Communication in time of disaster: Lessons from the Noto Peninsula Earthquake
Over eight months have passed since the massive earthquake that rocked the Noto Peninsula on Jan. 1, 2024. Professor Naoya Sekiya, director of the Center for Integrated Disaster Research in the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, explains what kind of communication is critical both when disaster strikes and once recovery efforts are underway.
Professor Naoya Sekiya (second from left) leads a research group in the Noto Peninsula region of Ishikawa Prefecture in February 2024 to carry out on-site, post-disaster surveys following the massive earthquake that struck the area on Jan. 1.
Listening to the voices of evacuees
── You conducted interviews at evacuation centers after the Noto Peninsula Earthquake. What did you learn from them?
As a joint research project with public broadcaster NHK’s Kanazawa Broadcasting Station, members of our research group joined their interview team to visit areas affected by the disaster and spoke with victims. In February and March, we conducted a three-month post-disaster survey and interviewed 258 people at primary and secondary evacuation centers1, and in June, we conducted a six-month post-disaster survey of 270 people staying in temporary housing2. We were looking to find out what specific actions they took at the time of the disaster, how they feel about those actions now and what difficulties they are currently facing.
According to the latter survey conducted among evacuees living in temporary housing, “securing housing” was ranked the most important item for recovery (at 83.3%) six months out from the disaster. That said, 72.2% of respondents were concerned about “the occurrence of another earthquake and/or tsunami,” and the number of those who stated that they felt “fear about the occurrence of another large earthquake” was an even higher 77.0%, indicating that anxiety about another disaster remained very strong. In many past disasters, a sense of anxiety about the next earthquake or tsunami often emerges after a certain amount of time has passed and recovery efforts are winding down. However, in the Noto Peninsula, earthquakes have been occurring frequently from around December 2020, with strong tremors striking in close succession. Before the disaster on Jan. 1 this year, the region experienced earthquakes with intensities on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of lower 5 on Sept. 16, 2021, lower 6 on June 19, 2022, upper 5 on June 20, 2022, and upper 6 on May 5, 2023. The Noto Peninsula is also continuing to experience aftershocks following the January quake. Victims of the disaster remain highly anxious about the possibility of another earthquake occurring in the region, especially given the indications by experts that the fault has not fully ruptured, so how they should rebuild their homes in this situation remains a major issue.
The characteristic features of disasters change constantly, and through interviews and surveys, we are able to unveil the important issues at that moment. When we spoke to people who had left Noto and taken refuge in hotels and other facilities, we found that some were trying to return to Noto even though the water supply and other infrastructure had not been restored. The reason they cited was that because tourism would increase with the completion of the Hokuriku Shinkansen high-speed rail line extension to the city of Tsuruga in neighboring Fukui Prefecture, they did not want to further impose on the places they had evacuated to. We also learned that even if the main concern of victims is securing housing, many of them do not want to settle outside of Noto, but rather rebuild in the same place they had been living before the disaster.
In recent years, surveys have been conducted increasingly via the internet, and face-to-face and door-to-door surveys have been on the decline. However, I strongly feel that the most important thing in conducting field surveys is to meet evacuees in person and hear their stories directly.
── What is holding back the post-disaster relief and recovery efforts in Noto?
While there are various factors, including the government response to the situation, I think a big factor is the geographical characteristics of a peninsula. To get from Kanazawa, the largest city in Ishikawa Prefecture (where the Noto Peninsula is located), to Okunoto, the peninsula’s northernmost region, still takes two to three hours by car, even though the roads have been restored to some extent. Lifelines (namely electricity, gas, water, sewage, communications and transportation) in critical infrastructure are also generally fragile on peninsulas — for example, areas of the Boso Peninsula, southeast of Tokyo in Chiba Prefecture, were without power for a long time after a typhoon hit the region in 2019. In cities, “redundancy” systems serve as a backup to lifelines, meaning that even if the water, electricity or gas goes down, it can be supplied from somewhere else. However, on peninsulas where installing and implementing redundancy is difficult, if part of a lifeline is cut off, restoring it takes a tremendous amount of time.
