Hiroki Kaniya’s fishing boat was washed away by the quake-triggered tsunami on Jan. 1, and the first floor of his house remains a mess.

The 60-year-old fisherman and his family are now staying at a community meeting place as evacuees in the Misaki-machi district of Suzu, one of the hardest-hit areas in the disaster.

But Kaniya is reluctant to leave his hometown for more comfortable accommodations at a “secondary” evacuation center.

“If we could all evacuate together, that would make sense, but we can’t leave the elderly here. The younger ones would have to stay behind,” he said.

The Ishikawa prefectural government on Jan. 16 said 1,278 people had moved to secondary evacuation centers, such as hotels and inns. That is only 7 percent of the more than 17,000 evacuees in the prefecture.

The majority of them are holed up in primary evacuation centers, such as gymnasiums and assembly halls, and concerns are rising about sanitary conditions and infectious diseases, particularly at shelters where water supplies have been cut off.

The prefectural government is urging evacuees to relocate to hotels in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa.

But many disaster victims are hesitant because they are worried about changes in their environment and do not want to leave familiar places and faces.

Kanazawa is more than 100 kilometers south of Suzu.

Kaniya, who plans to rebuild his house in the same place in Suzu, has been a fisherman for more than 40 years.

He is worried that if he leaves Suzu for Kanazawa, he might have to find a new occupation.

“If you tell me to do another job now, I can’t do that. It might have been OK when I was young,” he said.

In the Otani-machi district of Suzu, near the tip of the Noto Peninsula, about 150 evacuees were staying in the gymnasium of Otani elementary and junior high schools on Jan. 16.

After the New Year’s Day earthquake, roads leading to the district were blocked by landslides and other obstacles, and the area was isolated for two weeks.

During that time, the Self-Defense Forces delivered supplies, but water trucks could not get through.

The quake victims washed their hands in buckets of rainwater, collected their waste in plastic bags, and stacked the bags in a corner of the schoolyard.

On Jan. 14, city officials visited the gymnasium and called on residents to move to secondary evacuation centers. The officials said they would try to keep people from the same villages together for the relocation.

“We will do our best to evacuate collectively by village as much as possible,” one official said.

Many of the evacuees agreed.

But in mountainous areas of the district, where many homes withstood the shaking from the quake, residents are supporting themselves by drinking spring water and burning wood to heat water for their baths.

Some of them do not want to move, saying, “We can live with what we have now.”

Takashi Kawabata, 60, who is in charge of the shelter at the school gymnasium, said residents of the district developed strong bonds long before the earthquake.

They have shared agricultural and marine products, taken care of elderly family members together, and cooperated in crime prevention activities, he said.

“If they leave the district, they will no longer be able to help each other, and there is a fear that they will lose their livelihoods,” Kawabata said.

But he noted that if another major earthquake strikes, the district could become isolated again.

“I want to evacuate everyone to a safe place while we still can,” he said, impatiently.

The prefectural government has secured rooms at about 1,000 hotels, inns and other facilities south of Kanazawa as secondary evacuation centers for around 30,000 people.

It opened a call center on Jan. 14 to hear the wishes of quake victims and make arrangements at the evacuation sites.

Officials said they have increased the number of phone lines at the center from 15 to 20, and will raise the number further to 30 because the center has “received so many inquiries that it has been difficult for other people to connect.”

The prefecture has also carried out “evacuations of entire communities” by collectively moving people in an isolated village to a secondary location.

On Jan. 16, about 100 people in the Konosu district of Wajima were expecting to be transported to Nonoichi, a city neighboring Kanazawa.

Municipal governments are also trying to meet the wishes of evacuees, but the decision to leave can be difficult.

Suzu Mayor Masuhiro Izumiya tells residents at evacuation centers, “If you would like to apply for a secondary evacuation, please do so.”

He also informs them that moving is not mandatory.

“There are concerns that if healthy people move out in droves, the community will lose its strength,” Izumiya said.

He said there is no right answer.

“What kind of approach will lead to the protection of the lives of the local people? We need to think and act carefully,” the mayor said.

(This article was written by Tomomi Terasawa, Kantaro Katashima, Ayaka Kibi, Chiaki Ogihara, and Tomoyoshi Kubo.)