Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2019

Presentation information

[J] Poster

H (Human Geosciences ) » H-DS Disaster geosciences

[H-DS13] Tsunami and Tsunami Forecast

Tue. May 28, 2019 1:45 PM - 3:15 PM Poster Hall (International Exhibition Hall8, Makuhari Messe)

convener:Naotaka YAMAMOTO CHIKASADA(National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience), Hiroaki Tsushima(Japan Meteorological Agency), Tatsuya Kubota(National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience)

[HDS13-P16] The characteristic of the cause of death in each city in Miyagi prefecture during the Great East Japan Earthquake

*Shuji SETO1, Fumihiko IMAMURA1 (1.IRIDeS, Tohoku University)

Keywords:The 2011 Tohoku earthquake tsunami, Disaster science

About 20,000 people died in the Great East Japan Earthquake tsunami that occurred in 2011. According to the National Police Agency (2012), 90% of the victims in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures were drowned. Aoki et al. (2012) reported the results of questionnaires to physicians who actually examined in the affected areas. The questionnaire result showed that the National Police Agency's cause of death statistical result was reasonable, and that some physicians could not but describe it as drowning as a realistic problem.

This suggests that victims in a tsunami disaster may diefromcause of death other than drowning. According to Kahoku Shimpo(2011), the survivors witnessed the victims who died of symptoms like hypothermia after exposure to the tsunami. However, the details of the cause of death excluding drowning has not been elucidated yet.

Seto and Imamura(2019) classified the causes of death in Miyagi Prefecture during the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake tsunami using victim information provided by Miyagi Prefecture Police Headquarters. As a result,the cause of death was classified into the following 12 kinds; Injuries to the head, Injuries to the neck, Injuries to the thorax, traumatic shock, Unspecified multiple injuries, Asphyxiation, Drowning, death due to fire, Hypothermia, Heart disease, Othrers and Unknown. And, they showed the proportion of each cause of death in Miyagi prefecture. The proportion in each city are needed to clarify the casualty in the Great East Japan Earthquake in more detail.

In this study, wecarried outthe analysis using the address data in victim information provided by Miyagi Prefecture Police Headquarters. The data are resident address and bodies found location. Combining each address data and the above 12 kinds of cause of death, we showed characteristics of each cause of death in each city in Miyagi prefecture.