After the Kobe earthquakes in Japan a quarter century ago, a group of teachers began sending relief teams to disaster-stricken areas. Today, those groups have developed into an ever expanding network of teams across the nation of Japan [the original team was called Emergency and Rescue Team Hyogo (EARTH), according to The Japan Times]. The network has grown from 90 to 220 members and has members in the Hyogo and Kumamoto Prefectures. New groups are still launching in areas such as the Miyagi Prefecture as of December 2018 — an area devastated by both an earthquake and tsunami. “We hope to provide help to disaster areas in the future,” team member Takashi Chubachi told The Japan Times.
The original Hyogo group is also potentially helping to create a similar group in Hokkaido due to the earthquake in 2018.
“We’re very heartened” by these moves, said Chubachi. “Cooperation would be easier if such teams are formed across the country.”
The goal with these group formations is to foster collaboration across Japan. “We hope that the national government will consider a system to allow (disaster relief teams from) different prefectures to collaborate,” Hiroshi Asahori, a founding member of the original group EARTH told The Japan Times.
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