Due to the fact that the quake occurred during the evening , there were a large number of cars on the freeways at the time. Very unfortunately, and in an unusual meeting of events, the two local teams (the and the ) were about to start their third game of the which was due to start shortly after 5:30pm meaning that as well as the evening rush, many people had left work early to go and watch the match. As a consequence, the usually crowded highways such as the Nimitz Freeway and the Bay Bridge were experiencing exceptionally light traffic at the time. Not taking this into account, initial media reports guessed the death toll at 300, a number that was corrected in the days after the earthquake.
After the 1906 earthquake much of the rubble was bulldozed into San Francisco Bay. This reclaimed land was built upon and was extremely unstable. In the Loma Prieta earthquake many buildings on this reclaimed land were destroyed. Extensive damage also occurred in San Francisco's Marina District, where many expensive homes built on filled ground collapsed. Fires raged in some sections of the city and as water mains had broke; there was a lack of water. San Francisco's fireboat (the Phoenix) was used to pump salt water from San Francisco Bay through hoses dragged through streets by citizen volunteers. Power was cut to most of San Francisco and was not fully restored for several days. Deaths in Santa Cruz occurred from the secondary effects as brick storefronts and sidewalls in the historic downtown (what was then called the Pacific Garden Mall) tumbled down on people exiting the buildings. Between 6 and 8 billion dollars were spent rebuilding San Francisco.
After the earthquake struck, despite it being not expected America gathered immediate help and relief. Private donations poured in to aid relief efforts and on , signed a $3.45 billion earthquake relief package for California. The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program involves scientists and local governments to try and protect America from such devastating outcomes form earthquakes.
Earthquakes remain a serious threat to the San Francisco Bay area. Large quakes will certainly shake this built-up area in coming decades, but the impacts of these events can be reduced. Continuing advances in science and engineering and improved methods of construction, land use, emergency response, and disaster recovery will offer new ways to limit losses and reduce impacts of future shocks.
On January 17, 1995, at 5:46:52 am, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake shook Kobe and its surrounding towns. The epicentre was located at 34.641˚ N. and 135.179˚ E, on the northern end of Awaji Island, 20km away from the city of Kobe. The earthquake occurred due to a build up of friction between the Pacific, Eurasian and the Philippine tectonic plates. The denser pacific plate is being pushed under the dense Philippine plate. This plate is being subducted under the less dense Eurasian plate creating a very big collision. The focus of the earthquake was 20km under its epicentre
The earthquake killed over 5,000 people, 500 of which were killed in one of the 300 fires that came as a secondary effect to the earthquake. The immense amount of fires was due to the timing of the earthquake. As it was at quarter to six on a Friday morning, a majority of people were cooking their breakfast. This meant that when the gas pipes leaked, fires were caused by cookers, broken electricity wires and hot embers from fireplaces. The scale of fires had never been seen before and it took firemen about 2 days, to control the fires that burned down over 7000 buildings. Luckily for Kobe, it rained shortly after, helping to extinguish the fires. Otherwise, the damage would have been a great deal worse. During the earthquake the ground moved up to 50 centimetres horizontally and up to 1 metre vertically which also caused a majority of deaths.
In this case unlike in America the authorities didn’t handle this phenomenon well. Japan prides itself on being well prepared for earthquakes. Most new buildings and roads have, in the last 20 years, been designed to be earthquake proof, schools and factories have regular earthquake drills, etc. As it turned out, however, things did not go according to plan. Many older buildings still collapsed or caught fire. This led to many blocked roads and massive problems with the homeless. Telephones and other communication services were put out of action making communication slow and difficult. Electricity and water supplies were badly damaged over large areas. This meant no power for heating, lights, cooking, etc. Clean, fresh water was in short supply until April 1995, that’s 3 months later!! The government and city authorities were criticised for being slow to rescue people and for refusing offers of help from other countries. Many people had to sleep in cars or tents in cold winter conditions. A large number of the people affected were elderly and many of the effects are immeasurable disrupted schooling, increased unemployment, worry, stress and mental fatigue.
Access to the sites of earthquakes is always likely to be restricted, because ground movements damage roads and railways; however, the Kobe earthquake did more than anyone expected. Supposedly earthquake-proof roadways failed to do their job and collapsed. Kobe is situated on a strip of flat land between high mountains and the sea. This rather narrow strip of land carries all the communications routes between north-eastern Japan and western Japan. Emergency aid for the city needed to use these routes, but many of them were destroyed during the earthquake. The famous high-speed railway link connecting Tokyo with western Japan was cut in half when the bridges in Kobe fell down. The only other two rail links were also cut during the quake.
Damage worth an estimated £100 billion was caused to roads, houses, factories and infrastructure (gas, electric, water, sewerage, phone cables, etc).
Seeing as the authorities were slow to rescue everyone and accept that they needed help, you would have thought they would rush everything else to make up for it. But they didn’t! Water, electricity, gas, telephone services were fully working by July 1995 (7 months later), a year after the earthquake 80% of the port was working but the Hanshin Expressway was still closed and by January 1999, some people still had to live in temporary accommodation! Yet, as well as the above bad things, the Government passed new laws for the manufacture of buildings, more instruments were installed to measure vibrations and over 134,000 housing units had been built.