Catastrophes and Insurance

     We write this short post to share our concerns about this journey. Regardless of how well we manage to prepare for the travel, how well planned our route is, or how well developed is the country we are going to visit... nothing escapes the fury of nature, above all when that comes under the name of “monsoon.” We've already talked, in a previous post, of the risks that regularly abate on the Japanese archipelago. Nevertheless, I think we are still oblivious of the real danger of these nature forces.

     This morning we woke up to the news of heavy rains as the cause of 20 casualties, plus some 230,000 people evacuated, in the Kyushu region. Had we not studied carefully past years statistics on the weather concerning the regions we planned to go for our adventure, we would have, most probably, been caught in the middle of the consequences of this catastrophic incident. We report the news as published in El País newspaper:

     “We have been informed, by a news agency from Kyodo, that the authorities have ordered the evacuation of some 230,000 people in four provinces of Southern Japan due to the torrential rains that have affected these regions in the past few days, and that have caused already 20 casualties and 8 missing people.”

     “The order of evacuation affects the provinces of Fukuoka, Oita, Saga, and Kumamoto, in the Southern island of Kyushu, where persistent storms have been reported and many rivers have bursted their banks.”

     “The Japanese Metereology Agency has warned that the intensity of these rains has reached  levels “unprecedented” in the island.”

     “In Fukuoka, where 180,000 people have been evacuated and the level of the water has reached peaks of 110 millimeters in the time of just a hour this morning, three people have been submerged by landslides, of which two were rescued, while the third, a 83-years-old woman, remains missing.”

     “Meanwhile the Police continues searching other seven people who have gone missing in the provinces of Oita and Kumamoto.”

     “It is in Kumamoto where the rain has caused the highest number of casualties, with at least 18 people who have lost their life because of landslides, or the collapsing of their houses due to the heavy rain.”

     “Due to the rain, the Metereology Agency has kept the alert up in six provinces in Southern Japan (Fukuoka, Oita, Saga, Kumamoto, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima). The alert is at its yellow level in more than 30 regions in the South, Centre, and North of the country.”

     The unfortunate news of these catastrophes has pushed us to do something we had been procrastrinating about for too long, a good travel insurance for “multiadventurous” journey we are about to undertake. Surprisingly enough, that ended up being not as expensive as we feared (just 99€ per year, and with worldwide coverage). If you are interested in knowing more about our travel insurance (even thou we cannot guarantee on its efficiency yet), check out Seguro Aventura Plus. Still, we really hope we won't need to check the efficiency of our insurance this time!