Don Cayo: Japan’s disaster recovery remains a massive challenge (Vancouver Sun; March 11, 2013)
Post date: Mar 16, 2013 11:20:13 PM
Don Cayo: Japan’s disaster recovery remains a massive challenge
Even in one of the world’s best prepared jurisdictions, the earthquake and tsunami left huge physical and psychological scars
By Don Cayo, Vancouver Sun columnistMarch 11, 2013
To look at the “commemorative events” held — or not held — in B.C. this week, you might think the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan wasn’t of much significance to people here. All my Google News search turned up in the province was a report on a few good-hearted international students who got together to remember the 19,000 victims and to clean up debris from some beaches on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
And to look at some of the news stories on the quake-devastated area two years later, you might think nothing has been done to deal with the tragic aftermath. Concerns and complaints abound — the painfully slow decontamination of the nuclear reactor site, the lack of permanent replacement housing, psychological problems among those who lost homes and livelihoods and families and friends, slow progress regaining lost economic ground, and more
These are, of course, valid issues. Yet the impression a casual reader might gain from both the apparent forgetfulness or indifference in B.C. and the alarming news reports from Japan are both off the mark.
First, British Columbians were — as evidenced by our response at the time — deeply touched by the tragedy. And most of us realize, if only we stop to think about it, that it could easily have been us, and that there are many lessons we could and should learn from the Japanese experience.
Some of those things are the negative examples that are making the news today — things like off-target or too-slow responses.
But even more valuable lessons are in the things that have gone right, both before and after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck on what had started out as an unremarkable Friday afternoon.
British Columbians may feel lucky in that we face no threat from nuclear reactors like the three in Japan that were heavily damaged by the tsunami, one to the point of melting down, but we share many of our trans-Pacific neighbour’s other vulnerabilities. Our many low-lying coastal settlements give a worrisome number of people a ringside seat on one the world’s more geologically active areas.
Before you take too much comfort from having no B.C. nuclear plants to complicate a potential disaster here, bear in mind it was the natural forces, not the nuclear ones, that caused all the deaths.
And, since long before the quake that triggered the tragic events, Japan had made itself the best-prepared jurisdiction on earth for such an eventuality — far ahead of B.C. with our go-slow approach to earthquake-proofing vulnerable public structures and our lackadaisical approach to educating the public about how to prepare for and cope with the worst.
As well, Japan — it’s citizens, its businesses and, especially, its government — have put massive resources into recovery efforts. The criticisms notwithstanding, the net result has been very positive.
I visited the tsunami area almost a year-and-a-half ago, and even then a huge amount had been done. The hundreds of thousands of displaced people were housed modestly but adequately in well-planned, well built temporary housing. Mountains of debris had been cleared and sorted, ready for recycling. Public infrastructure was being rebuilt, and businesses were popping up even on ground that had been levelled by an unprecedented 30-plus metre wave. Detailed planning was well underway to ensure that rebuilt communities would not be vulnerable, like the ones that were lost.
The Japanese government this year increased the budget for reconstruction to 25 trillion yen (about $266 billion US). As well, in a land where far more attention has historically been paid to earthquake preparedness, it will spend about 10 per cent more ($23.4 billion US) to fortify public structures such as bridges, schools and highways.
Still, it’s no surprise that people are growing impatient. Their lives have been disrupted for a long time, and the prospect is that an even longer unsettled period lies ahead. Not to mention the psychological scars that, for many, may never fully heal.
But a key reason the job is taking so long that is that it’s so big.