The Cabinet Office has put together a new set of draft guidelines for municipalities to prepare for major earthquakes, clarifying?methods for estimating the number of first-aid staff and ambulances needed for relief operations, sources said Monday.
The draft guidelines, presented at a meeting of a panel of experts the same day, are aimed at encouraging municipalities to grasp the current situation and secure the necessary resources beforehand so that their local disaster prevention plan will be more workable.
Based on the estimation of quake damage by each prefecture, the frameworks present methods to make projections of the number of people with serious injuries, the number of doctors and nurses needed to take care of them, and the number of necessary disaster-relief items.
Compared with previous disaster-mitigation measures, the new standards ask local governments to focus more on quantitative analysis of the excess or deficiency of both personnel and supplies, and take measures to strengthen weak points.
The guidelines suggest ways to prepare for shortages of supplies, including by seeking the cooperation of residents to use private vehicles in the event of an ambulance shortage. They also open up the possibility of using private properties as evacuation centers in the event that existing ones do not suffice.
Local governments are also asked to determine the number of seriously injured people that hospitals in their respective jurisdictions can accept and confirm whether they have enough beds.
If many injured people are likely to be concentrated in hub hospitals, the guidelines say local governments can ask for the deployment of a Disaster Medical Assistance Team to temporary medical aid stations set up when major disasters occur.
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