Masanobu Kanai

Implementation of Tsunami Disaster Education for Children and Their Parents at Elementary School

It is expected that many coastal regions in Japan will be attacked by huge tsunami in near future. Therefore, tsunami evacuation plans are considered in Japan. In this paper, tsunami disaster education was carried out for elementary school children and their parents. The purpose of this education was to encourage development of a family plan for tsunami evacuation. At first, children and their parents learned about tsunamis and how to evacuate safety during tsunamis. Second, they searched for safety tsunami evacuation places near their houses. Third, they made a tsunami evacuation map and developed the family evacuation plan based on this map. Through this education program, children not only got the knowledge about tsunami but also got the wisdom about tsunami evacuation. INTRODUCTION Problem about Tsunami Evacuation in Japan There is a prevailing concern that a huge tsunami might be generated by earthquakes on the Sanriku, Toukai, Tounankai, or Nankai fault zone in Japan. It is clear that residents who live in coastal areas need to evacuate immediately after the earthquake occurrence in order to reduce the number of casualties that might result due to these tsunamis. However, even if the Japanese government issued tsunami warning and evacuation information to the residents in coastal areas, there is a concern that residents might not understand or obey the evacuation order. For example, in a recently survey undertaken by T. Katada, et al. 2005, it was found that during Miyagiken-Oki

ISSUES OF TSUNAMI EVACUATION BEHAVIOR IN JAPAN: RESIDENTS RESPONSE IN CASE OF CHILEAN EARTHQUAKE IN 2010

Chilean Earthquake occurred at 27th Feb in 2010. Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) announced the Tsunami Warning after about 18 hours from earthquake occurrence to all shoreline of the Pacific coast in Japan. It was 9:30 on February 28 of the Japan time. This tsunami warning expected that some regions might be attacked by tsunamis of over 3 meters. However, there were only a few areas inundated by tsunamis. Therefore, only a few residents evacuated from tsunamis at that time. In this paper, we carried out questionnaire survey to residents who live in coastal area. According to results of survey, we reveal why only a few residents evacuated. And we discussed issues and countermeasures to prompt residents to evacuate. (150)