【ストーリーズ・珠洲市大谷地区#2.5】地震と豪雨の二重被災に遭った珠洲市大谷町は今…離れる人残る人それぞれの思い (2025年1月1日)

December 2, 2024. In Otani-cho, Suzu City, residents have begun moving into temporary housing, whose completion was delayed due to the heavy rains in Oku-Noto. Resident: "We've been patient, patient, patient since August. It feels like we've finally arrived." Eleven months after the earthquake, they finally got their hands on their temporary "home." The earthquake on New Year's Day caused a massive landslide in the Otani district, cutting off roads. Residents were left stranded in an area with no shops or hospitals. When Governor Hasi visited the area on January 28th... Kawabata Takashi, Head of the Evacuation Center: "We still don't have electricity. This school building is still powered by a generator." Governor Hasi: "Thank you for letting us know, and we will respond to your requests one by one. Thank you very much." The then-Principal: "I have a request. This is a really great neighborhood. The parents, the community, and the children are all really great. I'm proud of this school, but if things stay the way they are, neither the children nor the parents will be able to live here." Governor Hasi: "My job is to make sure they can return home at any time." However...even in May, debris still spilled onto the school route. The area's only supermarket had gone out of business. With no progress being made in resolving the water outage or building temporary housing, many families with children left the area. Masahiro Ushiroyama, a farmer, was one of them. After losing his home and living in isolation for 11 days, and his child becoming ill, he decided to move to Kanazawa. Mr. Utoya: "I had thought about staying in Otani from the beginning, but by March, temporary housing wasn't ready, and since my child was preparing for entrance exams, I had no choice but to go to Kanazawa, so I rented this house. That's the main reason." In a survey conducted by Suzu City last summer, only about half of the 65 households that evacuated outside the city said they wanted to return to the Otani area. The city created a subsidy system of up to 3 million yen for home reconstruction costs to attract families with children, but... Mr. Utoya: "Even if we receive that much, it's not enough to build a house." Q: Have you considered returning to Otani? "Not anymore. Once my child goes to high school and goes to school here, there's no way we can go back." When asked why they weren't returning to Suzu, evacuees cited reasons such as "worrying about another earthquake or tsunami," "not seeing the town's future prospects," and "inconveniences for shopping and daily life." Five students from three households remain at Otani Elementary and Junior High School. One of those families is the Murakami family. Murakami Yuri: "We always ate here and slept next to each other, and this was our children's room." They moved here from Canada two years ago, but their home tilted significantly and became uninhabitable. Murakami Ametis: "This is where our New Year's card photo is..." "Say cheese." Murakami Yuri: "At first, I wondered what I should do. I wondered what I would do now that we no longer had a home, but the further away we were, the more I wanted to go back there." Murakami evacuated to her parents' home in Kanagawa Prefecture, and then returned to Otani with her family. They are now living in a rented, vacant house in the same village. Ametis: "It wasn't so much that I wanted to go back to school, but rather that I didn't want to go to school in Tokyo." Yuri: "At the time, they kept saying they wanted to go back." One of the children's playgrounds is the school evacuation shelter. It was also a shelter for those who lost their homes when they returned home temporarily, and over the past year it had become a place where everyone could gather. Kawabata: "Are there hydrangeas even at a time like this?" Woman: "They want to bloom. They want to bloom even after the season is over." Kawabata: "It's just like human life. They keep blooming even after the season is over." It has been decided that this shelter will also be closed for the rest of the year. On this day, a meeting of the Sotoura Future Creation Association was held. "The school (shelter) will close next week or the week after, right?" "There will no longer be a place where people can meet face-to-face for no reason." Murakami and his friends are now planning to create a community hub to replace the shelter. A place where people can shop and stay, and where people who have left their hometowns can return at any time. Murakami Yuri: "If residents and acquaintances can return and stay here, I think they'll definitely come back and the number of people connected to the area will increase." Another member: "The best thing would be for former residents to return." Murakami: "Of course." Otani District Mayor Maruyama: "Young people are very enthusiastic. They help whenever they can, so it's really helpful to have people...