KAGA (Ishikawa Pref.): Evacuees staying at hotels and inns following the magnitude-7.6 earthquake that struck the Noto Peninsula in the central Japan prefecture of Ishikawa on Jan. 1 face a fast-approaching deadline for finding other places to stay.

The hotels and inns that acted as secondary evacuation sites for such people are in a difficult situation as the planned extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen high-speed train line from Kanazawa in Ishikawa to Tsuruga in neighboring Fukui Prefecture on March 16 is expected to lead to a surge in the number of bookings.

Meanwhile, it is proving hard for evacuees to find new places to stay, causing widespread anxiety.

The Ishikawa prefectural government had encouraged evacuees to move to secondary evacuation sites in order to prevent quake-related deaths at primary evacuation sites such as makeshift evacuation centers at schools. As of Friday, more than 5,200 evacuees were staying at secondary evacuation sites south of Kanazawa.

This month, the prefecture launched information sessions and consultation events about future accommodation for evacuees.

At one such session at the Kaga-Hyakumangoku inn in the Yamashiro Onsen hot spring resort area in the city of Kaga, prefectural officials told attendees that evacuees can only use facilities until early March. They presented future lodging options for roughly 330 evacuees, such as emergency temporary housing, public housing and evacuees’ original homes after repairs of quake damage.

But Toshio Kobashi, 80, who fled to Kaga-Hyakumangoku from the city of Wajima, said that he “cannot go home because the roads are blocked, and temporary housing is full.”

“If we are told to move, there is no choice but to do so,” said Masayuki Tsubakihara, 47, who evacuated with his mother to an inn in the city of Komatsu. “But I don’t know when we can move into temporary housing, and it will be difficult to commute to work if we live in a faraway apartment.”

The reason many accommodation facilities are limiting evacuees’ stays to until February or March is an expected jump in tourism demand following the Shinkansen line extension. The extension is viewed as an opportunity for the lodging sector to rebound from the fallout of the quake.

“We need to change gear,” said Hisahiko Yoshida, president of Kaga-Hyakumangoku.

Still, construction had started for only 2,347 temporary housing units as of Thursday. The Ishikawa prefectural government has raised its target number for construction starts through the end of March from 3,000 units to 4,000 units, but the figure is far below over 7,000 applications submitted by evacuees.

Due to the situation, Yoshida is offering employee dormitory rooms to evacuees who cannot find their next accommodation and is introducing them to real estate firms.

“I don’t think any facility is thinking of forcing (evacuees out),” an official at another inn in southern Ishikawa said.

“Without instructions from the government, it is hard to take action,” the official added.

JIJI Press