Japan's internal affairs ministry on Wednesday presented a new plan to send officials from some prefectures to help other areas hit hard by a possible massive earthquake in the Nankai Trough off the country's Pacific coast.
The ministry selected 10 prefectures, mainly from on the Sea of Japan coast and the northern part of the Kanto region, to send such officials.
Under the new plan, for example, the prefectural governments of Toyama, Fukushima and Shimane will send officials to Shizuoka, Aichi and Kochi, respectively, in the event of a Nankai Trough megaquake.
The ministry will formally adopt the new plan by the end of fiscal 2024 for implementation in April.
The current system for such official dispatches was created in March 2018, based on lessons learned from the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes. Following the Noto Peninsula earthquake in January 2024, a total of about 116,000 officials were dispatched to 18 affected municipalities, including those in Ishikawa Prefecture, from 63 municipalities elsewhere in the country. However, the municipalities to which they were assigned were decided after the disaster occurred.
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