Disaster drill held at Tokyo’s Kabukiza Theatre, tabbed as hub for those unable to get home

TOKYO — It’s feared that when a major natural disaster strikes the Tokyo area, a large number of people, including foreign visitors, will become stranded, unable to return to their homes and lodgings due to transportation stoppages. To prepare for this, a training exercise was held recently at the Kabukiza Theatre in the capital.

Major logistics firms and others participated in the Aug. 28 event at the theater in Tokyo’s Chuo Ward, the heart of a sightseeing and business center that includes the Ginza, Nihonbashi and Tsukiji districts, where it is considered certain that people would be stranded in a disaster. The facility will become a temporary shelter in such an event, with enough meals and blankets for 3,000 people.

Foreigners, business workers and Kabukiza staffers were among the participants in the exercises, which were conducted in both Japanese and English and included registering people to stay at the theater and bringing in relief supplies.

Kabukiza executive manager Haruhisa Yokoyama said, “I felt that we need to regularly show foreign language support. I’d like to establish a system that can support foreign travelers,” and mentioned that translation devices able to handle over 80 languages will be supplied throughout the facility.

Amazon Japan G.K. was also there to participate in training for transporting and receiving relief supplies. The company has storage facilities for aid in Hyogo and Kanagawa prefectures, and after the Noto Peninsula earthquake this January, around 100,000 items were distributed.

During the event, supplies for 3,000 people including makeshift toilets and sterilization sheets to be distributed to those who have difficulty returning home were brought to the Kabukiza Theatre. Chuo Ward government disaster prevention and crisis management division head Masahiro Suganuma said, “Logistics is important in times of disaster. We were able to train using know-how that the ward government does not have.”

With the increased number of foreign visitors to Japan, the national government in July revised a portion of the guidelines on measures for those facing difficulty returning home in the event of a major earthquake. It was the first update for the guidelines, initially drafted in 2015, which were based on the fact that an estimated 5.15 million people in the Tokyo area had difficulty returning home in the wake of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.

The revisions added new measures to prevent crowding at stations and other locations reopening to passengers. As it takes three days to restore rail services and other infrastructure if a magnitude 7 or greater earthquake strikes during the daytime, returning home is set as a rule to occur on the fourth day or later. Under the new guidelines, to prevent crowding, people are asked to return home at different times and advised to carry a power bank and food with them on a regular basis.

An earthquake directly below the capital area is expected to cause around 6.5 million people to become stranded, presenting numerous challenges.

Under Tokyo Metropolitan Government ordinances, businesses are obligated to make efforts to store three days’ worth of food and water for each employee. However, a June survey of roughly 1,100 member firms of the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry showed that only around half were actually doing so.

Suganuma pointed out that, “In the city center, buildings are densely packed and stockpiles are limited,” adding, “In addition to publicizing safe places to stay, we’d like to expand the network of companies that are connected to and help each other, as we have on this occasion.”

(Japanese original by Shiho Fujibuchi, Business News Department)