Tsunami-hit Miyagi driving school made students wait despite evac alert

[yuiyoshida]

Hirofumi Terashima, head of the bereaved families' association in the Yamamoto driving school case, meets with the press after the Sendai District Court ruling, on Jan. 13, 2015. (Mainichi)
PR


SENDAI -- Instructors at a driving school devastated by the March 11, 2011 tsunami forced students to stay at the school even after an evacuation alert had been issued, witness testimony in a civil suit filed here by families of the victims revealed.

In a Jan. 13 ruling, the Sendai District Court found the Joban Yamamoto driving school in Yamamoto, Miyagi Prefecture, had failed to heed tsunami warnings, and ordered the school to pay 1.9 billion yen in damages to the families of 25 students and a staff member who died in the disaster.

Surviving students testified during proceedings that they had heard fire trucks driving around the neighborhood calling on residents to evacuate. The driving school instructors, however, told students to wait inside the school building.

"Are we continuing with the lesson? Shouldn't we evacuate?" a former student at the driving school said he asked an instructor after he heard the public announcement calling on residents to evacuate to higher ground as a tsunami warning had been issued. The instructor told the young man to wait until the school told them what to do.

Another former student, meanwhile, was told to stay in a school van parked on the premises. Some witnesses also in the vehicle told the court that they had heard radio broadcasts advising evacuation.

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20150113p2a00m0na003000c.html

[elehhhhna]

1. on 9/11 i worked in a high rise in houston, a few floors below the

Israeli consulate.

The fbi shut the bldg down. Senior Management did not inform us. When I found out I sent everyone home, resigned shortly thereafter. Forgot much of that until I read this awful story...

[uppityperson]

2. how awful, money will never replace those lost, but may make authorities in such situations

do the right thing next time

[SheilaT]

3. I like to think

that were I in a similar situation, I'd follow the evacuation order. I've never been in a situation remotely like that, so I don't know what I'd do, and I certainly don't blame the students for staying. But given that Japan has lots of procedures in place for tsunamis -- including walls that sometimes are not high enough, alas -- it's horrifying that the school didn't immediately evacuate.