Clarifying Suffering of the Elderly in the 2004 Niigata Flood and the 2004 Mid-Niigata Prefecture Earthquake

概要

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This rapid pace of aging in Japan implies that the number of elderly persons requiring special care will also increase rapidly at the time of disaster. A sure sign of this state was seen in two recent disasters that occurred in Japan, which received public attention as a social problem of the suffering of the elderly. In the 2004 Niigata Flood, 12 of the 15 fatalities were over 65 years old. The Mid-Niigata Prefecture Earthquake resulted in over 1000 elderly refugees, who needed nursing care, staying in emergency shelters. This study aims to gather basic data on the response to elderly people and to show the necessity of constructing the discipline of disaster management care, a systematic approach to the disaster process of elderly people under drastic social environmental changes. The major findings were as follows: 1. The care managers as the professionals licensed by the government-sponsored Long-Term Care Insurance System worked effectively to manage the needs of moving temporarily to care facilities, and 2. Thirteen percent of elderly people who moved to the care facilities as temporary shelters remained in the care facilities 6 months after the impact. These results suggest that care managers should be the more effective agents in responding to elderly people in disasters; however, they need the opportunity to learn about the disaster process of elderly people.
日本自然災害学会の論文