The purpose of this study was to obtain basic data for disaster prevention. We investigated cases of snow-related disaster that occurred in Hokkaido. The following results were obtained.
1) A proportional relationship was found between the number of snow-related disas-ter reported in newspapers and the number of such accidents reported to police ; the former was about one-third of the latter. Thus, this relationship can serve as an index of snow-related disaster in Hokkaido.
2) Examination of police records showed that most of the snow-related disaster occurred in cities during daily life activities. Moreover, many of the victims were people over 60 years old, indicating that the occurrence of snow-related disaster is a problem especially for elderly people living in snowy regions.
3) Many of the snow-related disaster occurred during the removal of snow and ice from buildings or the removal of roof snow, and such accidents dramatically increased in years of heavy snowfall. Thus, the occurrence of snow-related disaster is greatly affected not only by meteorological conditions such as amount of snow-fall but also by residential area planning and by the construction design of individ-ual buildings.
4) It was found that, in contrast to the immediate increase in the number of snow-related traffic disaster following an increase in the amount of snowfall, the num-ber of snow-related disaster begins to increase at about 10-20 days after an increase in the amount of snowfall.
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