Macro Analysis of Initial Responses from Yabuki Municipal Government After the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake

An effective initial response immediately after disaster strikes is not easy to provide when human and material resources and information are lacking. The purpose of this study is to achieve effective initial response activities immediately after disaster strikes, and it analyzes the initial responses taken by the government of the town of Yabuki, Fukushima Prefecture in the case of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. Disaster responses taken in the first five days after the disaster struck Yabuki are discussed in this paper. As a result, we have found that many staff members were deployed to nonregular works, such as food service, water service, and the sorting and transporting of materials, that could have been done even without town government staff members. To effectively deploy about all Yabuki staff members and conduct disaster response activities, it is necessary to classify the difficulty level of tasks, identify what each task entails, and then allocate the necessary resources to those tasks.