Photo/Illutration The leveled area around the Wajima morning market in Ishikawa Prefecture remains almost unchanged on Feb. 29, about two months after the Noto Peninsula earthquake. (Shinnosuke Ito)

Two months after the powerful Noto Peninsula earthquake disrupted residents' daily lives, 19,000 households in Ishikawa Prefecture remain without water. 

The extensive damage to water pipes and the severing of roads from the Jan. 1 quake is hampering water restoration work to the most severely impacted areas.  

According to the prefectural government, the earthquake cut off water to around 110,000 households in 16 cities and towns.

Prefectural officials prioritized restoration of the water service.

By early February, water had been restored in nine cities and towns. However, work has been slow in the hardest-hit municipalities, with Suzu at 3.1 percent and Wajima at 41.8 percent of water services restored. 

The lack of water and insufficient temporary housing have prolonged the evacuation period.

The earthquake, which measured the maximum 7 on Japan’s seismic intensity scale, damaged 75,421 houses in Ishikawa Prefecture, with at least 23 percent either completely or partially destroyed.

Roughly 13,000 houses were damaged in Wajima and around 9,400 in Suzu, with half of those in Wajima and about 60 percent in Suzu being completely or partially destroyed.

There were 7,884 requests for temporary housing, but only 302 units were completed by the end of February.

Construction of 4,600 emergency temporary housing units is expected to begin in the prefecture by late March, yet this will only meet less than 60 percent of the requests.

According to the prefectural government, 11,447 people are still evacuated, many of whom are unable to return to their homes due to water outages.

Of these, 5,759 people are staying at primary evacuation centers such as school gymnasiums.

Around 140 people are staying in their cars, raising concerns that their health condition may deteriorate.

The number of sections along Noto Satoyama Kaido road that are open to one-way traffic has increased, allowing more water and sewage system repair work.

The prefectural government expects that water service will be mostly restored by the end of March.

Many factors have contributed to the slow progress of recovery from damages caused by the earthquake, such as widespread liquefaction and road conditions that have hindered transportation.

The Jan. 1 earthquake caused widespread damage to water purification plants and distribution pipes in the prefecture.

The area is rich in groundwater, so ground liquefaction caused many manholes to pop up, severely damaging the sewage system.

Wajima city has been receiving support from Tokyo and seven other cities from the Kyushu and Shikoku regions, but resumption of water service is challenging.

Another factor is collapsed houses. Debris on the roads blocked workers from entering the areas so water pipes under the houses could not be repaired.

Removing debris needs the homeowner’s permission, but evacuees are unable to return home due to water outages, which delays water restoration work.

Securing sufficient work hours is also challenging. After the earthquake, many workers had to commute several hours from other locations because local accommodations were not suitable due to the lack of water.

Over the two months, 80 percent of water service in the prefecture has been restored, with the remaining 19,000 households still affected.

Although circumstances are different, this is slower compared to the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes, where 90 percent of water supply was restored within a week, and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, which saw a 57 percent recovery in a week.

Along the sewage system, about 65 percent of the 393 kilometers of pipes in the northern part of Noto Peninsula were damaged.

“It will take one to two years for the city’s sewage system to be fully restored,” said an official of the Wajima city waterworks bureau.

Restoring the region's vital water service is taking time, so recovery remains a long way off in the affected areas.

(This article was written by Yoshinori Doi, Eriko Nami and Akina Nishi.)

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