Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg
Takashi Komiyama, chief of the Metropolitan Outer Floodway Management
Office at Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and
Tourism, speaks in the central control room at the Metropolitan Area
Outer Underground Discharge Channel in Kasukabe City, Saitama
Prefecture, Japan.
Enlarge image
Pedestrians walk along the bank of the Arakawa river in Tokyo. Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg
3:15
May 31 (Bloomberg) -- Tokyo
is fortifying its river banks and water discharge facilities to prevent
flooding that could cause more damage to the city than those wrought by
superstorm Sandy on the U.S. east coast.
A storm tidal surge in Tokyo Bay may be the most devastating for
Japan's capital, leading to 7,600 deaths and flooding an area housing
1.4 million people, according to government estimates. Bloomberg's Chris
Cooper reports. (Source: Bloomberg)
Enlarge image
Residential buildings, right,
stand on the elevated ground along a 'super levee', wide embankment with
a gradual inward and upward slope built to raise the level of the
residential area higher than the river level against flooding, while
other buildings, center, stand on the lower ground near the Arakawa
river in Tokyo. Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg
Enlarge image
A man looks at a sign board
explaining about a 'super levee' along the bank of the Arakawa river in
Tokyo. Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg
Enlarge image
Takashi Komiyama, chief of the
Metropolitan Outer Floodway Management Office at Japan's Ministry of
Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, stands in the surge tank
area of the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel in
Kasukabe City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan. Photographer: Tomohiro
Ohsumi/Bloomberg
“Japan hasn’t prepared enough,” said Toru Sueoka, president of the an organization of engineers, consultants and researchers. “Weather patterns have changed and we are getting unusual conditions. We need upgrades or else our cities won’t be able to cope with floods.”
In 2008, for the first time in human history, half of the world’s population lived in urban ard Flooding. The report says that trend combined wit means the world’s cities will bear the biggest loss of life and the largest economic costs from flooding.
Should the Arakawa River break its banks, about 2,000 people in Tokyo may lose their lives and around 860,000 will be stranded, according to the government. The waters would flood subway and regular train lines, crippling 97 stations.
Flood Defenses
The capital’s Edogawa City, one of Tokyo’s largest wards that is sandwiched by two major rivers, predicts it will cost 1.7 trillion yen to strengthen and rebuild the banks of the Arakawa and Edogawa rivers to prevent breaching during a flood, said Naomasa Tachihara, director of Edogawa’s department of public works planning.Floods are the world’s most frequent destructive natural event and the costs of economic damage have surged, according to the 2012 World Bank report, citing examples in Pakistan, Australia, the Mississippi in the U.S., and Bangkok in Thailand in 2010 and 2011.
London’s effort to prevent flooding is a barrier spanning the River Thames completed in 1982; a three-decade project started after a flood in 1953 that killed 300 people.
The Thames barrier across a 520-meter stretch of the river was closed four times in the 1980s, 35 times in the 1990s and more than 80 times since, according to the Environment Agency.
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