Amid the nationwide push to prepare for a possible North Korean missile strike, there are questions about the effectiveness of carrying out evacuation drill considering the short time it takes for a missile to reach Japanese territory after launch.
On Friday, about 550 people in the Sea of Japan coastal city of Sakata, Yamagata Prefecture, participated in an evacuation drill conducted under a scenario that the city received central government reports that a missile was headed its way. When the first report arrived, a siren went off and residents were told, either electronically or by town officials, to take cover in their homes, underground shelters and ditches if they were out in the fields.
"Afterward, some participants noted there was very little time to think about where to evacuate, and that they only had a few minutes to decide where to go," said Toru Omori, a Yamagata Prefecture official in the disaster management section who was involved in the drill.
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