Community Recovery in Tsunami-Affected Area: Lessons from Minami-Kesennuma

Abstract

Many people who lived in affected areas by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami have been forced to live separately after the event. In some tsunami-affected areas, reconstruction of houses has been restricted since the disaster happened until reconstruction projects for safety finish because sea walls were destroyed and high risk of a future tsunami remains. These areas were designated as two separated zones; prohibited area of housing reconstruction and land leveling area. Survivors who lived in either zone can also choose to move out from the area they lived and to reconstruct their house by themselves. Therefore, community recovery plan makes an impact for affected people to decide where they reconstruct, consequently, it is considered to make an effect on community recovery process. For this reason, this chapter attempts to analyze problems of community recovery plan and characteristics of residents who have a will to reconstruct their house in tsunami-affected area in case of Minami-Kesennuma, a devastated area by the tsunami. From the analysis, lessons of community recovery is emphasized as following; early concept-making and consensus-building for recovery, housing reconstruction support in terms of re-building community and resilience building in the recovery process by involvement of multi-stakeholders.

Suitability of the early warning systems and temporary housing for the elderly population in the immediacy and transitional recovery phase of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

“…Whilst a number of these strategies were successful in buying time As with its early warning system and evacuation planning, Japan has a generally wellregarded capacity to provide temporary housing following a disaster [24]. Temporary housing provision has been a staple of the Government of Japan's (GoJ) natural and anthropogenic disaster policy since the creation of the Disaster Relief Act in 1947 [41]. It is a law through which the GoJ is mandated to provide assistance to "persons who have been subject to a disaster… and require Relief Activities within the territory of a municipality" [42].…”