2014 Volume 3 Issue 2 Pages 31-38
This article describes our participation in a civil protection training exercise with a dirty bomb scenario that was held jointly by the Japanese government (Cabinet Secretariat), Aomori Prefecture and Hirosaki City on November 7, 2013. Our missions took place mainly in an evacuation area (safe shelter) and included a surface contamination survey, decontamination, risk communication, and interviews on participants‘ symptom and history. In total, 40 members of our faculty played important roles in this exercise in cooperation with staff from other organizations. About 240 evacuees were transported to an evacuation area for surface contamination surveys, interviews, group risk communication and filling out registration forms. Decontamination or personal consultation was also performed if necessary. Despite some confusion caused by multiple staffs from different organizations working together and many casualties coming in one after another, we believe that most of our tasks were successfully implemented as a result of our faculty’s experience with the project for radiation emergency medicine (REM) professions. Although nuclear disaster is considered rare, its effects are serious, and we must prepare a system to enable an effective response Our project which involves developing human resources for REM is considered essential for this purpose.
