The March 11 mega-earthquake that left more than 20,000 people dead or missing has prompted education boards around the nation to add tsunami to the list of disasters to prepare for, an Asahi Shimbun poll shows.
The March 11 mega-earthquake that left more than 20,000 people dead or missing has prompted education boards around the nation to add tsunami to the list of disasters to prepare for, an Asahi Shimbun poll shows.
The vast majority of education boards in 47 prefectures and 19 major cities are now reviewing their crisis management manuals and disaster preparedness education for schools, the survey found.
Some 90 percent of education boards are involved in the process. Officials said a primary concern was to help nurture students' abilities to make sound judgments on their own in emergency situations.
Since the Great East Japan Earthquake, education boards across the country have made a concerted effort to learn from the disaster.
The Asahi Shimbun conducted the survey from July to August. Sixty-six education boards in 47 prefectures and 19 cities responded to the survey. The 19 cities are "seirei-shitei-toshi," or government-ordinance-designated cities with population of 500,000 or more.
Asked what action they took after the March 11 disaster, education boards of 41 prefectures and 18 cities said they reviewed or are reviewing their crisis management manuals on evacuation methods, among other issues. Many of them came up with new measures to deal with tsunami.
For example, in July the education board of Yokohama city drew up additional steps relating to tsunami in its disaster preparedness plans for schools for the first time.
As an initial precautionary measure, it has designated elevated areas of at least 5 meters, as well as rooftops and the highest floors of school buildings, as evacuation areas.
In the March 11 disaster, many children were swept away by tsunami because too much time elapsed in the process of trying to evacuate them. Learning from those cases, the education board decided that, when an earthquake with an intensity level of 5 or higher on the Japanese scale of 7 occurs, schools should put priority on making sure students flee immediately to evacuation areas, rather than assembling in schoolyards and calling out a list of names.
The education boards of some prefectures that have long coastlines, such as Wakayama, Toyama, Kagawa, Oita and Miyazaki, have added or strengthened their crisis management manuals to deal with tsunami.
In Nagasaki Prefecture, the education board decided to include measures to deal with radiation contamination for the first time. This is because a nuclear power plant is located in neighboring Saga Prefecture.
Many education boards also stressed the importance of allowing students to make judgments by themselves. The reasoning behind that is children are at school only for a portion of the day.
"We plan to strengthen our disaster preparedness education so that children can judge and act appropriately under any circumstances," said an official of the education board in Aichi Prefecture.