The cold winter of the Noto Peninsula

LEE YOUNG-HEE
The author is a Tokyo correspondent of the JoongAng Ilbo.

As I was getting ready to go out at 9 a.m. on Sunday, I heard a thump sound as if something had fallen on the ceiling, and my house shook. This is rather big, I thought. I took the emergency backpack from the corner of my room and left the door slightly open. I checked the phone and got an alert, “Epicenter Tokyo Bay, magnitude 4 in 23 wards of Tokyo, no tsunami.”

The strength of a four-magnitude earthquake shakes furniture, but when I carefully went outside, the scenery was no different from that of any other Sunday. Such peace is only possible in Japan, an earthquake-prone country.

While I don’t doubt that Japan is most well-prepared country for earthquakes in the world, I am still surprised and wonder “Is this happening in Japan?” whenever I see the news related to the Noto Peninsula earthquake on New Year’s Day. A month has passed, but more than 42,400 households in the affected areas of Wajima and Suzu still do not have running water. Compared to the Kumamoto earthquake of 2016, where 90 percent of water pipes were restored in a week, recovery is too slow. Some 3,300 households were without power as of Jan. 28, and more than 15,000 people are still living in shelters. Schools and gyms are offering “bath assistance programs.”

It turned out that the Noto Peninsula was a “blind spot” for Japan, a disaster prevention powerhouse. More than 80 percent of houses in Japan are designed to be earthquake-resistant, but fewer than 50 percent of houses in this region have meet that criterion. The earthquake destroyed 43,766 of such houses. The earthquake-resistance suitability rate of water pipes was only 10 to 30 percent.

This can all be attributed to the country’s shrinking and aging population. While seniors account for 29 percent of Japan’s population, Suzu City’s proportion of citizens of 65 or older exceeds 50 percent, while Wajima’s is in the high 40 percent range. Older residents were worried about earthquakes but were reluctant to spend money to repair their homes, as they have no one to inherit their houses. The region has rarely had earthquakes, and their complacence made the disaster worse.

The cold winter on the Noto Peninsula reminds us that there is no perfect preparation for disaster. Japan started to check its blind spots after the earthquake. An emergency safety check by the Tokyo Provincial Fire Department is scheduled for early February for the Tokyo bureau of the JoongAng Ilbo. Whenever I experience an earthquake, small or big, I imagine an earthquake of this magnitude occurring in Korea. Just as the earthquake that shook the Noto Peninsula brought a tsunami to the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, danger is again not far away. It is never too early to prepare for unexpected disaster.