A landscape photo of Tosashimizu city in Kochi Prefecture in Japan’s southern island of Shikoku. Jiji Press / AFP
A landscape photo of Tosashimizu city in Kochi Prefecture in Japan’s southern island of Shikoku. Jiji Press / AFP
A landscape photo of Tosashimizu city in Kochi Prefecture in Japan’s southern island of Shikoku. Jiji Press / AFP
A landscape photo of Tosashimizu city in Kochi Prefecture in Japan’s southern island of Shikoku. Jiji Press / AFP

Japan disaster spawns an industry


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KOCHI PREFECTURE, JAPAN // In 2011 a magnitude 9 earthquake caused a huge tsunami that slammed into Japan’s Honshu Island, devastating the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and killing tens of thousands of people.

The costs related to the atomic meltdown alone are staggering – and rising.

Japan’s government last month nearly doubled its projections for costs related to the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe to ¥21.5 trillion (Dh690.52bn), increasing pressure on the plant’s operator Tokyo Electric Power Company, know as Tepco, to step up reform and improve its performance.

The new projection, part of a recommendation from a government panel considering the future of Tepco and Fukushima, also calls for ¥7.9tn in reparations, up from ¥5.4tn, and ¥5.6tn for the treatment and storage of contaminated soil, up from ¥3.6tn.

“For now, we don’t expect the costs to increase further, but new developments and unforeseen factors mean there is a chance they could go higher,” economy, trade and industry minister Hiroshige Seko said.

The tsunami is believed to have been the most expensive natural disaster in Japan's history, so far costing an estimated US$300 billion, according to International Business Times. The eventual death toll was over 15,800, with another 2,500 missing. Further to this, 45,700 buildings and 230,000 vehicles were destroyed.

One region of Japan has taken steps to mitigate the cost, both human and structural, of a future tidal wave.

Kochi Prefecture has striven to prevent damage to houses and buildings in case of an earthquake and tsunami, and make sure people in potential disaster areas can not only find shelter but also have food and basic equipment while awaiting aid.

Kochi Prefecture, with a capital of the same name, is located on the south coast of Shikoku, the smallest and least populous of the four main islands of Japan.

In the western part of Japan, the plate boundary is marked by an underwater trench called the Nankai Trough, passing just south of Shikoku island. A large earthquake has struck the Nankai Trough every 100 to 150 years.

In August 2012, the Japanese government, based on the experience of the Tohoku earthquake, as the Fukushima quake itself is known, estimated a worst case scenario of 320,000 dead throughout Japan and ¥220tn in damages from a major Nankai Trough earthquake.

In a bid to reduce that figure, the Kochi prefectural government has encouraged earthquake-resistant improvements to homes, and as of the end of March 2016, 77 per cent of homes had been made earthquake resistant.

Among other measures, the government has built tsunami evacuation towers. These are steel and reinforced concrete buildings, built in areas where there is no high ground or tall buildings, for people to escape to in an emergency.

The prefecture began building them in 2013, and has completed 90 of the 115 it plans to construct, says the Nankoku City crisis management department chief Manabu Nomura. A total of 14 towers have been built in Nankoku, a city in the east-central part of the prefecture, financed 50-50 by the city authorities and the prefecture, at an average of ¥100 million per tower, Mr Nomura says.

The towers, which are fitted out with provisions and basic survival equipment, do not have doors and are open to residents, who can enter at any time.

The food and equipment such as torches and cooking facilities, are locked in specially-designed storage rooms that automatically open in the event of an earthquake of magnitude 5 or more.

So residents can get well acquainted with them, the towers are used for local festivals and firework displays. Evacuation drills focused on the towers are also regularly carried out by locals, Mr Nomura says.

The biggest towers’ top two storeys can hold up to 565 people each, and 115 in the smallest tower’s top two storeys. Each is no more than about five minutes on foot for people within a 300 metre radius from the tower, Mr Nomura says. The Ominatosho-Minami Tower, for example, is built right beside an elementary school and a nursery school.

“It would take 37 minutes for a tsunami to get to this tower,” Mr Nomura says.

Because of the destructive power of a tsunami, the piles supporting the towers have been dug deep into the earth, at 39 metres for the deepest towers, and 14.5 metres in the case of the Ominatosho-Minami Tower, Mr Nomura says. “[Capacity to dig deep] depends on the hardness of the ground,” he says.

Similar but more basic escape towers have been built elsewhere in Japan, including in Hamamatsu city, Shizuoka Prefecture.

In addition to the Kochi towers, small shelters in which four adults and two children can remain comfortably while waiting for rescue or for the waters to recede have also been placed at strategic points across the prefecture, and evacuation routes to towers and sites in the mountains have been laid out.

“With all these measures, we have been able to decrease the number of expected deaths in the prefecture resulting from an earthquake and tsunami from 42,000 to 14,000,” says the Kochi governor Masanao Ozaki.

