SENDAI (Jiji Press) — The Sendai High Court on Thursday ordered the Miyagi prefectural and Ishinomaki municipal governments to pay a total of some ¥1,436 million in damages to the families of 23 elementary school children killed in the March 2011 tsunami, slightly raising the compensation amount from that set by a lower court.
The higher sum came as the high court newly acknowledged the negligence of defendants to compile antidisaster measures before the tsunami, unleashed by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake that mainly rocked the Tohoku region on March 11, 2011.
In October 2016, the Sendai District Court ordered the prefectural government of Miyagi and the city of Ishinomaki in the prefecture to pay some ¥1,426 million to the bereaved families, finding teachers and other staff employees at Okawa Elementary School, run by the city, liable for the children’s deaths.
The district court said the school employees failed to evacuate the children to an appropriate place although they could have anticipated a massive tsunami some seven minutes before the water reached the school.
However, it stopped short of recognizing the negligence of the school or city in terms of their antidisaster measures, pointing out it was impossible to foresee the tsunami before the disaster.
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