An evacuation drill is held on Dec. 13, 2025, in Osaka by Osaka Metro Co. in preparation for a Nankai Trough megaquake. (Kyodo)
OSAKA (Kyodo) — Osaka Metro Co. conducted a disaster drill early Saturday at a train station in the major western Japan city it serves to prepare for a scenario in which large tsunami, triggered by a Nankai Trough megaquake off Japan’s Pacific coast, hit the transport system.
The drill also simulated a scenario where a train made an emergency stop due to strong shaking, causing a passenger’s bag to fall and a portable battery to ignite. About 180 rail employees and Osaka city firefighters joined the drill at Umeda Station on the Midosuji Line.
The simulated battery fire was located inside the train, which was stranded in the scenario between stations due to widespread power outages caused by the quake that registered an upper 6 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7.
A drill is held to extinguish a portable battery fire that was simulated to have ignited inside an Osaka Metro Co. train in Osaka on Dec. 13, 2025. (Kyodo)
An earthquake of that intensity makes it impossible for people to remain standing or move without crawling.
Participants evacuated train passengers from the last car onto the tracks and drilled procedures to extinguish the fire. After the evacuation was completed, staff closed off the platform with flood barriers to protect from tsunami flooding also expected in the area.
Noriyuki Watanabe, head of crisis management for Osaka Metro, said, “We were able to reconfirm what actions to take if a fire breaks out at the station or on a train.”
AloJapan.com