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On October 16, 2019, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held the sixth meeting of the Emergency Response Headquarters for Typhoon No. 19* of 2019 at the Prime Minister’s Office.
 
Based on the discussion, the Prime Minister said,
 
“In the disaster-affected areas, more than 1,300 government staff, including the cross-ministerial Team to Support the daily Lives of Disaster Victims, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism’s Technical Emergency Control FORCE (TEC-FORCE), and liaisons from the Ministry of Defense, are exerting every effort, along with the ongoing strenuous search operations by the front-line units. With regard to the push-mode support, as of today, approximately 140,000 food and beverage items, 2,000 cardboard beds, and other supplies have been delivered to the affected areas. There is a growing need in the affected areas for cold protection, and we are also delivering items such as blankets and hot carpets to evacuation centers.
 
As various support takes off, it is important to provide information regarding those relief supplies and other related issues in a concrete and easy-to-understand manner, so that those affected by the disaster have access to them. In addition to information through each ministry, we will publicize the assistance available in each region via the Prime Minister’s Office homepage.
 
In order to further strengthen push-mode support going forward, we have today approved 710 billion yen of disbursements from contingency funds. We will continue to allocate the necessary funding to ensure that the affected local governments will be able to exert every effort towards emergency response and recovery without worrying about their finances.
 
Those affected by the disaster are also feeling anxious about how to secure housing and we need to proceed with relevant work for that. We will secure housing such as private apartments. In addition, it is essential to issue Disaster Victim Certificates swiftly in order to provide emergency housing and advance efforts to rebuild housing. We have decided to dispatch support staff from local governments outside the prefectures affected by the disaster to 20 municipalities affected by the disaster in five prefectures, so as to facilitate the swift implementation of damage certification assessments by the municipalities. Going forward, please continue to extend support deemed to be necessary.
 
Circumstances permitting, I will visit the affected areas to obtain a better sense of the actual damages and listen to requests directly from the people and the local governments affected by the disaster. Tomorrow, I plan to visit Miyagi Prefecture and Fukushima Prefecture.
 
Heavy rains are expected to fall in the affected areas over the weekend. As the river levels have already risen and the soil may have loosened in some places, it is necessary to maintain the utmost vigilance.
 
I ask all of you to continue to exert every effort for those affected by the disaster, and not let up in recovery and reconstruction efforts.”
 
*Typhoon Hagibis