Japan Press Weekly

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2011 June 15 - 21 [JCP]

JCP member in Minamisoma reports on confusion at time of evacuation

Watanabe Kan’ichi, Japanese Communist Party local assembly member of Minamisoma City in Fukushima, reported on the chaotic evacuation process the city had to go through after the outbreak of the nuclear power plant accident. Following is his report at the JCP’s inner-party meeting on June 12 on grass-roots struggles to withdraw from nuclear power generation.

My house is in the Odaka district of Minamisoma City. It is located 12 km north of the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant, within the no-entry zone. There is not a single person remaining there now. The City Assembly set up a special investigative committee regarding the March 11 natural disaster and nuclear accident, and I was appointed as the committee chair.

Our city comprises 400 square kilometers with a population of 71,000. The area damaged by the massive tsunami went as far as several kilometers from the coast, covering 40 sq km or 10 percent of the city. As of June 11, we confirmed that 542 residents had died, 156 were missing, and 1,800 houses had been swept away by the tsunami.

The city office called on all residents to evacuate right after the outbreak of the natural disaster and nuclear accident. Those who could not leave the city by themselves took a bus chartered by the municipal office. Residents evacuated to 380 public shelters or to their relatives’ or friends’ homes in other parts of Fukushima or neighboring prefectures like Niigata, Gunma, and Nagano. Although the people living outside the 20km-zone from the nuclear plant already returned to their homes, nearly 30,000 people are still unable to return.

Residents, especially those living within 20 km from the plant, had to leave their homes with only the barest necessities. For instance, some people in the area stayed overnight on March 11 at an elementary school in their community because of the tsunami damage. They moved to the central part of the Odaka district on the following day. However, on the early evening of the 12th, the national government ordered residents within the 20-km zone to evacuate. The city office then had to rush to inform the people of the national order by using a wireless system and cars with loudspeakers.

Then on the 15th, another order was announced recommending that those staying between 20 and 30 km from the plant either stay indoors or evacuate. As a result, residents had to move from one shelter to another after only a few days. Many actually had to move to different evacuation centers more than 10 times.

Since Minamisoma City is outside the 10-km zone from the nuclear power plant, it had been considered to be unaffected by the nuclear accident. We had never been included in the prefectural or national government nuclear-accident prevention plans or taken part in their disaster drills. The city office had not procured iodine tablets. This is one of the factors behind the confusion during the evacuation.

What I strongly feel is that the delay of the release of information related to radiation contamination greatly disrupted the residents’ smooth evacuation, especially the delayed publication and distribution of the government’s SPEEDI (System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information) information.

On March 11 and 12, residents of Namie and Futaba towns, located closer to the crippled plant and south of Minamisoma, evacuated to the mountain area in the Odaka district, where a relatively high radiation level was detected. Those evacuees as well as our city residents who received them were therefore exposed to high a level of radiation there, so they had to go through decontamination procedures once they moved to Niigata Prefecture. I strongly believe that we could have avoided their exposure to radiation if we were informed of the radiation level at an earlier stage.

We have many tasks for reconstruction. The determination of radiation scattered in the 20-km zone has only been conducted haphazardly. This will greatly affect the future reconstruction effort in addition to the determination of compensation for nuclear damages. Furthermore, we will have to provide regular health examinations for a long time for every Minamisoma resident. If we fail to take appropriate measures in time, the 30,000 residents who are still evacuees will not return to Minamisoma and our population may decrease to 40,000 from 70,000. We must make every effort until the last resident is able to come home.