TOPICSDescription on the actual damages to thepeoples’ lives by The Tohoku Pacific Ocean
Earthquake And Tsunami

KUBOTA Keijiro, Senior researcher
ONAMI Hiroyuki, Researcher
ITO Hiroyuki, Head of Flood Disaster Prevention Division,
Research Center for Disaster Management（Key words） Tsunami, Actual damage to the peoples’ lives, Direct conversation inquiry
1. Introduction

goods as almost all of the retail shops have got

Tsunami has brought not only the damage on thedamage.

property such like collapsed and wrecked houses but・Using the bicycle as a substitute for the damaged

also damages to the peoples’ lives that the victims haveautomobile until new one becomes available, but

been forced to live up for a long period of time underobliged to move long distance for going and cominginconvenient conditions under shortage of daily

between the safe shelter and home as well as purchasehousehold goods , no utilities supply, destructedof daily households goods.

community functions . By those reasons mentioned above,

・Life in shelter becomes long not knowing when andwe visited victims’ houses in the Tsunami disaster area

how to recover the proper housing as there is no target

directly s so as to grasp the actual circumstances ofthat the area is recovered without concrete landdamages to the lives of such peoples .

development schedule.
Further,

2. Inquiry method

following

exampleswereshownon

deteriorated physical condition and mental illness due toActual inquiry was implemented from February tolong period of inconvenient life.

June 2012 with the collaboration of total 223 victims in・A person lost its physical conditions and was underseven cities (Iwate pref.:Kamaishi,Miyako, Miyagi

medical treatment at home following a distress caused

pref.:Ishinomaki,from staying long in a shelter. As a result the person fell

Shiogama,Tagajo,

Iwanuma,

Fukushima pref.: Soma). We have visited homes ofsuddenly one day and cannot stand up any more.

such victims respectively and sounded their life after
disaster through direct conversation inquiry about one
hour each.

3. Damages to the life
We came tohave grasped actual circumstances that thevictims are obliged to bear inconvenient life long time asshown below.
・It became difficult to obtain food and daily household

Photo-1 Area destroyed by the Tsunami

Photo-2 Longer-term shelter life
Family members are suffering from unstable mental
condition caused by the fear of Tsunami and cannot
determine to return home adjacent to the beach.
・ A person who could not approach his/her house as only
pillars were left on the ground floor, lost all memory
articles such as children’s photos in early childhood thatwere left on the second floor when his /her house wastorn down.

4. Conclusion
In the inquiry process, we have made great efforts tomake the query sheet flexible in order to explain and ask
questions pursuant to understanding of victims sinceinquiry items are complicated and diversified.
In the catastrophes, victims tend to suffer from theinconvenient life for long period that does not appear on
the statistical figures. Hence the challenge is how toreflect such circumstances in the business evaluation andso on.
We would like to express our sincere appreciation to
those victims who cooperated with us in this time inquiry.