# Chapter 5 Toward Recovery from the Great East Japan Earthquake

At 2:46 pm on March 11, 2011 a massive earthquake struck with a magnitude of 9.0 and its center off the coast of Sanriku. Due to this earthquake, strong tremors were observed mainly in the Tohoku and Kanto regions and towering tsunami were observed mainly along the Pacific coast. The earthquake and tsunamis caused the most tragic human suffering in Japan since World War II, particularly in a wide region of the Pacific Coast from the Tohoku region to the Kanto region, and had immeasurably enormous effects on daily life, such as destruction of buildings, damage of automobiles, and severance of things that are referred to as lifelines, such as electricity and running water. In addition, primarily in the Tokyo metropolitan area there were shortages of all kinds of daily necessities such as food and daily commodities, caused by factors such as severance of distribution channels for supplies and consumers hoarding non-essential and non-urgent goods.

From the perspective of impacts on the environment, problems have arisen such as the generation of large amounts of debris due to the collapse of buildings in each of the disaster areas, and there is an urgent need for prompt handling of and appropriate response to such problems. Support is also important for things such as dealing with the excrement of people living in shelters and debris related the disaster, keeping people and their pets in good conditions, and monitoring of air and water qualities.

As for electricity, which is closely related to fighting global warming, nuclear power plants and thermal power plants controlled by Tokyo Electric Power Company and Tohoku Electric Power Co. Inc. were seriously damaged, resulting in an extremely difficult situation for the balance between electricity supply and demand and thus creating the need for drastic measures concerning both supply and demand.

The damage from the Great East Japan Earthquake was of an unparalleled scale across broad areas, and the type of damage was also of a seriousness that had not been experienced in the past. Under such an unprecedented situation, it is necessary to move forward with efforts for recovery, taking into consideration the experiences of past major disasters such as the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake while keeping in mind the differences in the states of damage. In promoting efforts aimed at recovery from the earthquake, it is necessary to build a broad-area system based on leadership by the national government. Although the full spectrum of the damage is not yet clear and the tasks that require responses are constantly changing, in this White Paper we have laid out the situation up to the beginning of May.

### 1. Handling Environmental Problems Caused by the Earthquake

The government established an emergency headquarters for response to the 2011 Tohoku Region Pacific Coast Earthquake immediately after the disaster on March 11, and based on fundamental policies related to disaster emergency measures it has been collecting information at the relevant ministries and ascertaining the damage situation, conducting disaster emergency activities such as saving human lives, rescue activities for disaster victims, and firefighting activities, as well as restoring lifelines in disaster areas, securing required personnel and goods, and providing accurate information to residents and other people in disaster areas.

## (1) Disposal of Debris Caused by the Collapse of Buildings

The “2011 Earthquake off the Pacific Coast of Tohoku” was Japan’s largest scale earthquake on record, and various areas along the coast were stricken by subsegment towering tsunamis. They caused an enormous amount of debris created by the collapse of buildings, and the disposal of such debris is an urgent task in order to restore the daily lives of residents and economic activities in the disaster areas.

In order to carry out smooth and rapid disposal of the enormous amount of debris generated by this major earthquake, immediately after the earthquake the Ministry of the Environment established a system for information collection and communication. After March 11 it dispatched its personnel to Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima prefectures. On March 13 the Ministry of the Environment established a task force for response to disaster waste and it has been coordinating and making arrangements with local governments and other organizations to build a broad-area collaboration system in order to dispose of the enormous amount of debris.

It will be extremely difficult to dispose of the debris generated by this earthquake if only the facilities of municipalities in the disaster areas are used. For that reason, the Ministry of the Environment has asked all local governments and related groups in Japan to support disposal of the debris of the disaster areas, and many