On January 26 our Tokyo Head Office held the “Emergency Task Force Headquarters First-Response Drill.” This event was organized as a full-fledged training session hypothesizing the occurrence of the so-called “Nankai Trough Earthquake” – a huge temblor predicted to occur in Japan’s southwest Honshu and northern Shikoku islands sometime in the near future.
The day began by assembling the 41 PPC employees assigned as members of the Emergency Response Task Force Headquarters and various support teams. Everyone then took part in a simulation-format drill developed jointly with the expert support of an outside risk management consulting firm.
For the drill, the only premise was that the session would hypothesize the type and caliber of disaster expected in the event of the Nankai Trough Earthquake. Absolutely no other information was disclosed to participants prior to the actual quake training. All teams simply viewed a special drill-use DVD, then gathering and organizing information distributed for that occasion. The individual members worked to determine what to do at each steps.
This format enabled participants to experience the inherent difficulties of integrating and sharing key information in emergencies, with each team successfully identifying the particular themes to be addressed at such times. We will share and compare the experiences during this drill among the various team and departments, working to put the experiences from this day to effective use in the event of an earthquake or other major disaster in the future.
