Current Status and Issues of Life Recovery Process Three Years After the Great East Japan Earthquake Questionnaire Based on Subjective Estimate of Victims Using Life Recovery Calendar Method

Abstract

This paper clarifies recovery status and life recovery processes based on victims’ feelings following the March 2011 Great East Japan earthquake. Specifically, a questionnaires were given to about 3,000 quake victims to determine their status and any issues they may have had. The overall recovery picture was obtained using measurement called a “recovery calendar.” The structure of the recovery process was compared to disasters such as the Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) earthquake in 1995. The recovery calendar indicated that 80% of respondents felt that local activities have not been restored to their original state and saw themselves as victims three years after the earthquake, indicating that recovery had progressed slower than it had following the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake. In a comparison of the three prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima, Iwate and Miyagi displayed the same recovery trends. Fukushima recovered later than the other two prefectures. For the item “The local economy was no longer influenced by the earthquake,” it was indicated that the economic situation in Iwate was worse than that in Miyagi or Fukushima. General characteristics of the life recovery process were also investigated through a comparison to other earthquake and water disasters. Life recovery proceeded in five phases: 1) Victims prepared to have an uncomfortable life for a while and understood the extent of the damage. 2) Victims felt safe and office and school activities had resumed. 3) Everyday life settled down, housing problems were finally settled, and personal financial situations were no longer influenced by the earthquake. 4) Respondents no longer defined themselves as victims. 5) The local economy was no longer influenced by the earthquake. In cluster analysis for classifying life recovery processes, 12 items were classified into five clusters corresponding to the above five phases, statistically showing that victims’ lives recovered through these phases. As a result of decision tree analysis for predicting causes of “they no longer defined themselves as victims” in an attempt to organize life recovery processes, the same structure of life recovery processes was found as for the three-layer recovery model of the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake. In short, physical and economic recovery such as of houses and regions was achieved based on the reconstruction of infrastructures, followed by the achievement of life recovery. It is predicted and proposed that life recovery in areas affected by the Great East Japan earthquake took the course of infrastructure reconstruction at first, then achieved physical recovery in local areas by supporting house recovery on a parallel with economic support. To achieve them, a long-term plan from a perspective of at least 10 years is required, as was the case of the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake.

The Influence of Residents’ Resilience on the Recovery in the Torrential Rain in Western Japan in 2018

“…Victims’ behavioral patterns appear to change over four logarithmic time phases divided by three time criteria: 10 hours (the day of the disaster), 10 2 hours (2−4 days after the disaster), and 10 3 hours (two months after the disaster). The “recovery calendar” terms the four victim recovery phases as the “initial phase—disorientation (up to 10 hours),” the “second phase—acceptance of a new reality (up to 10 2 hours),” the “third phase—disaster utopia (up to 10 3 hours),” and the “final phase—reentry to everyday life (over 10 3 hours).” Recent studies of recovery calendar added a new phase, “creative recovery” (Kimura, Tamura et al., 2015; Kimura et al., 2014). The “creative recovery” phase is a long‐term process of recovery from one to 10 years after a disaster.…”

“…The recovery calendar focuses on the timeline of life recovery based on the important milestones that characterize victims’ behavior change after a disaster. The originate work was done after the 1995 Great Hanshin–Awaji Earthquake and following the 2004 Mid‐Niigata Prefecture Earthquake (Kimura, 2007), the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake (Kimura et al., 2014), the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake (Kimura, Ohtomo, & Hirata, 2017), and the 2011 Kii peninsula flood disaster (Kimura & Ohtomo, 2013). These studies all demonstrated the validity of the recovery calendar for tracking the victims’ life‐recovery process.…”

“…Previous studies (Kimura & Ohtomo, 2013; Kimura et al., 2014) indicated that the life‐recovery process is realized in the following order, although the periods vary depending on the scale of the damage or type of disaster. First, victims understood the extent of damage about one week after the disaster.…”

“…From a broader viewpoint (e.g., Amir & Kant, 2018; Linkov et al., 2018), resilience can be considered as the transformability of a living environmental system involved in a victims’ recovery from a disaster. In the aftermath of a devastating disaster such as the Great Hanshin–Awaji Earthquake (Kimura, 2007) and the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake (Kimura et al., 2014), victims’ psychological recovery from calamity is an important issue in managing the consequences such disruptive events. Previous studies on devastating disasters, such as these earthquakes, have argued that life recovery is not equivalent to returning to a predisaster state but is better characterized as a transformation to a new postdisaster state.…”

A Study on the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake: Citizen’s Evaluation of Earthquake Information and Their Evacuation and Sheltering Behaviors

“…In this study, we have obtained data from the "Questionnaires on Aftershock Information and Evacuation and Sheltering Behaviors in the Kumamoto Earthquake" that was conducted by the Earthquake and Disaster-Reduction Research Division in the Research and Development Bureau of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) from November to December 2016. As expert commission members of the Headquarters of Earthquake Research Promotion in MEXT, we have designed, prepared, and analyzed the questionnaire surveys on the basis of the previous large-scale random sample questionnaire surveys conducted in the event of past earthquake disasters (Kimura, 2007;Kimura et al, , 2014Kimura et al, , 2015 [5][6][7][8].…”