SOMA, Fukushima Prefecture--Preparedness is everything in a major earthquake as residents learned the hard way a decade ago.

But their efforts in the years since have clearly paid off.

When the destructive shaking arrived in the middle of the night on Feb. 13, Yoshimasa Imada, 55, immediately decided to react and told himself, “I will protect my family this time around.”

He started preparing to go to a nearby evacuation center with his 42-year-old wife, 12-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter.

His strong will stems from an irretrievable loss he suffered 10 years ago.

Imada lived in Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, when the Great East Japan Earthquake jolted the area on March 11, 2011.

The ensuing tsunami claimed the lives of his 66-year-old father and mother, 46-year-old wife, 20-year-old son, 16-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter.

“I couldn’t protect my family before,” he said.

The thought has tormented Imada for a long time.

“Little did I imagine that the tsunami would hit our home.”

The family home was about 1 kilometer from the coastline. Many houses and trees filled the space in between, and the ocean was not visible from their home.

But the raging water stripped everything bare. Imada came to a stern realization viewing the desolate, post-disaster landscape.

“We were living this close to the ocean,” Imada thought back then, kicking himself for not preparing well.

He has started a new life with a new family, but never forgets the six lives that he feels he could not save.

Imada currently lives in Soma, about 2 km from the coastline.

But he is now prepared to evacuate immediately when the next big earthquake hits, with his valuables packed in a bag.

On Feb. 14, Imada visited the grave site of his six family members in Minami-Soma, concerned over whether the quake destroyed their headstone.

“The March 11 anniversary is nearing. I’ll come back,” Imada promised.

For many residents in Soma like Imada who have lived with a crisis mentality for the past decade, the Feb. 13 quake not only triggered memories of the 2011 tragedy and reminded them of the dangers, but it also served as a test of their preparedness.

Mitsuo Kamata, 68, almost fell off the bed when the quake hit.

“Uh-oh, here we go again,” he thought. The strong tremor brought memories of the 2011 disaster rushing back to Kamata.

At the time, residents in the area did not immediately move to higher ground, even though they received a tsunami warning.

Kamata evacuated to higher ground and survived, but some of his acquaintances did not.

“If I hesitated, I would have been dead,” Kamata said. “I learned the hard way that mental preparation is important.”

Ever since, Kamata has made sure he has water and a flashlight in his car, and the gas tank is always more than half full.

“With a tsunami, a minute or two becomes the difference between life and death,” he said.

This time, Kamata kept the car engine running and he stayed ready to leave at a moment’s notice until he was told the quake did not trigger a tsunami.

In Shinchi, a town north of Soma, elderly neighbors held each other and stayed on the alert.

A 68-year-old woman told other elderly residents living in a nearby apartment, “Go change and get yourself ready to run.”

She fled to higher ground 10 years ago, but without checking on other neighbors.

“I wish we could all work together back then, and I have regrets about that,” she said.

In the 2011 disaster, her older brother went to check the condition of the ocean and died.

“There is no such thing as absolute safety. Preparing on a routine basis saves lives,” she said.

She regularly stocks several days’ worth of food, and she keeps a stove and valuables on the second floor of her home in the event the ground floor is flooded.

“We need to learn from each and every earthquake and make small preparations, because that is the only thing that we, who survived, can do,” she said.

Still, many people did not evacuate, following the Japan Meteorological Agency’s announcement that there was no threat of tsunami.

Katsuya Yamori, a professor at Kyoto Disaster Prevention Research Institute at Kyoto University whose expertise is in disaster psychology, said their decision “was not a huge mistake.”

But Yamori warns that a tsunami can reach the shore within just a few minutes in some areas if a big quake occurs along the Nankai Trough.

“Run immediately when you feel the shaking. That is the cardinal rule in those areas,” Yamori said.

“Information about tsunami can change anytime, like it did in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Levees may break from a quake and cause more flooding than expected. Even if the agency issues a ‘no tsunami’ bulletin, people need to pay attention to updates and be prepared to evacuate immediately if the risk increases.”

(This article was written by Emi Iwata and Yuji Masuyama.)