Category Archives: Japan

Recovery — a realistic account of what’s entailed

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Tsunami wall at Tsu-shi, Japan

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Debris, challenges pile up in Japan 1 month later. AP, April 11. This is a candid, gritty account of what recovery tasks are ahead for the Japanese.

A month after Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, the challenges seem as daunting as ever: Thousands are missing and feared dead, tens of thousands have fled their homes, a leaking nuclear plant remains crippled and powerful aftershocks keep coming. Vast tracts of the northeast are demolition sites: The stuff of entire cities is sorted into piles taller than three-story buildings around which dump trucks and earth-movers crawl. Ankle-deep water stagnates in streets, and massive fishing boats lie perched atop pancaked houses and cars. The occasional telephone poll or bulldozer is sometimes the only skyline.

“It’s a hellish sorrow,” said Numata Takahashi, 56, who escaped his home in Natori just before the waters came. “I don’t know where we’ll go, but I’m not coming back here. … We’ll go somewhere where there are no tsunamis.”

Two strong aftershocks have killed people and sunk thousands more households into darkness, while also delaying progress on restoring power to those in darkness since March 11. Facing the prospect of massive shortfalls in the hot summer months, the government is asking companies to cut their consumption drastically or face mandatory energy caps. Over this destruction and deprivation, the fear of radiation hangs. The tsunami knocked out power at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant and reactors have been overheating since.

Progress in stabilizing the complex comes slowly most days, or not at all, as the new tremors and radiation repeatedly halt work. Monday’s aftershock briefly cut electricity to the plant and halted work while technicians took cover, but did not endanger operations, according to officials.

All the more reason for doing some recovery planning pre-event; and of course more recovery planning afterwards, when the specifics of the destruction are known.

The High Personal Cost of Disaster

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Fateful Choice on a Day of Disaster; When the Tsunami Struck, a Mayor Had to Decide Between His City and Family; WSJ, April 9, 2011.  Mayor Futoshi Toba of Rikuzentakata, Japan, lost his wife and his house in the Japan tsunami, but stayed on his job at city hall.  This article highlights the conflict between personal and professional demands.

More than 2,300 people—a tenth of the population here—were dead or missing.

A month later, Mr. Toba finds himself in a role of bewildering complexity and responsibility, as Japan struggles to recover from the worst natural disaster of its modern history and its leaders debate how—and even whether—to rebuild a part of the country that was already in steep decline. The decisions Mr. Toba and other local politicians make now may well determine whether the hard-hit areas on the northeast coast survive and thrive, or never recover.Mayor Futoshi Toba’s house in Rikuzentakata was destroyed in the tsunami.

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Disaster Preparedness Deficiencies in Japan

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Two other bloggers have captured some useful information about the deficiencies now coming to the fore about the Japanese disasters, so I will point you to their articles:

(1) Eric Holderman, Disaster-zone.com, cited this article: in Scientific American: Japan Faces Up to Failure of Its Earthquake Preparations;Systems for forecasting, early warning and tsunami protection all fell short on 11 March. Posted on March 29.

(2) This is an excerpted version of a posting on the Homeland Security Watch blog (hlswatch.com) on April 1., by Arnold Bogis. I removed the baseball analogies in order to save space.

Some obvious lessons for homeland security planning in general.  Yet, just as in baseball, this balance between best and worst case scenario planning can be difficult in even the best prepared of countries–or simply ignored.

Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s disaster plans greatly underestimated the scope of a potential accident at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, calling for only one stretcher, one        satellite phone and 50 protective suits in case of emergencies.

Hard to believe, but it seems that in a nation often lauded as among the best, if not the best, in terms of preparation for a natural disaster simply dropped the ball regarding catastrophic planning for nuclear facilities. More from the Wall Street Journalarticle describing the lack of proper planning:

Disaster-response documents for Fukushima Daiichi, examined by The Wall Street Journal, also contain few guidelines for obtaining outside help, providing insight into why Japan struggled to cope with a nuclear crisis after an earthquake and tsunami devastated the facility. There are no references to Tokyo firefighters, Japanese military forces or U.S. equipment.

The main disaster-readiness manual, updated annually, envisions the fax machine as a principal means of communication with the outside world and includes detailed forms for Tepco managers when faxing government officials. Much hinged on the fax machine. One section directs managers to notify the industry minister, the local governor and mayors of nearby towns of any problems “all at once, within 15 minutes, by facsimile.” In certain cases, the managers were advised to follow up by phone to make sure the fax had arrived.

