Student teachers visiting the exhibition space at Arahama Elementary School in Sendai, Japan, for World Tsunami Awareness Day

By Denis McClean

SENDAI, 6 November, 2019 - The earthquake and tsunami which occurred in Chile in February, 2010, helped save the lives of 320 people in Japan when it was struck the following year by the strongest recorded earthquake and tsunami ever to hit the country.

The tsunami waves from Chile reached Japan’s Tohoku coast and prompted a review of disaster prevention measures at the Arahama Elementary School situated close to the sea in the Sendai region of Japan.

The prescient decision was taken to move the school’s tsunami evacuation site from the gymnasium to the main four-storey school building. Emergency supplies kept in the gym were moved to the third floor of the school.

The March 11, 2011 earthquake was felt at 14.46 and a tsunami warning quickly followed. The Great East Japan Earthquake was at least magnitude 9 and reached maximum intensity of 7 on the Japanese scale of measurement.

Arahama headmaster, Takao Kawamura, ordered the gym to be shuttered and any children inside to leave for the safety of the school’s upper floors where they had a grandstand view of the seven metre high tsunami as it suddenly burst through the forest of pine trees which screened the school’s view of the ocean.

The waves destroyed the gym and reached up to the second floor of the school, jamming the stairwell with debris from the remains of the pine forest and vehicles from the car park. The 320 people on the rooftop including schoolchildren, staff and some local people were safe.

That is all part of the story shared with the 200,000 people who have visited the school over the last two years.  Arahama Elementary School is now partly derelict, left as it was after the tsunami, and has been converted into a place of pilgrimage and learning to spread awareness of tsunami risk among Japanese and many visitors from overseas.