Problems on Earthquake Disasters in Rural Area-consideration from the Recent Damaging Earthquakes in Hokkaido,

Problems on earthquake disasters in rural area are discussed through the experiences due to recent damaging earthquakes attacked Hokkaido, northern Japan. In the field of earthquake disaster engineering, main concern has been focused on the problems in the densely populated area in large cities. It is obvious that in a large city seismic risk is very high because of concentration of vulnerable structures and complex functions. On the contrary in rural area seismic risk is rather small compared with urbanised area in general but there might be different problems due to the situation of isolation and less population in wide area. From the ratio of area, the chance to be attacked by earthquakes is much higher in rural area than in urbanised area. Therefore the problems in the rural area is also important in the earthquake disaster mitigation programs. In Hokkaido, northern most Japan, we had three large damaging earthquakes in 1993 and 1994. These events attacked not only urbanised area but also more wide rural area and caused much damages in primary industrial area. In this paper, problems on earthquake disasters are discussed through the experiences of three earthquakes. Firstly, reconnaissance reports, various data in local government and organisations, newspapers and related statistics are gathered and rearranged. Secondary, damaging and recovery processes and their effects to local society are revealed for each sector and specified problems in rural area are pointed out. Finally, new approach to the disaster mitigation programs in rural area is indicated