How People Find Their Way Back Home During a Natural Disaster

摘要

The 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, which was a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, caused a paralysis of the railway system and stranded as many as 5.15 million people in Tokyo, which is about 380 km from the location of the epicenter. In this study, an online questionnaire survey was conducted on how individuals returned home duri ng the aftermath of the earthquake. In particular, we investigated how they obtained their route information to return home when regular transportation services and adequate information were not available. We performed a logistic regression analysis, and found that the level of difficulty and the process of acquiring route information varied by age, travel time, distance, level of knowing the way, departure time and initial location.