In the case of the Noto Peninsula, damage from the earthquake was widespread, which, when combined with the already aging infrastructure, makes it difficult to restore water and sewage systems right away. There were also difficulties in the movement of construction vehicles and personnel for reconstruction work, as restoring the transportation network, including the Noto-Satoyama Kaido Expressway and the Nōetsu Expressway that run from north to south along the peninsula, was delayed. Even now, it is hard to find overnight accommodations in Noto, although this is partly because of the scarcity of business hotels in the area. Recently, though, lodgings for support staff and workers have been established on the peninsula — for a long time, many reconstruction workers commuted from Kanazawa and Himi, which are located near the base of the peninsula.
── What other issues are important when considering disaster recovery in the Noto Peninsula?
Coupled with aging, the population of the Noto Peninsula had already been declining before the earthquake. Even within Ishikawa Prefecture, there are notable disparities between Noto and major cities like Kanazawa and Kaga in terms of depopulation, nonresident populations, transportation infrastructure, hospitals and schools. This problem has become even more apparent since the disaster in January.
Sixty-nine percent of respondents in the March survey and 66.3% in the June survey stated that they want to return to living where they did before the disaster. However, we still have not reached a solution to what extent and scale the towns should be rebuilt or the process in which to do so. It is difficult to rebuild a town to exactly the same size as it was before the earthquake, and we cannot simply assume new residents will move to town to make that happen.
The surfacing of long-existing regional issues combined with the possibility of being unable to restore the area to its original state is not a situation unique to the Noto Peninsula. For example, Fukushima encountered a similar situation after the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in 2011. Regions with declining populations that are facing various difficulties are often referred to as frontline regions already encountering issues that the rest of Japan will eventually experience in the future — the Noto Peninsula is one such area.
Similar problems also exist in urban areas when it comes to disaster preparedness. We need to think about recovery and reconstruction from the premise of a declining population and economy in Japan, which is a very different scenario from the past when we had steady growth. We have seen this clearly in preparations for an inland earthquake set to strike directly beneath the Greater Tokyo area in the future, as well as a gigantic earthquake that could occur in the Nankai Trough. The direction of recovery and reconstruction is different depending on the social context, and that is something we have to be aware of.
Preparing now for future disasters
── What are your thoughts on the Noto Peninsula Earthquake and future disasters from a communication perspective?
In Japan, the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act and the Broadcast Act require broadcasters to transmit information on disaster mitigation in the event of a disaster. Looking back in history, when the Great Kanto Earthquake struck the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area in 1923, there were no broadcast media, including radio, and newspapers, which were the main media at the time, were crippled and could not publish the news as usual. This resulted in the spread of baseless rumors and the persecution of Korean and Chinese people. After this event, the importance of conveying correct information in times of disaster came to be recognized. Then, in the Ise Bay typhoon (Typhoon Vera) of 1959, although the authorities could have projected extensive damage from the storm, they failed to warn people and take appropriate measures for evacuation in advance, resulting in the greatest wind and flood disaster in the post-World War II period, with 5,098 people dead or missing. This led to the establishment of the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act in 1961.
Under this act, broadcasters like TV and radio stations are required as designated public and local public institutions to contribute to disaster preparedness and mitigation. While news organizations in other countries provide journalistic coverage of disasters as important events affecting society — and some countries also have early warning systems in place — they are not required by law to contribute directly to disaster preparedness and mitigation efforts as in Japan. Because Japan is located on the Pacific Rim and is subject to not only earthquakes, but also volcanoes, as well as floods and landslides caused by typhoons, the entire country is at risk of disasters. I believe that this has allowed a culture of disaster preparedness to develop in the broadcast media.
The way public broadcaster NHK implored viewers to evacuate in a strong and urgent tone of voice in its TV broadcast at the time of the Noto Peninsula Earthquake also drew attention and has been talked about. It is worth noting, however, that most of the people who fled this earthquake started evacuating when they felt the tremors, which would have been before they heard the warning on the broadcast (see Figure 1). In other words, many people living in coastal areas were well aware of the possibility of disaster and they already understood the risk of tsunamis caused by tremors, so they were able to evacuate instantly when they felt the shaking. This was also the case in the Great East Japan Earthquake3.
