Japanese workers began the huge task this weekend of building the temporary housing needed to move hundreds of thousands of homeless tsunami survivors out of cold, crowded shelters.
Construction teams drove wooden stakes into the playing field of Dai-ichi middle school in Rikuzentakata on Saturday, marking the spot where 36 prefabricated units will stand.
The houses, each about 30m2, will provide accommodation for families of between two and five people, Rikuzentakata City Mayor Futoshi Toba said.
“These are the first wave, which we expect to be finished by the end of this month or the beginning of next,” he said, adding that each unit would have a dining room-kitchen and two living rooms.
“We have plans for 200 houses in the immediate term at the school, but have asked the prefectural government for 4,000, although we are awaiting their final go-ahead,” he said.
Toba, whose own home was washed away by the waves that crashed through Rikuzentakata, said housing would be allocated according to need.
“The elderly and those with young children will be given priority,” he said.
Nationally, up to 500,000 people have been evacuated in Japan’s twin emergencies caused by the quake-tsunami and problems at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima.
About 9,500 people — more than a third of Rikuzentakata — were made homeless when the tsunami struck.
Those who had no relatives nearby are being looked after by the city in municipal buildings.
Volunteer Tsutomu Nakai has taken charge of organizing the relief operation at Dai-ichi middle school, where, he says, the temporary housing can’t come soon enough.
“At the moment we have about 1,000 people here,” he said. “Everyone is managing very well living together, but it would be better if they all had somewhere of their own,” said Tsutomu, who also lost his own home.
The first phase of 200 homes are being put up by construction company Daiwa House, whose spokesman Takafumi Nakao said prefabricated house builders had been asked by the government in Tokyo to produce 30,000 units.
“Construction of 200 prefabricated houses began yesterday in the school at Rikuzentakata and we are building 36 of them,” he said.
Nakao said the company was trying to ramp up production, but the scale of the devastation made the task enormous.
“It’s hard to speed up construction as the affected areas are quite wide,” he said.
People sheltering at Dai-ichi middle school gathered to watch workers break ground at the spot that will become their home over the coming months.
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