Old age, disability, and the Tohoku-oki earthquake
Since the Evacuation/Sheltering Guideline was first published in March 2005, Japan has been a leader in systematically promoting evacuation and shelter assistance initiatives for people with special needs (PSND) in times of disasters. Despite the nationwide, community-based initiatives prescribed by the Guideline, this paper first addresses the issue of evacuation by examining mortality data of the total population, the elderly, and people with disabilities (PWD). The elderly and PWD mortality rates were not even across the three disaster-hit prefectures.