Photo/Illutration Residents evacuate to a subway station during a drill in Tokyo’s Bunkyo Ward in January 2018 under the scenario of a ballistic missile having been launched. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Alarmed by the crisis in Ukraine, local authorities are listing subway stations as temporary emergency shelters for citizens in the event of missile or other attacks.

More than 400 underground stops were designated in June, about triple the number prior to the Russian invasion in February.

“We have accelerated designation procedures because the invasion heightened our awareness of crisis,” said a Tokyo metropolitan government official.

The Tokyo metropolitan government in May listed 105 stations along the Toei Subway and Tokyo Metro lines as emergency shelters.

Officials expect those taking shelter there will move elsewhere for their safety in one to two hours because subway stations are designed to serve only as temporary evacuation facilities.

The Osaka prefectural government, as well as the Osaka and Sakai municipal governments, designated 108 Osaka Metro stations in March.

The civil protection law that took effect in 2004 puts the onus on 47 prefectural governors and the mayors of 20 major cities to designate sturdy concrete structures, such as schools, community centers and gymnasiums, as emergency shelters.

According to the Cabinet Secretariat, 94,125 locations nationwide were given that designation as of April 2021.

But only 1,278 of those facilities were situated below ground level, allowing them to better withstand blasts caused by missile strikes. Subway stations can accommodate large numbers of evacuees, but none was included.

The central government called on local authorities to include large underground facilities, such as subway stations, on their shelter lists over the course of five years from fiscal 2021.

In Ukraine, citizens evacuated to subway facilities for protection against Russian missiles raining down on their cities.

The number of subway stations in Japan designated as emergency shelters shot up to 409 as of June 1, from 142 on Feb. 23, a day before Russia invaded its neighbor.

Concerns remain that many subway stations are situated in relatively shallow locations.

Roppongi Station on Tokyo’s Toei Oedo Line, Japan’s deepest subway station, lies at a depth of 42.3 meters, while some underground stops in Ukraine are situated more than 100 meters below the surface.

Mitsuru Fukuda, a professor of risk management studies at Nihon University and an expert in civil protection, said adequate preparations are necessary for handling the stampede of people fleeing to safety.

“Evacuation to subway stations is expected to increase the probability of survival (in the event of a missile attack), although it cannot be called foolproof,” he said. “Local governments and subway operators need to conduct training on how to safely guide a rush of citizens.”

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