Disaster prevention training in Japan taught from childhood

Due to the new crown epidemic, most of the school's group activities have been suspended in the past two years, and they have started to reply this year. Yesterday afternoon, I participated in the "pick up the child home" as part of the disaster prevention training at my son's elementary school.

To be honest, when I saw this notification, I felt a bit baffled. Does this kind of thing need a rehearsal? If you are in an elementary school in a Chinese area, you are training every day. XD

After some research, I realized that this may be a disaster prevention training unique to Japan. When a major earthquake or typhoon occurs, how does the school ensure the safety of students and correctly and smoothly hand over a " relative " insurance method to the parents of the students.

Before explaining this kind of disaster prevention drill, it is necessary to explain the situation in Japan.

Elementary school students in Japan are basically not picked up by their parents, and they are left to go to and from school alone throughout the whole process. Of course, there will also be individual parents (or others, such as dedicated drivers) who will pick them up in person, which is very rare. (There is a mother in my son's class who insists on picking up and dropping off by herself)

In the primary schools in the metropolitan area, because the students live near the school, and the walking distance to and from school is not far, it is not a big problem. Even children who go to school across districts can take the tram by themselves. The rural areas may be far from the school, but in my limited experience with my own eyes, they mostly walk to and from school by themselves. (If the perception is wrong, friends who have experience in this area please enlighten me.)

Japan seems to have put more emphasis on this training after the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, for the following reasons.

1. After the earthquake, most of the children were still in school, but because of the impact of the earthquake, the communication situation was very poor, and it was difficult for parents to contact the school to confirm the safety of their children. Therefore, many parents drive to the school by themselves to pick up people, but the traffic is not smooth at this time, and at the same time, a large number of cars flock to the school, causing the congestion situation to be more serious.
2. Students who have not been able to wait for their parents to pick them up, some schools are led by teachers to send them home one by one, but there is no one at home, and aftershocks continue to occur, leaving only the children at home, which is not a good way. (The class guide must know the location of each student's home. Therefore, when the school starts every year, parents must also fill in the latest family information, and the teacher will also walk through the site according to the information.)
3. On the day of the earthquake, the class guide was not necessarily at the school. If other teachers were in charge, they would not be able to recognize the faces of all the parents. (Japanese class guides are very hard and must recognize the appearance of all the parents. A person with face blindness like me will definitely not be able to be.)
4. The parents (relatives and friends) who come to pick up the person must be registered in the "book" (the information filled in by the parents when the school starts), otherwise the school cannot confirm whether they are "bad people". At the very least, the relatives and friends who come to pick up the person must also be adults known to the students.

The rough process of disaster prevention training

Before the designated time arrives, the parents will gather at the school first, and the class guide will confirm the parents one by one, and then lead out the students and let the children say the names of their mothers or fathers or other people they know. Make sure it's not given to the wrong person. Students who have no one to pick them up are finally led home by their teachers.

If there are siblings in the same school, it is claimed by the beginning of the senior year. The reason is said to be that in the event of a real disaster, in a chaotic situation, it is not easy to take the children of the lower grades to find the brothers and sisters.

There are some other small details that have not been written, and those who are interested, please watch the video by yourself. Because the film was shot before the epidemic, it is a little different from now.

In Japan, where various natural disasters are frequent, in addition to preparing for disaster prevention as much as possible in advance, it also conducts exercises and training on how to respond to disasters after they occur. Of course, there are different voices in Japan as to whether such training is necessary. For example, when parents need to pick up someone, whether there is a name book is definitely not the point. The child is naturally handed over to someone he knows to pick him up. Also, often schools are designated as shelters, and if students have to stay at school for several days, they might as well train themselves how to live there.

If the disaster prevention training that seems useless in ordinary times can be done every time, when the real disaster occurs, even if the disaster situation is quite different from the training, at least the psychological level will be better than that of people who have never experienced it.

2022/05/07 posted.