Why did so many people die in the 1995 Kobe Earthquake?

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Why did so many people die in the 1995 Kobe Earthquake?

The Kobe Earthquake disaster took many innocent lives from the Japanese people in 1995. The main life loss was due to primary and secondary, physical and human factors. So throughout I will state some of the factors which contributed to the very high death toll.

Kobe was very close to the epicentre of the earthquake, meaning that they took the heaviest part of the shock and the earth’s crust split. This brought down buildings in the centre of the town, the main port of Kobe was also destroyed, as the plates sub ducted some of the ground liquefied and part of the area fell into the sea. The size of the earthquake caused buildings to collapse which meant the people within them perished, many of the older buildings were built with concrete roofs and the majority which were built before 1960 collapsed along with the wooden framed buildings.

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As the earthquake hit, gas pipes underneath the ground were hit by the tremors, this set off fires throughout the city. Due to all the buildings that had collapsed, emergency services could not reach the victims with ease, they either could not reach some of the survivors or had to take a long diversion to get to them another way. People who were trapped under rubble therefore could not be saved so many lives were lost due to the vehicles being blocked off by the primary human factor of the buildings collapsing, so one factor leads onto another here and ...

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