Visiting areas devastated by heavy rains in Takeo City,Saga Prefecture
Yoko Saito
Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor,
Institute of Disaster Area Revitalization, Regrowth and Governance
Kwansei Gakuin UniversityIn August 2021, heavy rainfall caused disasters mainly in northern Kyushu, including Sagaand Fukuoka prefectures. The affected areas included Takeo City and Omachi Town in Saga
Prefecture, which were also flooded by a torrential rain disaster in August 2019. Two years
after the last flood, we experienced another disaster. In the case of Takeo City, 1,756 houses
were flooded this time (1,184 above floor level and 572 below floor level) compared to 1,536
houses flooded in the previous earthquake. The total rainfall was 1,256 mm, greater than the482 mm that fell in the previous event. The disaster that occurred mainly in Kumamoto in2020 was a river flood caused by a river bursting its banks due to heavy rainfall from a linear
rainband. In the case of Takeo City, the inland flooding was caused by a pump that stopped
pumping rainwater flowing into the city's tributaries to the main stream, the Rokkaku River.
The team visited Takeo City from October 18 to 20, 2021. Most of the damaged houses thistime were judged to be “medium-scale half-collapsed,” a term added to the Law for Assistancein Reconstructing the Livelihoods of Victims, which was partially revised on November 30,
2020. As a result of this, financial aid for “half-destruction,” which was not previouslyprovided, will now be provided in the amount of 1 million yen for the construction or purchaseof a dwelling and an additional 500,000 yen for repairs, depending on the determination of“medium-scale half-destruction.” If used in conjunction with the emergency repair system(see previous issue for details), a total of about 1 million yen will be provided, including thefunds for repairs. However, when volunteers talked about the system to elderly victims at atea party organized by a volunteer group, they were surprised to find that many of them did
not know about the system. An elderly disaster victim blurted out, “Thank God,” when avolunteer informed him that apart from emergency repairs, he would be provided with alivelihood reconstruction assistance grant for disaster victims. The government has set up aReconstruction Assistance Office, which provides consultation services and publicity, butthere are various support measures, and it is difficult for disaster victims to understand at a
© 2021 Institute of Disaster Area Revitalization, Regrowth and Governance, Kwansei Gakuin University

glance which support measures apply to their houses, which application documents require acontract, which require an estimate, and so on. Although the fact that support is now available
for medium-scale partial destruction is a step forward, disaster victims are still at the mercyof an increasingly complex system.
Moreover, as in previous disasters, adisparity has emerged between thosevictims who can afford to build orpurchase the equipment and those who
cannot afford the repair costs. Many of
the younger households are thinking ofleaving the area because they still haveloans from the disaster two years ago andare now even more affected by thedisaster. However, elderly households do
not want to leave the land where they
have lived for many years. There are no▲Affected house with closet opening leading to exterior wall.

tatami mats, however, and the residents continue to live on wooden flooring. In mid-October,the weather changed from summer-like to a sudden chill in the air. In this situation, there arepeople who live in places where outside air blows directly into the house if they do not takemeasures against the cold, such as opening closet doors that lead to the exterior walls. Even if
they try to use the emergency repair system, it takes time and costs a lot of money due to theshortage of craftsmen and the increase in labor costs caused by the soaring cost of lumber,and the situation cannot be immediately sorted out. To solve these problems, eventemporarily, volunteer groups are going around to households in need and putting up tarps toprotect them from the open air. All the tables and furniture had to be discarded due to theflooding, and everything had to be put together again from scratch. Some of the victims werestill without tables and were eating their meals alone, using small cabinets instead.
It makes me wonder if the “right to exist (the right to a minimum standard of living that is
healthy and culturally acceptable)” was not one of the three major rights of the Japanesepeople. Or will the response continue to be based on the fact that floods are natural disasters
and therefore no one is at fault, and therefore the affected people are the only ones
responsible? It is expected that weather disasters caused by global warming will increase not
only in Japan but also globally. Visiting the disaster-stricken area in Takeo, I was reminded of
the need to consider how we, as people living in such an era, can live in peace and security onthe same land (or on new land) after a disaster, based on the basic principle of “humanrecovery.”© 2021 Institute of Disaster Area Revitalization, Regrowth and Governance, Kwansei Gakuin University

The flood damage response in Takeo City will also be reported at the Forum on Disaster
revitalization and mitigation’s exchange meetings and roundtables in the affected areas andat the symposium.
November 2021

© 2021 Institute of Disaster Area Revitalization, Regrowth and Governance, Kwansei Gakuin University