誰かが言わなきゃならない

1. Nursing functions upon evacuation

The biggest difficulty upon evacuation and indoor sheltering fell upon nursing facilities,schools for the disabled, and hospitals. The whole patients
could not be transported in a hurry in a group by bus. It was not possible to carry them, unless adequate facilities and staff are available wherever to evacuate. Healthy people could manage to evacuate in one day, but it took much more time to carry them.
Adequate facilities to accept them are not usually available everywhere. Normally they are in short everywhere. Their staffing is not sufficient,
either. Those staff may not be able to evacuate together with the patients, they have their own families.
It was not rare that some or many of caregivers, nurses and supporting members for catering, cleaning, etc. left the facilities upon evacuation never to return. There were also self-sacrificing people to fulfill their roles even if their homes were also in trouble. In the indoor sheltering zones, many hospitals fell into difficulties to maintain their services due to insufficient materials, medicines and staffing.
Lessons: The town should have planned in advance which facility to evacuate where to and have arranged necessary agreements.Everything started from the “unhappy” fact: everybody took it for granted that a situation of whole evacuation due to nuclear accidents would never happen in my life. It was a mistake.

2. Our anxiety

Recalling back, we had little fears against radiation. The instruction was to evacuate upon emergency. No information was given on what the radiation level was, what type of dispersion of radioactive materials was foreseen, etc. With no information, no images came to us.
No evacuees had realistic feeling. The only exception would be the person who said in his TV interview;“I was resigned to death. I felt as if vice might have eventually defeated virtue in Armageddon, when I heard the sound of hydrogen explosion at the hospital entrance in Futaba-cho while carrying a patient.”
The persons for traffic control for evacuation were with white protective gears and masks.We simply thought that those people did so as a formality in their position, and that it would be hot, a pity for them. All we tried to do was to keep the car windows closed. We might have thought differently, should we have worn protective gears and masks.
Nothing scaring is at the evacuation camps in Kawauchi-mura or in Koriyama. The only visible difference is to practice radiation screening. All we feel realistically is, watching the same TV programs as in Tokyo, that there may a lot of hardships with high radiation back in town. With no sight, we can have no specific fears, despite the word “Invisible fears.”

3. “Facilities non grata”

NPPs and garbage incinerating facilities are often named as “Facilities non grata.” But the local residents near the NPPs never thought of this trouble-making. No residents would die of radiation or get ill due to radiation. But once an instruction is issued to evacuate from the designated zones, all freedoms are lost. Nobody has a right to use their own houses, rice pads
and agricultural fields.
Nobody knows how soon they can use them again. If everything were lost by an earthquake or fire disasters, they may be able to have a kind of hope by claiming the insurance money for restoration. The evacuation camps move from one place to another,farther, and nobody knows when they can return home. Skilled workers (craftsmen,technicians, carpenters, painters, etc) may have an opportunity to find a job where they evacuated, but farmers have no such opportunities.
All they can do is to watch and follow the development of the situation. Factory employees can do nothing productive, either, unless the factories can be accessed for use. No difference from the lost factories by tsunami. Children
have to choose a school to go upon the new semesters. No accidents other than nuclear accidents are so frustrating.

4. Escape routes in the area

Futaba-gun, Fukushima Prefecture, accommodating Fukushima Daiichi and Daini NPPs, is located in a long zone from the north to the south, the so-called Hama-dori (Coastal Zone),facing the Pacific. Highway 6 connects Tokyo and Sendai through this area from south to north along the coast. Further to the coast side (east to Highway 6) is the Hama-dori Steet and the NPPs stand between this street and the coastline.
All four NPP towns (Naraha, Tomioka,Okuma and Futaba) have their town centers on the west side of Highway 6. Most inhabitants live on the west side, too. Very few people live on the east side, on the NPP side. A new prefectural road, the Sanroku Highway, is being constructed to the west of, and in parallel with, Highway 6 for mitigating its traffic load. As a result, three trunk roads are
running from north to south in Fukushima: Hama-dori, Highway 6 and Sanroku Highway.
The earthquake and the tsunami destroyed Hama-dori completely, and tore Highway 6 into pieces.People evacuated to the west (Kawauchi-mura, Miyakoji Area in Tamura-city, Kuzuo-mura and Iidate-mura), using the nearest national road out of three.
On their way, Sanroku Highway lies. People could opt to take any of these three roads for evacuation, if they go to north or south on the Sanroku Highway. But most people did not take this option, but took the access
right to the west. There was an opinion to build an escape route, but it did not come true. All done was to build bridges or tunnels on existing roads for dam constructions in the mountainous zones.
Still they worked nicely helpfully, as their damage was limited because they were rather new and well maintained.If escape routes are newly explored, they must stand big earthquakes and big tsunmis. And there must be more than one.