HIKAWA, KUMAMOTO PREF. – Local dry cleaning and laundry businesses in Kumamoto Prefecture are washing clothes without charge for disaster evacuees following last month’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake. A laundry facility affiliated with the White Express dry cleaning and laundry chain in the Miyahara district of the town of Hikawa has sent a vehicle every morning on business days since Aug. 7 — 10 days after the July 28 quake — to collect bags of clothing from evacuation centers. It washes and dries more than 1,000 items, including towels and underwear, each day and returns them to evacuees.
Folding freshly dried T-shirts and trousers, 64-year-old employee Mihoko Tsukamoto said, “We want to help disaster-affected people whose homes have been destroyed and who cannot even take a warm bath.” Amid consecutive days of scorching heat, many locals wash their clothes by hand at evacuation centers or return to their damaged homes to do laundry. Behind the initiative is the Disaster Sentaku Assistance Team (DSAT), a volunteer network of professional cleaners launched after a powerful quake in the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, in January 2024. Sentaku means washing in Japanese.
In collaboration with a laundry and dry cleaning industry association in Kumamoto, the team called on local businesses in the cities of Yatsushiro and Uki to join the initiative. Laundry costs under the initiative are covered by support funds given to the DSAT and other sources. Expecting a potential increase in demand for laundry services for clothes retrieved from collapsed houses, Nakamura said, “We want to keep supporting people as long as there are requests.”
Extract — continue reading at the source.
