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Japan Stages Nationwide Tsunami Drills on Disaster Prevention Day

Officials used the annual observance to test interagency readiness shaped by lessons from 2011.

Overview

  • The Kinki Regional Development Bureau and Sakai City simulated a maximum intensity-7 earthquake with an epicenter off Kushimoto, Wakayama.
  • About 50 organizations and roughly 1,000 participants, including the Self-Defense Forces, police and fire departments, joined the Sakai-area exercise.
  • At Sakai Senboku Port, responders practiced helicopter evacuations of people stranded on a pier and loaded truck-delivered relief supplies onto ships.
  • Exercises occurred across the country, including school evacuations and shelter setup in Choshi, Chiba, where plans account for tsunami run-up along the Tone River.
  • Okinawa Prefecture did not deliver a planned 10:03 p.m. emergency alert due to a training-mode system setting, and municipalities were told to proceed as if it had been sent.