Thursday, April 14, 2011

Tohoku coast -- Focus on Survivors

It's hard sometimes to think about statistics when peoples' lives are involved, but I found the data below heartening. Despite the widespread devastation in these towns, preliminary data show that really, most people survived. Early statistics used the total population of these towns, but these data attempt to count only the part of the population that was in the inundated area.

The table is ordered from most to least casualities (= dead plus missing). I added the survivors columns, which therefore are ordered from least to most survivors, top to bottom. So the bad news comes first

Preliminary table of survivors within inundated region of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures*
Prefecture Township Population within the inundated area (a) Dead + Missing (b) % casualites (a)/(b)x100 Survivors % survivors
Iwate Otsuchi 7839 1616 20.6 6223 79.4
Iwate Rikuzen-Takada 13547 2459 18.2 11088 81.8
Miyagi Onagawa 8816 1504 17.1 7312 82.9
Miyagi Natori 12132 1873 15.4 10259 84.6
Iwate Kamaishi 9331 1306 14.0 8025 86.0
Miyagi Shiogama 173 23 13.3 150 86.7
Fukushima Minami-Souma 13919 1474 10.6 12445 89.4
Miyagi Yamamoto 9341 788 8.4 8553 91.6
Miyagi Minami-Sanriku 13306 1090 8.2 12216 91.8
Iwate Yamada 11721 911 7.8 10810 92.2
Miyagi Kesennuma 29648 2138 7.2 27510 92.8
Fukushima Namie 2749 186 6.8 2563 93.2
Miyagi Ishinomaki 102670 5520 5.4 97150 94.6
Miyagi Higashi-Matsushima 32993 1713 5.2 31280 94.8
Fukushima Souma 9227 408 4.4 8819 95.6
Iwate Miyako 24937 1083 4.3 23854 95.7
Iwate Tanohata 1075 38 3.5 1037 96.5
Iwate Ofunato 15500 494 3.2 15006 96.8
Fukushima Futaba 1061 32 3.0 1029 97.0
Fukushima Shinchi 4258 118 2.8 4140 97.2
Miyagi Iwanuma 7310 183 2.5 7127 97.5
Fukushima Okuma 1053 24 2.3 1029 97.7
Miyagi Watari 13186 284 2.2 12902 97.8
TOTAL
345792 25265 7.3 320527 92.7













Average survival rate within inundated area: 92.7%







Statistics Bureau & Director-General for Policy Planning of Ministry of Internal Affairs & Communications
released "Populations and Number of families within the Expected Inundation Areas" in Japanese.
http://www.stat.go.jp/data/chiri/map/index.htm


Inundation areas are estimated by aerial and satellite photos; not the survey on site.
*The table prepared by Yamamoto, Masahiro (Jody B. added survivor columns).

1 comment:

  1. Very good information, thanks. It is important for people to realize that a tsunami, even one this size, is survivable.

    ReplyDelete