Miyazaki Prefecture City Conducts Survey on Nankai Trough Earthquake Information to Support Deaf People

From NHK

August 10 2024

Nichinan City, Miyazaki Pref –   While emergency information was issued calling for caution in the Nankai Trough mega-earthquake, staff from a prefectural center providing support to hearing-impaired people visited the homes of hearing-impaired people in Nichinan City, Miyazaki Prefecture, and conducted an interview survey on their concerns.

On the 10th, three staff members from the Prefectural Center for the Hearing Impaired drove around the homes of hearing-impaired people living in the city, where a seismic intensity of 6-low was observed in the earthquake on the 8th.

The staff members used sign language to ask about damage caused by the earthquake and their concerns, and Shingo Ebihara (47) described the situation at the time of the earthquake, saying, “I was driving when the earthquake happened, and I didn’t know what had happened, so I was in a bit of a panic.”

On the 10th, a total of four homes were visited, and one 64-year-old man who did not have a smartphone expressed a request that it would be nice to have a device that would light up and be visible to the naked eye in the event of a major disaster that required evacuation.

Mitsuhira Kazuo, director of the Prefectural Center for the Deaf, who conducted the survey, said, “We don’t know when the next big earthquake will occur, so we went there to listen in detail. We would like to hear the honest feelings of disabled people in other areas of the prefecture as well.”