Besides the risks of earthquakes and tsunami, Kochi Prefecture has the second-highest number of typhoons that make landfall in Japan. With an annual rainfall 1.6 times the national average, Kochi Prefecture has experienced many large-scale wind and water disasters. “You may think that these risks are weaknesses, but you can turn them into strengths,” Mr Ozaki says.

Many companies in the prefecture manufacture products designed for disaster prevention, and the Kochi prefectural government has been promoting them not only within the country but also abroad.

In order to support both outside sales and local production and consumption of “Made in Kochi Prefecture” disaster prevention products and technology, the prefectural government has established a system to certify products that pass quality and safety tests as “Disaster Prevention Related Products of Kochi Prefecture”, with 116 products currently registered.

Among these are canned fish made by Kuroshio Cannery in Kuroshio City, and a water steriliser manufactured by Kowatec Corporation in Nankoku.

Mr Ozawa has accompanied teams promoting his prefecture’s disaster prevention products to other disaster-prone countries, going to Indonesia in November 2015, the Philippines last September and Taiwan the following month.

The Kochi government’s ultimate goal is to bring the worst-case scenario of deaths from the Nankai Trough earthquake down to 1,800, Mr Ozawa says. Emphasising that the prefecture now spends an annual ¥440bn on disaster prevention, 10 per cent of its budget, compared with less than ¥220bn before the 2011 earthquake, he says the challenge now is to build more earthquake-proof housing.

“We have a subsidy system for that,” Mr Ozawa says.

There are three goals for disaster management: protecting lives; protecting property; and ensuring continuation of daily and commercial activities, says Norio Maki, a professor at Kyoto University and a member of the university’s Disaster Prevention Research Institute.

Kochi Prefecture should now work on effecting measures to assure continuation of daily and commercial life following a devastating earthquake and tsunami, Mr Maki says. “That means that it should work on preparing recovery from disaster,” he says.

One of the prefecture’s strong points is that it has experience with disasters. Another is that it has worked hard to turn its disaster protection products into businesses, Mr Maki says. “They promote those products in Japan and other Asian countries,” he says.

For his part, Makoto Okamura, who teaches seismic geology at Kochi University’s faculty of science, lauds the prefecture for constructing the evacuation towers, which he considers the most important feature of all the anti-disaster measures.

A member of his university’s Center for Disaster Prevention Promotion, Mr Okamura also thinks the prefecture achieved good results in promoting tsunami and earthquake awareness in schools. However, such education for adults is absent, so their knowledge is very limited, he says.

“The prefecture should support disaster education in the workplace,” Mr Okumura says.

business@thenational.ae

Key facilities
  • Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
  • Premier League-standard football pitch
  • 400m Olympic running track
  • NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
  • 600-seat auditorium
  • Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
  • An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
  • Specialist robotics and science laboratories
  • AR and VR-enabled learning centres
  • Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
WHAT IS GRAPHENE?

It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were experimenting with sticky tape and graphite, the material used as lead in pencils.

Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But when they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.

By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.

In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. 

Labour dispute

The insured employee may still file an ILOE claim even if a labour dispute is ongoing post termination, but the insurer may suspend or reject payment, until the courts resolve the dispute, especially if the reason for termination is contested. The outcome of the labour court proceedings can directly affect eligibility.


- Abdullah Ishnaneh, Partner, BSA Law 

UAE rugby in numbers

5 - Year sponsorship deal between Hesco and Jebel Ali Dragons

700 - Dubai Hurricanes had more than 700 playing members last season between their mini and youth, men's and women's teams

Dh600,000 - Dubai Exiles' budget for pitch and court hire next season, for their rugby, netball and cricket teams

Dh1.8m - Dubai Hurricanes' overall budget for next season

Dh2.8m - Dubai Exiles’ overall budget for next season

Your rights as an employee

The government has taken an increasingly tough line against companies that fail to pay employees on time. Three years ago, the Cabinet passed a decree allowing the government to halt the granting of work permits to companies with wage backlogs.

The new measures passed by the Cabinet in 2016 were an update to the Wage Protection System, which is in place to track whether a company pays its employees on time or not.

If wages are 10 days late, the new measures kick in and the company is alerted it is in breach of labour rules. If wages remain unpaid for a total of 16 days, the authorities can cancel work permits, effectively shutting off operations. Fines of up to Dh5,000 per unpaid employee follow after 60 days.

Despite those measures, late payments remain an issue, particularly in the construction sector. Smaller contractors, such as electrical, plumbing and fit-out businesses, often blame the bigger companies that hire them for wages being late.

The authorities have urged employees to report their companies at the labour ministry or Tawafuq service centres — there are 15 in Abu Dhabi.

Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
  • Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
  • Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
ORDER OF PLAY ON SHOW COURTS

Centre Court - 4pm (UAE)
Gael Monfils (15) v Kyle Edmund
Karolina Pliskova (3) v Magdalena Rybarikova
Dusan Lajovic v Roger Federer (3)

Court 1 - 4pm
Adam Pavlasek v Novak Djokovic (2)
Dominic Thiem (8) v Gilles Simon
Angelique Kerber (1) v Kirsten Flipkens

Court 2 - 2.30pm
Grigor Dimitrov (13) v Marcos Baghdatis
Agnieszka Radwanska (9) v Christina McHale
Milos Raonic (6) v Mikhail Youzhny
Tsvetana Pironkova v Caroline Wozniacki (5)

TOP%2010%20MOST%20POLLUTED%20CITIES
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MATCH INFO

Uefa Champions League final:

Who: Real Madrid v Liverpool
Where: NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium, Kiev, Ukraine
When: Saturday, May 26, 10.45pm (UAE)
TV: Match on BeIN Sports

Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
  • Priority access to new homes from participating developers
  • Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
  • Flexible payment plans from developers
  • Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
  • DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

Jigra
Director: Vasan Bala
Starring: Alia Bhatt, Vedang Raina, Manoj Pahwa, Harsh Singh
Rated: 3.5/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Specs

Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric

Range: Up to 610km

Power: 905hp

Torque: 985Nm

Price: From Dh439,000

Available: Now

States of Passion by Nihad Sirees,
Pushkin Press

The%20specs
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The five pillars of Islam

1. Fasting 

2. Prayer 

3. Hajj 

4. Shahada 

5. Zakat 

ELIO

Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett

Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina

Rating: 4/5

THE DETAILS

Kaala

Dir: Pa. Ranjith

Starring: Rajinikanth, Huma Qureshi, Easwari Rao, Nana Patekar  

Rating: 1.5/5 

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The specs

Engine: Dual 180kW and 300kW front and rear motors

Power: 480kW

Torque: 850Nm

Transmission: Single-speed automatic

Price: From Dh359,900 ($98,000)

On sale: Now

THE BIO

Favourite author - Paulo Coelho 

Favourite holiday destination - Cuba 

New York Times or Jordan Times? NYT is a school and JT was my practice field

Role model - My Grandfather 

Dream interviewee - Che Guevara

Need to know

The flights: Flydubai flies from Dubai to Kilimanjaro airport via Dar es Salaam from Dh1,619 return including taxes. The trip takes 8 hours. 

The trek: Make sure that whatever tour company you select to climb Kilimanjaro, that it is a reputable one. The way to climb successfully would be with experienced guides and porters, from a company committed to quality, safety and an ethical approach to the mountain and its staff. Sonia Nazareth booked a VIP package through Safari Africa. The tour works out to $4,775 (Dh17,538) per person, based on a 4-person booking scheme, for 9 nights on the mountain (including one night before and after the trek at Arusha). The price includes all meals, a head guide, an assistant guide for every 2 trekkers, porters to carry the luggage, a cook and kitchen staff, a dining and mess tent, a sleeping tent set up for 2 persons, a chemical toilet and park entrance fees. The tiny ration of heated water provided for our bath in our makeshift private bathroom stall was the greatest luxury. A standard package, also based on a 4-person booking, works out to $3,050 (Dh11,202) per person.

When to go: You can climb Kili at any time of year, but the best months to ascend  are  January-February and September-October.  Also good are July and August, if you’re tolerant of the colder weather that winter brings.

Do not underestimate the importance of kit. Even if you’re travelling at a relatively pleasant time, be geared up for the cold and the rain.

THE CLOWN OF GAZA

Director: Abdulrahman Sabbah 

Starring: Alaa Meqdad

Rating: 4/5

If you go

The flights

Etihad flies direct from Abu Dhabi to San Francisco from Dh5,760 return including taxes. 

The car

Etihad Guest members get a 10 per cent worldwide discount when booking with Hertz, as well as earning miles on their rentals. A week's car hire costs from Dh1,500 including taxes.

The hotels

Along the route, Motel 6 (www.motel6.com) offers good value and comfort, with rooms from $55 (Dh202) per night including taxes. In Portland, the Jupiter Hotel (https://jupiterhotel.com/) has rooms from $165 (Dh606) per night including taxes. The Society Hotel https://thesocietyhotel.com/ has rooms from $130 (Dh478) per night including taxes. 

More info

To keep up with constant developments in Portland, visit www.travelportland.com. Good guidebooks include the Lonely Planet guides to Northern California and Washington, Oregon & the Pacific Northwest. 

 

Specs

Engine: 51.5kW electric motor

Range: 400km

Power: 134bhp

Torque: 175Nm

Price: From Dh98,800

Available: Now

Quick facts on cancer
  • Cancer is the second-leading cause of death worldwide, after cardiovascular diseases 
  •  About one in five men and one in six women will develop cancer in their lifetime 
  • By 2040, global cancer cases are on track to reach 30 million 
  • 70 per cent of cancer deaths occur in low and middle-income countries 
  • This rate is expected to increase to 75 per cent by 2030 
  • At least one third of common cancers are preventable 
  • Genetic mutations play a role in 5 per cent to 10 per cent of cancers 
  • Up to 3.7 million lives could be saved annually by implementing the right health
    strategies 
  • The total annual economic cost of cancer is $1.16 trillion

   

While you're here
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The specs
  • Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
  • Power: 640hp
  • Torque: 760nm
  • On sale: 2026
  • Price: Not announced yet