquet was held in the House of Representatives dormitory in Akasaka, Tokyo. This is a monthly gathering called "Akasaka Zimin Pavilion". In addition to General Affairs Chairman Takeshita, Hiroshita, Defense Minister Onode Gonori also leaned close to Abe with a smile on his face. Onoji received a request to send a Self-Defense Force to rescue the disaster a few hours later.
At that time, Kyoto City ordered more than 80,000 people to evacuate. The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a geological disaster alert to earthquake-stricken areas in northern Osaka Prefecture in the early morning of July 5, and called for vigilance at an emergency press conference at noon. Afterwards, the disaster expanded to the Western Japan from July 6 to 7. Otter Festival wineries in Iwakuni City, Yamaguchi Prefecture were also affected, with the production of about 900,000 large bottles of wine.
When the internship ship "Ehime Maru" collided with a US nuclear-powered submarine in 2001, then Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori was criticized for continuing to play golf after receiving the first report, which became a major reason for his resignation. Perhaps in order to avoid deductions, Abe canceled his overseas visit plan to Europe and the Middle East and made a decision to inspect Okayama Prefecture, a disaster area. Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide also emphasized at a press conference on July 9: "Responsive measures have been taken so far."
Although Abe canceled his foreign visit schedule on July 9 and emphasized "priority for responding to heavy rains" and actively avoiding points reduction, experts criticized that "long-term rule has led to (Abe) being content with the status quo and being too relaxed."
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrived in Okayama Prefecture, which was the worst in the heavy rain disaster on the morning of July 11. Through the view of the Self-Defense Force helicopters and ground visits, he inspected the land area, water and landslides caused by the heavy rain caused by the river bankruptcy.
This is the first time Abe has inspected the disaster area after a rare heavy rainstorm in Western Japan.Regarding the inspection of the disaster area in Okayama Prefecture, Abe said he "witted the horrifying traces of disasters". In view of the large-scale and serious disasters caused by heavy rains in western Japan, the plan was designated as extremely serious disasters.
Japanese society pays far less attention to heavy rains and floods than natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. For example, Japanese media reported that Japanese companies' measures to deal with heavy rains are significantly weaker than other disasters.
