A Tohoku University study says only 8 percent of the Pacific coast hospitals thought to be at risk from the dreaded Nankai Trough earthquake scenario have contingency plans in place to arrange for external assistance.
The survey was sent to 2,898 hospitals, drawing responses from 614.
The findings, released Saturday, come nearly five years after a magnitude-9.0 offshore earthquake spawned giant tsunami that wrecked much of the Tohoku region's Pacific coastline on March 11, 2011, killing nearly 20,000 people.