Broad support grows for people hit by continuous earthquakes in Kumamoto, southwestern Japan

April 28, 2016

Broad support grows for people hit by continuous earthquakes in Kumamoto, southwestern Japan

The two brotherly professional BMX riders usually perform at street shows and city events, but they appeared one day at a charity gathering held  in support for people affected by a series of earthquakes in Kumamoto Prefecture, southwestern Japan, in April.
The charity event was called by a riders' group as one of participants at a sports and leisure vehicle show in the prefecture. The annual show had been held in Mashiki, the area hardest hit by the latest earthquakes, over the past 10 years.
This year's show was to be held at the Grand Messe Kumamoto ground just out of a freeway exit in Mashiki Town on April 24, but it was canceled because of the continuous earthquakes since April 14.
The disaster started with two big tremors, which registered a maximum intensity of 7 on the Japanese seismic scale in the town, followed by a long spell of aftershocks felt at many places in Kumamoto and neighboring Oita prefectures, in Kyushu.
"This year's F.T.W. Show was the 10th and the final one. So, we were working even harder than ever for preparation, but because the quakes occurred, we just had to cancel it," said a member of the riders' group. F.T.W. stands for Forever Tow Wheels. Instead, the group organized charity events at a few places by gathering members and followers.
Similar activities were launched by many volunteer and civic groups in Kyushu for the affected people amid growing calls "Pull together, Kumamoto! Pull together, Kyushu!".
Seiji and Seiichi Fujii, the BMX riders, are active in their home town of Saga and other regions in the northern part of Kyushu. They were asked to perform as a program for a charity auction held at a lakeside park in Asakura, Fukuoka Prefecture, north of Kumamoto.
The brothers attracted big applause from the young audience each time they showed stunt riding on their vehicles. Their enthusiastic play helped to make the charity event livelier.
Put for the auction were vehicle-related goods and items. Among them, a miniature Volkswagen, which the auction MC stressed costs over 80,000 yen, was knocked down to a young man in a wheelchair for 25,000 yen.
The mishap has claimed more than 60 lives, including deaths linked to earthquake-related reasons at shelters and other facilities.
The disaster has flattened or damaged almost 30,000 houses in Kumamoto Prefecture. It has also left tens of thousands of people homeless as the continued tremors have hampered rescue work and rehabilitation activities in the affected regions.
Proceeds from the auction and sale of items at the event were contributed to the affected areas through a volunteer group.
Japan experienced two devastating earthquakes from 1995 to 2011. A first one hit Kobe and neighboring regions in the Kansai area of western Japan, claiming about 6,500 lives. The killer earthquake and the ensuing tsunami tidal waves of March 2011 left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing in northeastern Japan. But both disasters rather reminded Japanese of their traditional value of unity and solidarity to overcome hard days.
This was the case with the latest disaster in Kumamoto, which prompted many people, mostly youngsters, to stand up for volunteer work in the affected regions.
The number of volunteers grew day by day. People gathered not just from neighboring areas but also from remote places. So many volunteers came for help, surpassing local municipality officials' capacity to sort them out.
The latest mishap left many challenges for local governments. On the hardware front, they will have to rebuild the damaged infrastructure networks and construct temporary housing for affected people. Challenges on the software side include studies on smoothly carrying out post-disaster jobs, including an effective system to receive supporting staff and volunteers from outside.
These personnel-related problems are unlikely to be fixed quickly, but because the importance of volunteer activity and mutual cooperation has come to be recognized broadly among Japanese, particularly young people, efforts to build better post-disaster programs are expected to be facilitated in the years ahead.



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