Obviously one could take up several blog posts to simply unpack these and other related revelations. Undoubtedly, other Japanese efforts at disaster readiness saved thousands, if not tens of thousands, of lives following the earthquake and tsunami.  I have serious doubts about the current ability of the United States to manage a similar size catastrophe–both the immediate impact and long term consequences.  And I agree … that the nuclear crisis is needlessly overshadowing the larger natural disaster.

Yet it still boggles the mind that a society so prepared could allow such a substandard state of planning to exist.  The current disaster would not have been avoided if much of the response plan had been improved–only moving the back-up generators to higher ground would have saved the plant from the loss of power that initially drove events.  However, this disaster did underline the deficiencies in planning and hints at the difficulties that it caused in responding to this maximum of maximums event.

What the managers of the Fukushima plant failed to do was honestly consider even a bad, never mind worst, case scenario. * * *   Perhaps planning for an earthquake and resulting tsunami stronger than the reliable historical record indicates would not have been feasible before current events.  But the existence of a decent Plan B may have helped ameliorate the consequences of this Godzilla-esq black swan that fell on the people of Japan.

I suggest readers to the hlswatch.com website to see the comments and discussion today.

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Sendai, Japan Disaster – updates on economic and financial aspects

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Japan Earthquakes 3-13-2011 11-29-13 AM

Image by Kevin Krejci via Flickr

Right now the dominant news coverage deals with the nuclear and radiation issues that are hindering the response.  Regarding the recovery phase, most of the news reported comes from financial experts. I have not seen any significant interviews or articles that provide insights or analysis from major historic earthquakes and successful recovery from them.  Many dimensions of recovery are not being considered, other than financial. And few media types seem to understand of the complexity or actual duration of the recovery process.  See the “Worth Reading” page on this blog, which is my attempt to highlight some useful documents for consideration.

Discussion of the likely sources of recovery funds, from the NYTimes today. Japan’s Government Likely to Bear Much of the Loss

Apart from an expected $35 billion in insurance claims from last week’s earthquake, the financial losses in Japan will probably fall most heavily on the Japanese government once it tallies the damage from the tsunami and the nuclear disaster.

The extent of insurance coverage is not as great as in the Tokyo area; nor is it as high a ratio as is true in New Zealand.  But the coverage is far greater than that in the U.S.

March 14: The Diva did a brief TV interview on CNBC this morning, where they were interested in the effects on the business and financial communities, as might be expected. (The video clip is now available.) Presently, I am thinking about the upcoming federal National Level Exercise regarding a New Madrid earthquake, planned for May.  To date most of our thinking in the U.S. about recovery has not been broad gauge enough; we should be thinking in terms of events of the size and destructive possibilities of the Tangshan, China (1978), Christchurch, N.Z. (2011), and the current Sendai, Japan events. I plan to provide more details about the first-mentioned in subsequent posts.

March 13:  Disaster recovery has many essential ingredients, two of which are business and financial recovery.  Here is my take on some key business and economic issues/concerns that I have gleaned from secondary sources on the catastrophic events in Japan:

  1. The earthquake, tsunamis, and other cascading events (damage to nuclear power plants) combined resulted in a catastrophic disaster, which probably will be the costliest one Japan has ever experienced. This sequence of major events is unprecedented and quite scary.  Altogether, the compound of events poses the greatest challenge Japan has faced since WWII
  2. The recovery period will begin soon, although completing the damage assessment and cost estimates will take more time than usual.  The recovery process is likely to divert resources away from manufacturing. It no doubt will entail making some major decisions about the future of the country. Plus, it will take decades to accomplish.
  3. Insurance and reinsurance. Earthquake and fire insurance coverage is common for residential and commercial structures, although fewer policies are in place in Sendai than is true in the Tokyo region, which is (was) considered the highest risk. The major reinsurers (Lloyds of London, Munich Re, Swiss Re) expect to make payouts in Japan.  These same companies also provide insurance in New Zealand.
  4. For American business owners and consumers, interruptions in supply chains might occur; e.g., computer parts, chips, cars etc. Sendai is not an industrial hub, like Kobe. But ground transportation and communications have been disrupted in many areas of the main island.
  5. Possible relocation of residents and structures in Sendai and around the failed nuclear power plants.  Similar to the decisions made about downtown Christchurch, N.Z. Already consideration is being given to not rebuilding in place many of the past structures and systems in the most vulnerable seismic areas. Decisions about the power plants remain to be made.

Reuters news service has done an interesting special report, on March 13, titled Japan Quake Unlikely to Shock Economy. The analysis is thoughtful, citing quite a few economists who have studied the economics of disaster recovery. Yet, despite the optimistic sounding title, the article lays out some serious negative considerations re the Japanese economy with respect to the essential requirements for an effective and efficient recovery.

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