Many Still Under Mud

Numbers of victims are still changing day after day. In the morning of Saturday, three days after the landslide northern district of Hiroshima city occurred, death toll rose up to forty-one and forty-seven are still missing. Size of disaster was too big for local and national government to deal with. Although Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cut his summer recess in short and back to his job in Tokyo, disaster management did not look improved. His schedule to visit suffered area has not fixed yet, casting question on his seriousness.

Hiroshima Prefectural Police, with helps from other region, dispatched 1,700 personnel to search missing people under huge accumulation of mud. Hiroshima City Fire Department sent 1,000 for rescuing effort. 500 troops of Ground Self-defense Force also arrived. In spite of their joint efforts, possibility of additional disaster caused by consecutive rain has been disturbing the operation.

While rescue team were searching for tens of missing people, the national government focused on reviewing laws for determining warning zone or helping other people who lost their houses, instead of enhancing rescue team. It was revealed that those suffered area was not included in landslide warning zone set by national government. Even if a local government realized the places to be vulnerable for landslide, it does not necessarily be the warning zone. Residents sometimes oppose being included in the zone, because it may devalue their land property.

So, the national government is thinking about how to change the law for more discretional determination of warning zone. It is not about helping missing people, but about expansion of bureaucratic power over local government or people. This is Japanese bureaucracy that is always enthusiastic for ruling people, even in the time when people are dying under heavy mud.

Japan is poor in livable land. That fact causes ridiculously high price of land in urban area. Young families with not so much high income tend to live newly developed land. In Hiroshima city, those new towns were located in foot of the hills, where risk of landslide was high. The encroachment of the land was so fast that governmental regulation could not catch up with.

The fact that the national government could not help people underground must be remembered as a failure of land development policy. The effort was so insufficient that the government was so much involved in reviewing laws, putting emergency management aside. Anyway, wasn’t the priority of Abe administration protecting people’s lives?