Voluntary Self- and Mutual-help Organization to Cope with Mountain Disasters in Japan: Case Study in Reihoku
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Voluntary Self- and Mutual-help Organization to Cope with Mountain Disasters in Japan: Case Study in Reihoku
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Voluntary Self- and Mutual-help Organization to Cope with Mountain Disasters in Japan: Case Study in Reihoku
- 1. Kumiko Fujita, Yukiko Takeuchi, Rajib Shaw (Kyoto University, Japan) Voluntary Self- and Mutual-help Organization to Cope with Mountain Disasters in Japan: Case Study in Reihoku
- 9. Do you have voluntary self-help organization in your community?
- 10. Do you have voluntary self-help organization in your community? Yes No
- 11. Which organization do you rely on, in case of disaster?
- 12. Which organization do you rely on, in case of disaster? 1. Self-help 2. Fire Volunteer 3. NS 4. Others
- 15. Do you have community meetings?
- 16. How do you communicate with neighbors? (multiple answers allowed)
Editor's Notes
- First, I briefly introduce about the mountain and forest in Japan. In Japan, mountain and forest have a close relationship, because two third of Japan is covered by forest, and most of the forests are distributed in mountain areas. The population there is small. It is only about 4%. Though the population is small, two third of the national land is forest, so mountain villages with small population play an important role in forest management and national land conservation.
- The mountain environment is changing. Japan has been suffered from typhoons, heavy rain, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Because of these climatic and geological factors, various natural disasters occur in mountains such as landslides, floods and avalanche. We have a long history to cope with these disasters. Recently, global warming and abnormal weather affect the scales and types of disasters. Occurrence of localized torrential rain is increasing, and big scale local floods and droughts will be occurred. In addition to these environmental changes, social changes affect the types and scales of damages. Social changes are aging, decreasing population, deforestation and so on.
- The disaster management system has been developed and strengthened following the bitter experiences of large-scale natural disasters and accidents[3]. When Debris flow occurred in Kagoshima prefecture in 1993, it was pointed that there is limitation of informing debris flow dangerous area, evacuation measures and structural measures. The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake hit an urban city, Kobe in 1995. The damage was unprecedented and it gave an opportunity to raise awareness of risk management and disaster prevention plan have been revised in all over Japan. Nonstructural measures such as voluntary self-help organization are needed to be developed as soon as possible mainly by local residents, fire departments and fire volunteers, since neighbors played an important role to help each other when modern heavy machineries as an emergency measure did not function well because roads were blocked and staff of disaster risk reduction also became victims[6].
- 自主防災組織とは、 災害から自分たちの地域は自分たちで守るという住民の自覚と連帯感に基づき、町内会等の単位で自主的に防災活動に取り組む組織をいいます。 ( 高知県南海地震による災害に強い地域社会づくり条例 2 条第 4 号の定義）
- Then I choose Reihoku area as a research area to know the actual situation about disaster prevention organization. It is a typical mountain area with large forest area and high rate of old population. The forest rate is almost 90%. The ratio of more than 65-year-old is about 40% in 2000. Total population is about 15,000. It locates in the center of Shikoku island. There are three towns and one village. (Reihoku is in the upper Yoshino river basin. The area is about 757 km2 and shares 10.6% of total area of Kochi. It is mountainous with steep mountains of 200 to 1,700 m in height.)
- The have been suffered from sediment-related disasters like debris flow induced by typhoon and torrential rain. Okawa village and Tosa town was hit by torrential rain in August 2004. It is so-called Sameura torrential rain.
- This is the information about the research for local residents. 347 targets are selected from 5,267 registered lists of the phone book at random. 155 targets replied answers. The collection rate is 45%.
- The first question is asked if there is a self-organization or not, “Do you have voluntary self-help organization in your community?” The result shows 40 % answered “yes” as Fig.5 shows. This rate is below the avarage of Kochi. Though the number and rate of voluntary self-help organization , which is “the key of mutual help”, in Kochi has been increasing since 1995, the rate of voluntary self-help organization in Kochi (47.1% in 2007) is very low compared to the national rate (66.9% in 2006), and it shows the difficulty to develop voluntary self-help ortanization because these oraganizations in Kochi have been establisted by administrative leadership 。
- Then to know more detail about the result, it is analyzed if there is a difference among different age range. Younger generation has higher rate of recognizing voluntary self-help organization.
- Next question is “Which organization do you rely on, in case of disaster?”, and 7 % answered “voluntary self-help organization” and 66% answered “fire volunteer”. A few respondents do not know about the voluntary help-self organization itself. On the contrary, fire volunteers have been developed in every region in Reihoku. Then 15% answered “nothing special” The reasons why they answered nothing special is assumed by their major comments as follows: There is a possibility that road is blocked. The number of fire volunteer is decreasing. As 15% of respondents answered “nothing special” in the questionnaire survey, they feel the necessity of self-help.
- Though younger generation recognized about the organization more than older generation did, They also rely on fire volunteer.
- Fire volunteer is a traditional public system under the fire department and it have close and more daily relationship with residents in addition to the activity in an emergency case of the disasters. Since fire volunteer has a long history, many respondents answered that fire volunteer is the most reliable organization in case of disaster. Aging and decreasing number of fire volunteer is the nation-wide issues in Japan.
- 消防団は非常勤の公務員 自主防災 もっと早い段階での安全な避難活動をめざす。
- Fire volunteer is a traditional public system under the fire department and it have close and more daily relationship with residents in addition to the activity in an emergency case of the disasters. Since fire volunteer has a long history, many respondents answered that fire volunteer is the most reliable organization in case of disaster. Aging and decreasing number of fire volunteer is the nation-wide issues in Japan.
- Because of decreasing population and increasing rate of old people, it is difficult to increase the number of both self-help organization and fire volunteer, local residents need to increase awareness of importance of self-help. As 15% of respondents answered “nothing special” in the questionnaire survey, they feel the necessity of self-help. Since knowing evacuation and getting information in case of disaster is important for self-help, many comments regarding evacuation and information system is seen. 35% of the comments are regarding to revision and awareness of evacuation place and route, and 20% of the comments are regarding to development of information system and network. Further research on hazard map is needed to review the evacuation place and route whether it is suitable for old people. In addition, research on information system and network is needed.