Six months after the New Year’s Day earthquake struck the area around the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, locals are still dealing with the aftermath of the 7.6 magnitude quake.
The quake, which killed 281 people, also damaged 83,980 homes and forced up to 34,000 people to evacuate their homes.
The number of evacuees dropped to 2,288 on Thursday and shelters are gradually shrinking. The water outage has been resolved, except for about 1,500 homes in mountainous areas where there is a risk of landslides.
Construction of temporary housing has progressed and around 17,000 people have moved into makeshift homes, including existing apartments rented by local authorities. By the end of August, the Ishikawa Prefectural Government plans to complete about 6,800 houses signed up by municipalities.
The demolition of collapsed houses at the government’s expense has not progressed. More than 18,000 of the approximately 20,000 homes for which applications have been granted have not yet been dismantled.
The population outflow was serious in the prefecture, especially among the younger generations. In four municipalities in the Okunoto region that were hit hard by the earthquake, the population fell by 2,600 in the four months since the earthquake, three times as much as the same period last year.
In the Okunoto region, elderly people made up as much as 50% of the total population in April. Local authorities must therefore do more to prevent them from dying in isolation.
The prefecture and municipalities will use about ยฅ54 billion in reconstruction funds released through state tax subsidies to provide assistance to people affected by the quake.
