The Yomiuri Shimbun
Volunteers distribute rice balls and crackers to evacuees at a middle school in Sendai on Thursday.Volunteers from across the nation this week have started relief activities in the areas struck hardest by last week's massive earthquake and tsunami.
Nongovernmental organizations established after the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake embarked on providing support to disaster victims at evacuation centers and other places. In Sendai, the municipal government established a volunteer registration center.
Some areas suffered such serious damage in the disaster that their local governments have been unable to set up their own volunteer registration systems.
Ahead of the three-day holiday starting Saturday, the influx of volunteers to disaster-stricken areas has been continuing at a swift pace. It is expected citizen volunteers will be able to engage in voluntary work throughout the three-day weekend, including Monday's vernal equinox.
"As damage was inflicted over a wide area, it's difficult to set up an operation base," said Masamichi Yoshitsubaki, 43, a volunteer at the Collaboration Center for Hanshin Quake Rehabilitation, a Kobe-based NGO providing volunteer relief operations. The organization was formed after the Great Hanshin Earthquake hit the southern part of Hyogo Prefecture in 1995.
Yoshitsubaki is an experienced volunteer who worked to support victims after the Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu Earthquake devastated the central region of the prefecture in 2004, and a powerful earthquake occurred in China's Sichuan Province in 2008.
After the Tohoku Pacific Offshore Earthquake occurred March 11, the organization's three staff members left Kobe in a rented car.
Last Saturday night, they arrived in Natori, Miyagi Prefecture, where they helped to distribute food to disaster victims at a primary school in the city.
On Monday, they traveled to Minami-Sanrikucho in the prefecture, 75 kilometers from Natori. After assessing the local conditions, they set up an operation base at a municipal gymnasium in Yonezawa, Yamagata Prefecture, where residents living near Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant had taken shelter.
"They're short of food. The prospects for restoring the electricity and water supply are still far from clear. We're trying hard to think about what we can do to help on a long-term basis," he said.
Nippon Volunteer Network Active in Disaster, an NPO based in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, has received daily offers from people willing to work as volunteers or donate relief supplies.
The organization plans to go to Niigata Prefecture, where a huge number of people have taken shelter, to establish a base of operations and visit shelters in Ojiya and Kariwamura in the prefecture.
It plans to distribute food and other supplies, and provide information about vacant rooms being made available to evacuees by local governments and private residents.
However, the difficulty of procuring fuel during the ongoing gasoline shortage is hampering the organization's activities. "There's no time to spare. We're getting impatient," managing director Hironobu Teramoto said.
On Tuesday, the Sendai municipal government and Sendai City Council for Social Welfare established a volunteer center at Miyagino gymnasium in the city, and began registering volunteers. About 70,000 people are taking shelter in Sendai.
The center on that day registered about 80 volunteers, who were dispatched to several shelters in the city.
"There are many elderly evacuees, and they've almost reached the limit of their physical strength," said Hideo Watanabe, an official of ADRA Japan, a Tokyo-based NPO that distributed miso soup to evacuees at Takasago Middle School in Sendai.
Local governments busy with the removal of rubble in the hard-hit areas of Onagawacho, Minami-Sanrikucho and Ishinomaki have been unable to set up volunteer registration centers or to provide care for evacuees, sources said.
(Mar. 19, 2011)
