Indoor quake-resistant shelters gradually becoming popular in Japan

IMABARI, Ehime — A construction company in this west Japan city has developed an “Ehime Prefecture type quake-resistant shelter” using cedar wood produced in the prefecture, which can be assembled inside a building in about a week.

Morimatsu Corp. based in the city of Imabari has been receiving orders from day care centers and individual customers, with many of them reportedly stocking up emergency bags, water and food inside the shelters.

In preparation for a feared Nankai Trough earthquake, company president Koji Morimatsu, 62, thought about creating a safe and sturdy room that could serve as a “refuge inside the house,” and worked quickly to commercialize the product after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.

With support from the Ehime Industrial Promotion Foundation, he repeatedly made prototypes of the box-shaped shelter about the size of six tatami mats using cedar wood supplied by the prefecture’s forest cooperatives. Reinforcements were added with seven iron beams used for the ceiling and another above the entrance. A 3-metric-ton weight was dropped from a height of 3 meters on the shelters in an experiment to test their endurance. The shelters also come equipped with rechargeable floor lights that turn on during power outages.

The first shelter was installed at the municipal Kikuma day care center in 2014. In addition to being used for everyday child care and as places for toddlers to nap, the shelter also stores stockpiles of food and water. Monthly evacuation drills are conducted, and during an earthquake in central Tottori Prefecture in 2016, the day care staffers guided the children into the shelters.

Since then, orders have continued to come in from day care centers, kindergartens and individuals, with roughly 25 shelters set up in Ehime Prefecture so far. In the case of private residences, the shelters are mostly installed during renovations. Even if people postpone renovating the entire building for earthquake resistance, increasingly more people are revamping just their first-floor living area centered around the shelters, based on the idea that “a safe bedroom is essential.”

The construction costs currently start at around 800,000 yen (roughly $5,300) for the six tatami mat sized shelters. Many people died in the Jan. 1 Noto Peninsula earthquake due to buildings collapsing. Morimatsu said, “I feel a strong desire (among people) to protect elderly family members,” and he has been receiving consultations from both private and public facilities.

(Japanese original by Nobuto Matsukura, Imabari Local Bureau)