SHIZUOKA—The “Great Tokai Earthquake” has yet to occur but Japan is gearing up for that imminent event in the hope that efforts at disaster preparation will minimize any casualties.
Such is the case with the Shizuoka Prefectural government which is now at the forefront of an urgent emergency management program aimed at educating individuals and communities of an impending massive earthquake with a magnitude of 8 on the Richter scale that is also expected to trigger tsunami attacks.
Takayoshi Iwata, spokesperson from the prefecture’s Department of Emergency Management explained that the Tokai earthquake is a plate-boundary earthquake that will be brought about by the movement of the Philippine Sea plate.
It was theorized by Katsuhiko Ishibashi, an assistant at the Faculty of Science, University of Tokyo in August 1976 and has since then become a serious social problem and the most urgent task of the prefecture.
The government, Iwata said, has spent 1,900 billion yen in preparation for this seismic activity which has been predicted to be more powerful than the 7.9 magnitude quake that hit Szechuan Province in Western China in 2008, killing about 70,000 people.
The focal region of this seismic activity is at Suruga Bay located on the Pacific coast of Honshu in Shizuoka. Japan’s highest peak, Mt. Fuji, rises from the Suruga Trough, the deepest area of the Bay. This also serves as the boundary of the Philippine Sea plate and Eurasian plate.
The Philippine Sea plate, which forms the seabed, moves to the Eurasian plate at the rate of several centimeter per year and slides below it. The edge of the Eurasian plate is dragged downward and strain is accumulated thus when it comes to its limit, the Eurasian plate has the tendency to spring upward and trigger an earthquake. At the same time, a tsunami is also generated.
“Thirty years ago, scientists have published that an earthquake in this area is imminent so we have to prepare,” Iwata said during a briefing attended by participants of the 31st NSK-CAJ fellowship program.
Because of this, Japan established an Earthquake Disaster Management Strategy in anticipation of the Tokai earthquake. The goal is to reduce the number of deaths and the amount of fiscal damage by half in the next 10 years.
Coincidentally, the government pushed for Tokai-0, an initiative project to provide subsidies for retrofitting residential houses and other infrastructures such as schools and government institutions.
“There are two crises that we will possibly encounter. One is the earthquake in this area, probably the largest shaking of the ground, possibly intensity 7 based on the Japanese intensity scale—the highest should be. And also because we are facing the ocean and the earthquake is happening underneath the ocean we are expecting a very huge tsunami disaster,” he said.
“That’s why we retrofitted the buildings to withstand the earthquakes and also we have set up different facilities to prevent a tsunami disaster to enter into inland,” added Iwata.
Besides this, the prefectural government also set up a permanent disaster management headquarters that would handle such large scale disasters.
The Shizuoka Prefecture Crisis Management Center was re-equipped from December 2007 to July 2008 to enable simultaneous decision-making and operation from the head (prefectural governor) down to its members as part of its operations.
The building itself was retrofitted, designed to withstand a great and powerful earthquake. It has double capability than the projected seismic strength.
“But no matter how many times we prepare to retrofit, we cannot stop the ground motion itself. The ground will shake so from another perspective, is (I think) we have to promote sophisticated prediction capabilities,” he said.
“We are trying to reduce the damage that we may have to minor as possible,” he said, admitting that they are filled with uncertainty as they have no clear picture yet of the enormity of the quake.
Iwata said the Center’s main goal is to educate people regarding earthquake preparation by organizing disaster management drills, evacuation exercises and personnel mobilization drill in the prefecture.
He also disclosed that a portion of the second floor of the center is set aside as a work area for journalists who would cover the aftermath of the seismic activity.
Shizuoka Shimbun, Shizuoka prefecture’s daily newspaper, for its part said they are committed to giving highest priority news about the Tokai earthquake.
The Shizuoka Shimbun Press Center boasts of having a seismically isolated structure. A base isolation system is set up in the basement of the building in order to enable the company to continue publication even in the event of a huge disaster.
Japan has experienced a number of devastating earthquakes such as the Kobe earthquake in 1995 which measured 7.2 on the Richter scale and rocked Hyogo prefecture. More than 6, 000 people were killed and 300,000 left homeless due to the disaster.
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