Nanao: Three municipalities in the central Japan prefecture of Ishikawa hit hard by the 7.6-magnitude earthquake on Jan. 1 started accepting disaster volunteers recruited from the general public on Saturday.

Around 80 volunteers got to work in the city of Nanao and the towns of Anamizu and Shika, with some moving damaged furniture out of houses and others scraping out mud.

While volunteer activities for supporting the operations of evacuation centers had already started in the Ishikawa capital of Kanazawa, it was the first time for volunteers to engage in assistance activities in areas seriously damaged by the temblor.

On Saturday in Nanao, where seismic activity of upper 6, second highest on the Japanese seismic intensity scale, was felt on New Year’s Day, 17 volunteers worked in cold weather to carry muddy furniture and tatami mats out of houses and offered other forms of support.

“I felt anew (the seriousness of) the damage caused by the earthquake,” said Yuki Kato, a 29-year-old corporate worker who joined the volunteering efforts from Tokyo. “I’ll do what I can to the best of my ability.”

Kenichi Kawamura, 55, asked for help to clean up his parents’ house, where mud flowed into rooms due to soil liquefaction caused by the earthquake. He extended his gratitude for volunteering by saying: “It was very helpful. The mud was heavy, so I couldn’t do it (the cleanup) by myself.”

According to the Ishikawa prefectural government, the advance registration of volunteers started on Jan. 6 and a total of about 14,500 people–some 4,000 in Ishikawa and around 10,500 outside the prefecture–signed up. Last Wednesday, the prefecture solicited about 560 people from among the registered volunteers interested in working in the three municipalities from Saturday to Friday, and the slots were filled in only three minutes from the start of recruitment. Next Wednesday, the prefecture will solicit volunteers to be engaged in activities from Feb. 3.

The city of Wajima, the town of Noto and eight other municipalities in Ishikawa are conducting surveys on the needs of volunteering and plan to start recruiting volunteers when their preparations are complete. The city of Suzu in the prefecture has not been able to launch its assessment of volunteer needs as the municipality is having difficulty restoring roads and water services and is still seeing no prospect of accepting volunteers.

JIJI Press