Plan Ahead

It pays to know your neighbors and plan ahead. This happy-ending story is from Kyodo News, published by The Japan Times online:

"On a small island about 30 minutes by boat from Shiogama, Miyagi Prefecture, Kisako Utsumi, 68, felt herself swept off her feet by the force of the March 11 tsunami. Houses were being torn apart around her.

"I was terrified," she recalled.

The tsunami triggered by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake swept away half of about 50 houses on Nonoshima Island, one of the group of Urato Islands north of Sendai. But none of the approximately 80 residents on the island was killed by the tsunami, thanks to a disaster prevention map and an evacuation route created more than half a century ago.

They had also prepared for the possibility of disaster by conducting emergency drills over and over.

In the scant 30 minutes that elapsed between the quake and the arrival of the massive tsunami, town officials knocked on the doors of every home, urging residents to evacuate.
Using a special 2-meter-wide evacuation route that local residents had cleared through a bamboo grove, they fled to a local elementary and junior high school that was built on higher ground."

PS: Imagine having town officials who would knock on every door.