By carrying out surveys and analyzing communication not just in the aftermath of the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, but after various other disasters as well, I believe we gain insight into how to effectively call for evacuation when a disaster strikes, how to encourage people to evacuate even if they have no information and how to structure disaster preparedness education for the future. The answers to these questions can only be obtained through on-the-ground, empirical research, such as by listening to people’s stories and conducting surveys, not by armchair speculation.
── What are you going to focus on in future research and surveys?
We can trace the origins of research on disasters and communication in part to the research that began after the Tokai earthquake theory was proposed in 1976, which stated the imminent risk of a devastating earthquake occurring in the Tokai area along Japan’s Pacific coast. It was thought that if major earthquakes could be predicted, the next problem would be how to communicate these predictions to the public (though now we know that imminent earthquakes are difficult to predict and pinpoint when they will actually occur). Therefore, it was a point of debate whether people would panic or whether social order would collapse if, for example, a warning was issued for a Tokai earthquake. However, as we conducted more research on people’s evacuation behavior and psychology during earthquakes and floods, we learned that panic and taking flight quickly are actually extremely rare during natural disasters. In fact, people do not pay much heed to natural disasters and do not evacuate readily. This is why we are continuing our research with a focus on human psychology — that way, we can determine not only how to alert people during disasters, but also what we can do to ensure that they prepare during times of normalcy to be able to protect themselves should disaster strike.
Post-disaster communication has many phases and the nature of that communication changes over time. First, when a disaster strikes, tsunami warnings and evacuation orders must be conveyed via broadcasts and smartphones to ensure that people evacuate. In the past, before the spread of smartphones, telephone lines would become jammed, making it difficult to get through by phone. Now that the communication app Line, which uses the internet, has become mainstream in Japan, this congestion problem has been alleviated. However, as in the case of the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, communication can be disrupted if base stations and other facilities are damaged during a disaster. Even in the event of an earthquake directly beneath the Tokyo metropolitan area, communications will most likely be interrupted by large-scale fires. Ultimately, disaster preparedness comes down to carefully considering how to protect yourself in a situation where communication systems are down and information is unavailable.
Second, it is very important to consider how communication should take place once some time has passed. For example, when volunteers set up soup kitchens at evacuation centers or engage in exchanging good, positive messages, people’s spirits are lifted and a so-called disaster utopia type of community is formed. On the other hand, communication in a situation where anxiety is high can result in the spread of unverified information, resulting in miscommunication and confusion. This is also a type of communication problem.
We will be continuing our research on the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, even after the victims of the disaster have moved from evacuation centers to temporary housing. We would like to further our research on how communication is conducted in various phases of the disaster and link this to the recovery of the people of the Noto Peninsula, as well as develop measures for the next disaster.
1. 3-month post-disaster survey: 258 respondents, in-person interviews with primary sampling at primary and secondary evacuation centers (Survey period: Feb. 11 - March 10, 2024)
2. 6-month post-disaster survey: 270 respondents, mail-in questionnaires completed in temporary housing, response rate of 31.8% (Survey period: June 4 - June 19, 2024)
3. See Sekiya, Naoya (2021). Saigai jōhō: Higashi nihon daishinsai kara no kyōkun [Disaster Information and Social Psychology: Lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake]. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.
Naoya Sekiya
Professor, Center for Integrated Disaster Information Research, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies
Ph.D. in social informatics from the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo, specializing in disaster information theory and social psychology. Before assuming current role in 2024, served as associate professor in the Faculty of Sociology at Toyo University in Tokyo, and associate professor at the Center for Integrated Disaster Information Research in the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo. Concurrently visiting professor in the Faculty of Food and Agricultural Sciences at Fukushima University and a senior researcher at the Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum. Author of Disaster Information and Social Psychology: Lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake (University of Tokyo Press, 2021), among other publications.
Initial interview date: May 21, 2024
Interview: Yuki Terada, Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd
