Special to The Asahi Shimbun
Special to The Asahi Shimbun
The crux of crisis management is best described by the proverb, "Speed is the essence of war."
Countermeasures against disasters don't need to be perfect. The government can both refine the system and provide relief while it is running.
For some time now, I have insisted that setting up a command center team, comprising experts in various fields, is absolutely necessary when a national crisis, such as the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, occurs.
The office would coordinate information-gathering to assess the situation, deciding what is needed and where. This is necessary to determine how many personnel and how much equipment and materials should be directed where.
The team should not be large; 10 people would suffice.
The central government should have already set up such a team through bipartisan efforts from both the ruling and opposition parties.
When emergency strikes, a meeting of all Cabinet ministers only consumes too much time and energy. Adding on the bureaucrats typically summoned to such meetings, the entire government ends up being put on hold.
Even if people insist on setting up a new government agency or revising the law to achieve that, it will be too late for the present crisis. We must use all possible exemptions and flexibility to ensure the government and administration do not become paralyzed.
Since the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, the disaster management capabilities of the Self-Defense Forces, firefighters and police have all improved by leaps and bounds. But each entity operates separately and is thus unable to maximize its potential.
Through mutual networking, these separate entities could create a greater force.
To do that, the nation needs a central emergency command center.
Another point is that the government needs to make better use of the large number of helicopters at its disposal.
In the present disaster, many municipal governments have been rendered inactive, and the central government must go out to find information from the disaster area. However, with roads and railways broken, and telephone communications down, information gathering has become difficult.
To check on the damage, the government could have 20 to 30 Ground SDF helicopters fly over the disaster areas, carrying senior SDF officials and local firefighters familiar with the areas.
The front-line officials would then notify the central command officials of their estimates of the number of rescue workers needed in each area.
The GSDF has 54 CH-47 Chinook helicopters capable of carrying about 100 people standing up. These choppers could swiftly evacuate quake victims by air.
Through such actions, officials would be able to quickly see the types of people and goods needed. Each time something emerges, the team could add on new members.
I was chagrined at the televised sight of flames consuming vast areas of Kesennuma in Miyagi Prefecture. Why couldn't they have conducted aerial extinguishing at the early stages of the fire?
As a member of the Fire and Disaster Management Agency's firefighting commission, I have previously urged the government to consider having a large number of rescue helicopters participate in exercises. Those calls went unanswered.
We must never again allow anyone to suffer what the victims of this disaster have gone through.
I also wonder if the government has included crisis-management experts in its advisory panel on nuclear issues.
Future countermeasures are needed, based on the worst-case assumption that this situation could go beyond anything previously imagined.
The nuclear radiation situation could conceivably end up requiring drastic measures, such as raising safety standards to 100 times the current level, or ordering residents to vacate the area within 50 kilometers of the crippled plant. We must also provide ample compensation for those who lived in the area.
It is inevitable that another huge earthquake will strike at some point. I hope that the government will take this opportunity to set up a Japanese version of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency based upon the central command team, as well as a Japanese version of the U.S. National Security Council.
(This article was compiled from an interview by Masaaki Tonedachi.)
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Kazuhisa Ogawa is the head of the Strategic Research Institute of International Change. As a military analyst, Ogawa has served on various government panels, such as the Cabinet Secretariat's crisis management study group and conference on strengthening the prime minister's office for national security.