On Oct. 23, 2004, a series of powerful earthquakes, including one with a magnitude of 6.8, devastated the Chuetsu region in Niigata Prefecture. Of the 51 deaths, 16 were directly caused by the devastation. Most of the remaining deaths were caused by "economy-class syndrome," in which survivors who tried to live out of their cars in the wake of the quakes suffered blood clots in their legs. A year later, 9,000 survivors still live in prefabricated houses. They must find new residences by December 2006, when their temporary-housing facilities are scheduled to close. Some survivors have lost sources of income, and roads remain closed in 47 places.

Many communities hit by the temblors were located in mountainous areas and became isolated. Lessons must be learned to minimize damage in future earthquakes. One lesson is the importance of quake-proofing lines of communication. In the village of Yamakoshi (now part of the city of Nagaoka), which was hit by a quake with an intensity greater than six on the Japanese scale of seven, it took the village mayor up to six hours to get in touch with the Niigata Prefectural Government. His barely operable mobile phone was the only link between the village and the prefectural government in Niigata City.

Landslides made roads impassable at many places in Yamakoshi village and power blackouts rendered ordinary telephones unusable. Most mobile phones were also unusable because the quakes damaged their base antennas. As a result, the communities in the village were isolated and the villagers were unable to send their rescue requests to the village office. The latter, in turn, had a difficult time grasping the extent of the damage. The prefectural government had built a satellite-based emergency-radio network linking it with municipal governments in the prefecture, but this system did not work either because the strong tremors damaged the radio equipment installed in the Yamakoshi village office.