The Earthquake
The earthquake struck at 5.40 a.m. on Tuesday, 17th January 1995. The epicentre of the earthquake was only a couple of kilometres away from Kobe’s port, 90% of which were destroyed.
Most people were asleep and weren’t expecting anything when the earthquake happened. Many died in their sleep; others woke as they felt the weight of their house on them.
Most of the houses that were destroyed in the quake were built before the 1980’s, with poor or old people living in them. Mostly the old houses were destroyed, because since 1981 Japanese houses have been built to be earthquake proof.
In January 1995 an expressway connecting Kobe with Osaka collapsed during the 1995 Kobe earthquake.
Japan is a rich and technologically very advanced country, and some of the late designed buildings in central Kobe have structures, which are computer controlled and adjust to earth movements. Therefore, none of the modern buildings in the city centre were caused severe damage.
Problems causing death
When the earthquake happened, many buildings collapsed, but many more lives could have been saved if the emergency services would have been prepared.
Japan and Kobe have a very high population density (310/square km) and when the buildings broke and fell, a high number of people were affected.
The underground water pipes were broken by tremors during the earthquake. This caused collapsed buildings to flood and people stuck underneath the ruins of their houses to drown.
As the houses fell to the ground, gas pipes exploded and fires burnt all over the city. Trapped people were burned or died from smoke before fire engines could help. Many ambulances and fire engines were unable to reach damaged areas because collapsed buildings blocked the roads. Even as the fire engines arrived, they soon ran out of water, before the fires were put out.
People were all willing to help, and may volunteers dug through the rubble with their bare hands to search for victims. Many of the survivors were immediately taken to a central building with stockpiles of food, water and blankets.
It was just as difficult to put all the injured and dying people in hospital, because there weren’t enough places for everyone, and as several hospitals in the old part if Kobe were destroyed, it was hard to put the sick people into hospital immediately.
Long-term problems
Some time after the earthquake, the death rate was still very high. People that were injured in the earthquake were still dying from injuries and others were more likely to get ill after much dust was raised in the quake.
The earthquake had been deadly for many old and/or poor citizens of Kobe, and for those that survived the quake, it was just as hard to survive the time after it. Many people lost their families and some were unable to care after themselves or work. A large number of people lost their jobs; poverty became very common.
Kobe’s, Japan’s and the world’s industry suffered greatly. Kobe’s port, the largest container port of the world, was fully destroyed. The government also lost much money after the earthquake after spending it on building new houses, schools, hospitals, shopping malls, shrines, basically building a new part of town.
There were, and still are, many more minor and not so minor problems, such as all the homeless people, for which the government failed to provide houses, children couldn’t go to school because it had been destroyed. Hundreds of buildings and hundreds of lives had to be rebuilt after the catastrophe.
Kobe has still not fully recovered from the earthquake in 1995. But maybe now people are more prepared for the next one.
There is a manual about how to survive in an earthquake, but there is no manual about how to survive after it, which may be just as difficult.
