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Analysis of the Actions and Motivations of a Community during the 2017 Torrential Rains in Northern Kyushu, Japan

Damage caused by weather events has increased dramatically across the world in recent years. In the case of Japan, record-breaking rainfall has caused devastating damage almost every year since 2014; many people have been killed in these disasters. To better prepare for future heavy rainfalls, we ne...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Nonomura, Atsuko, Fujisawa, Kazuhito, Takahashi, Mari, Matsumoto, Hideo, Hasegawa, Shuichi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7177669/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32252389
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17072424
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author Nonomura, Atsuko
Fujisawa, Kazuhito
Takahashi, Mari
Matsumoto, Hideo
Hasegawa, Shuichi
author_facet Nonomura, Atsuko
Fujisawa, Kazuhito
Takahashi, Mari
Matsumoto, Hideo
Hasegawa, Shuichi
author_sort Nonomura, Atsuko
collection PubMed
description Damage caused by weather events has increased dramatically across the world in recent years. In the case of Japan, record-breaking rainfall has caused devastating damage almost every year since 2014; many people have been killed in these disasters. To better prepare for future heavy rainfalls, we need to discover how to prepare for disasters and mitigate damage by learning from examples in resilient communities. In 2017, torrential rains hit Toho Village in northern Kyushu, and the people as a whole responded well to avoid disastrous outcomes. We studied the actions and motivations of residents of Toho during this rainfall event by conducting semi-structured interviews in November 2017. The interviewees indicated that their motivation for evacuating was “personal observation of the danger” or “communication with neighbors”. Communication within the community was found to be an important factor that enabled the safe evacuation of community members, even without notice of the disaster risk and/or in the absence of timely information from the government because of a power outage. Knowledge of local landforms would be also helpful to reinforce appropriate actions and precautions needed during a disaster.
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spelling pubmed-71776692020-04-28 Analysis of the Actions and Motivations of a Community during the 2017 Torrential Rains in Northern Kyushu, Japan Nonomura, Atsuko Fujisawa, Kazuhito Takahashi, Mari Matsumoto, Hideo Hasegawa, Shuichi Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Damage caused by weather events has increased dramatically across the world in recent years. In the case of Japan, record-breaking rainfall has caused devastating damage almost every year since 2014; many people have been killed in these disasters. To better prepare for future heavy rainfalls, we need to discover how to prepare for disasters and mitigate damage by learning from examples in resilient communities. In 2017, torrential rains hit Toho Village in northern Kyushu, and the people as a whole responded well to avoid disastrous outcomes. We studied the actions and motivations of residents of Toho during this rainfall event by conducting semi-structured interviews in November 2017. The interviewees indicated that their motivation for evacuating was “personal observation of the danger” or “communication with neighbors”. Communication within the community was found to be an important factor that enabled the safe evacuation of community members, even without notice of the disaster risk and/or in the absence of timely information from the government because of a power outage. Knowledge of local landforms would be also helpful to reinforce appropriate actions and precautions needed during a disaster. MDPI 2020-04-02 2020-04 /pmc/articles/PMC7177669/ /pubmed/32252389 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17072424 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Nonomura, Atsuko
Fujisawa, Kazuhito
Takahashi, Mari
Matsumoto, Hideo
Hasegawa, Shuichi
Analysis of the Actions and Motivations of a Community during the 2017 Torrential Rains in Northern Kyushu, Japan
title Analysis of the Actions and Motivations of a Community during the 2017 Torrential Rains in Northern Kyushu, Japan
title_full Analysis of the Actions and Motivations of a Community during the 2017 Torrential Rains in Northern Kyushu, Japan
title_fullStr Analysis of the Actions and Motivations of a Community during the 2017 Torrential Rains in Northern Kyushu, Japan
title_full_unstemmed Analysis of the Actions and Motivations of a Community during the 2017 Torrential Rains in Northern Kyushu, Japan
title_short Analysis of the Actions and Motivations of a Community during the 2017 Torrential Rains in Northern Kyushu, Japan
title_sort analysis of the actions and motivations of a community during the 2017 torrential rains in northern kyushu, japan
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7177669/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32252389
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17072424
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