Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Communities are also facing disintegration. Over time, some residents are moving
out of temporary housing settlements to rent or buy their own permanent housing.
Other residents have left their former hometowns to live in temporary housing in other
areas. Opportunities for former community residents to meet and discuss the
future - of their town and also their own recovery choices - are increasingly rare.
This scattering of residents will have long term impacts on the future of many towns,
as well as residents' decisions to return and their ability to have a voice in future
town planning.
The issue of community disintegration is also becoming very serious in
Fukushima Prefecture. Whether they were ordered to evacuate from certain areas,
or self-evacuated from other areas, many Fukushima residents who fl ed radiation
contamination are likely to face a much longer displacement than those other disas-
ter survivors whose homes were destroyed by the earthquake or tsunami. Currently,
contaminated areas are separated into three zones based on their level of radiation
and likely ability to be reoccupied at some point. They are: (1) Areas where evacu-
ation orders are ready to be lifted; (2) Areas in which the residents are not permitted
to live; and (3) Areas where it is expected that residents will have diffi culties in
returning for a long time (METI
2013
). Even in the areas where the radiation
measurements may be low enough to be offi cially designated as “safe” and the
government eventually lifts the evacuation order, residents and especially families
with young children may not chose to return. This creates an untenable future for
these towns, and presents some diffi cult long-term challenges - both for those residents
who chose to return and those who do not - in sustaining connections between
residents, and also integrating residents into the new communities that are hosting
long- term evacuees.
3.4
Discussion and Conclusion
The Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami damaged a vast area and caused a
complex series of disasters that continue to have cascading effects even today, more
than 3 years later. Planning and implementing recovery and rebuilding of the
impacted region has involved a massive amount of resources and sustained coordi-
nation and intervention. A multitude of recovery programs and related relocation
projects are happening simultaneously and require multi-institutional collaboration
and management by an array of institutions and agencies. Residents must also reach
consensus on the proposed recovery plans and projects in order to help ensure their
implementation. Thus, there are many stakeholders in the Tohoku region's recovery
with a wide variety of recovery interests continually facing new challenges to build
and sustain consensus on key decisions and implementation processes.
Several key insights have emerged from this review of the recovery and rebuilding
activities following the GEJE. First, it takes a long time to develop the overall
recovery concepts and build the necessary consensus and support to transform these
concepts into actionable programs and projects, especially when the scale and
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