Almost all the elementary and junior high school children of Kamaishi, a small coastal town in Iwate, managed to survive the tsunami. Many people said it was a miracle, but it wasn’t. The response capabilities they learned at school helped them to overcome a disaster that exceeded all worst-case scenarios.
See article here: http://wedge.ismedia.jp/articles/-/1334?page=1.
Following the tragic 3.11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, New Zealand’s GNS Science in collaboration with Washington State Emergency Management and other stakeholders set out to further analyze the successes of the evacuation and messaging approaches used in this event. A key element of this research was to investigate both traditional tsunami evacuation strategies used in communities, schools, etc. as well as non-traditional approaches, such as vertical evacuation techniques and draw parallels with the concepts being applied in New Zealand, Washington, and elsewhere in the United States. The report can be found here.
