Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake
On January 17, at 5:46am there was one of the most devastating earthquakes ever to hit Japan.
An earthquake with a 7.2 on the Richter scale, hit the city of Kobe. Its epicentre was near the city on Awaji island, just 14 km under the ground. It killed 6,433 people, and let 300.000 people homeless, with a population of 1,5 million makes that 1 on 5 people.
This earthquake which is know as the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake (or the Hanshin-Awaij-daishinsai), was the worst earthquake in Japan since the great Kanto earthquake in 1923, in which 140.000 people died.
The earthquake caused over 100 billion US dollar in damage, with destroying buildings, railways, and the Hansin Expressway (which links Kobe and Osaka interconnecting much of the region surrounding Osaka Bay) collapsed. 1,2 million houses had no water, 1 million houses had no power, and 850,000 people had no gas, and most of the communication lines were destroyed directly after the quake.
On the day of the earthquake more then 100 fire’s broke out, but due the lack of water and the interruption of the transportation access, the fire service was not effective in putting out the fire’s. The fires spread over large areas and let 5,864 houses burn down.
The government applied the disaster relief law, and rescue activities were implemented in the Kobe (Hyogo) area and some area’s of the city Osaka. 27.000 policemen , 29,000 personnel from the Self defence Force, 83 rescue teams of the fire defence agency, 110 fire brigades, and 65 other teams were mobilized in this disaster.
The rescue activities were difficult, because of the roads where blocked by cars, or they were damaged, and the lack of water and power made it even worse.
After the earthquake.
It took months to restore the railways, and a lot of the transport like busses were also destroyed , so busses from all of the country did there best to help out. The port of Kobe, was Japans largest port before the earthquake hit, but the port was so heavily damaged that it lost its size, right now the port is on a 3rd place of Japan.
The city has been building better constructions for houses, bridges, and highways, so that when another earthquake of this size will occure, the damage and the numbers of fatalities will be reduced.The government understood that safety should be first above all other things.
In Kobe city is a memorial park, this area was heavily damaged and has been preserved in its damaged state as a memory of the earthquake. Also there is the Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution located in Sannomiya where you can get all information about the earthquake, see video’s and hear story’s from the volunteers there.
Do you want more information about the earthquake or want to know more about the restoration of the city, have a look at the link section for links to other website’s.