Disaster-Related Deaths: Efforts Needed to Ensure Smooth Certification Reviews

Editorial

16:11 JST, January 19, 2026

Every time a major disaster has occurred, such as the Great East Japan Earthquake, the Kumamoto Earthquake and the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, affected people have been forced to live in harsh evacuation conditions.

There has been a series of cases in which people survived a house collapse or tsunami caused by an earthquake but lost their lives due to mental distress caused by unfamiliar living conditions or due to the worsening of preexisting conditions. Preparations must be expanded and improved to prevent such disaster-related deaths.

The Noto earthquake, which occurred two years ago, struck areas where there is an especially large elderly population, so many frail seniors were affected. Consequently, the deaths of more than 470 people — twice the number of deaths directly caused by the earthquake — have been certified as disaster-related.

To prevent disaster-related deaths, it is essential to improve shelter conditions. Maintaining health is difficult in an environment where people sleep haphazardly on cold floors and only have access to unsanitary bathrooms.

Preparations must be made in advance during peacetime to ensure that disaster-vulnerable people, such as the elderly, can live as evacuees with peace of mind while receiving necessary care.

If municipalities cannot handle this task on their own due to labor shortages or financial constraints, they should consider cooperating among multiple local governments to implement measures.

Municipalities provide condolence money to families of people who die in disasters based on the law on disaster condolence grants.

In the case of deaths directly caused by a disaster, such as the collapse of a house, it is rare for the payment of condolence money to take a long time. On the other hand, there are even cases in which the certification review process for disaster-related deaths can take several months to years.

In fact, certification reviews have still not been completed for more than 200 applications related to the Noto earthquake.

One factor for the relative delays in certifying disaster-related deaths is that a review system has not been fully established.

Certification decisions are made by review committees, which are set up based on municipal ordinances and consist of doctors, lawyers and other professionals. However, prior to the Noto earthquake, only the city of Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, had established provisions for setting up such a review committee in an ordinance. If the review system had been in place beforehand, a faster response might have been possible.

Such issues are not limited to the areas hit by the Noto earthquake. According to a Cabinet Office survey, 60% of all municipalities nationwide lacked the ordinance provisions needed for conducting certification reviews as of August last year.

Shiga, Kagawa and Nagasaki prefectures had not even one municipality with such provisions in place.

The central government has estimated that a major earthquake directly beneath Tokyo could result in up to about 40,000 disaster-related deaths, and that a possible quake along the Nankai Trough could cause up to about 50,000 such deaths. Condolence money would help bereaved families rebuild their lives. Municipalities should urgently establish proper review systems.

 (From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Jan. 19, 2026)