The relationship between the two plate boundaries is that they both slide past each other underneath the earths crust.
When the two plates move against each other they can sometimes become stuck this causes energy to build up between them because neither of them can move. When the energy is released tremors are sent through the ground, which causes an earthquake.
The Kobe earthquake was caused when the Eurasian plate collided with the Philippine plate on January 17th 1995 at 05:46am. As these two plates collided with each other there was a hazard of an earthquake and there was one. The rocks at the plate boundary snagged and energy was built up. Eventually on the day of the earthquake the rocks unsnagged and the two plates broke free, releasing the energy out from the focus to the epicentre and many people died. It lasted for 20 seconds on land. It lasted a 2 whole minutes on the reclaimed land which is where the famous port was built. The epicentre of the earthquake was 20 km SW from Kobe at the Awaji Island. The Earthquake measured 7.5 on the Richter scale.
Effects on People:
5,500 people died in the earthquake mainly because most of the population was asleep. 35,000 people were injured and 300,000 people were made homeless after this devastating event.
Effects on Communications and Transport:
The Kobe port was badly damaged. 550m of the Hanshin Expressway twisted and collapsed, three quarters of the city water supply was lost so the Kobe fire stations had problems putting out the fires, 300 fires were caused many by broken gas pipes and 12 fires went on for 2 days before they could be put out.
Effects on Buildings:
The devastation was on a very large scale 180,000 buildings were damaged and 102,000 buildings were destroyed. The Kobe Governments estimate to restore everything was $150 billion dollars for the state buildings only.
Effects on Industry (Economic impact):
The Economic impact in the 1995 earthquake may be the largest ever caused by a natural disaster in modern times because of the loss of workers, the business interruption, the loss of production and the number of businesses that moved away. The effects were so severe that sewers discharged their contents onto the street and electricity posts collapsed with falling buildings.
Where are Mr and Mrs Endo?
Mrs Endo was trapped under the rubble of her home and died of suffocation after 36 hours, she couldn’t get out mainly because the roof of their house was made of heavy concrete tiles. The house was built before the 1960’s so it wouldn’t be able to withstand an earthquake. The residents of Mr and Mrs Endo would not have been ale to help her because they live in the older residential part of Kobe called Nishinomiya so most people who lived there were old. I know this because her husband Mr Endo couldn’t help her because he went to visit his son Kazuo on the evening of January 16th and spent the night there. Mr Endo and his son Kazuo didn’t die because his son lived in a new apartment block in central Kobe. New apartment blocks had computer programs in to adjust to the shaking of earthquakes. I believe Mr Endo and his son Kazuo are still alive and are living somewhere in Japan because Kazuo’s new apartment block and the technology saved their lives. I believe that Mrs Endo suffered a terrifying death and that her family will always remember her.